The Care/Security Nexus of the Humanitarian Border: Assisted Return in Norway
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Synnøve Bendixsen |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12630 |
The Care/Security Nexus of the Humanitarian
Border: Assisted Return in Norway
Synnøve Bendixsen*
ABSTRACT
While Assisted Return and deportation are frequently viewed as two different return policies,
the first represented as humanitarian and the latter as enforcement, this article argues that there
is a continuum between these policies and that they form part of humanitarian border enforce-
ment. Drawing on policy document analysis and interviews with NGOs and with irregular
migrants, the article provides a two-level analysis by examining how AR is presented from the
Norwegian governmental perspective and how it is experienced from the Afghan migrant per-
spectives. The article argues that the government bases its AR policy on the need to maintain
the credibility and sustainability of the asylum system, as part of fighting crime, while present-
ing it as a humanitarian solution. For irregular migrants, however, the experienced lack of
proper asylum procedures delegitimizes return policies. Overall, the performative aspects of
humanitarianism in return policies contribute to depoliticizing return.
INTRODUCTION
In the autumn of 2017, the Norwegian government planned to deport all Afghan youth with a tem-
porary permit who had turned eighteen by October that year. There was significant media coverage
about this controversial case of a group of youth who became known as the “October children”:
after arriving as unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan they had received a temporary permit
until they came of legal age. Many civil actors (lawyers and guardians of unaccompanied minors)
and human rights organizations (including Amnesty International Norway) signed petitions and
demonstrated against the return of these youth. They argued that several of the asylum cases had
procedural errors and demanded a halt of returns –Assisted Return (AR) and forced return –to
Afghanistan until the country became stable enough to ensure returnees’safety and dignity. As this
discussion went on, the outspoken and controversial Norwegian Minister of Immigration Sylvi
Listhaug (from the Progress Party) went on a trip to Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya with the aim of
securing return agreements. In January 2018, the government declined to halt forced returns to
Afghanistan, arguing that stopping deportations to Afghanistan would mean that Norway would
attract Afghans and other migrants. In the meantime, several worried Afghan youth left the recep-
tion centres. As covered widely in Norwegian newspapers and activists, some of these youth went
missing and others went to Paris, where they lived on the street.
These events highlight the ways in which state-induced returns, such as deportation and AR have
become an increasingly important focus for Norway as a way to deal with asylum seekers and
* University of Bergen
doi: 10.1111/imig.12630
©2019 The Author. International Migration
published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf
of International Organization for Migration
International Migration Vol. 58 (6) 2020
ISSN 0020-7985
This is an open access article under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
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