International Cooperation of ‘coerced’ returns of migrants

Zeynep Şahin Mencütek is currently involved in the Horizon Europe Project, “Decentring the Study of Migrant Returns and Readmission Policies in Europe and Beyond” (GAPs). One of the work packages she lead, along with colleagues from the University of Glasgow (Gerasimos Tsourapas and Samet Apaydın), focuses on the international cooperation dimension of the ‘coerced’ return of unauthorized migrants and refugees.

The study’s guiding research questions include: “What conditions prompt migrant destination countries to seek readmission/return agreements and which conditions explain cooperation and lack of cooperation of targeted countries for returns? Methodologically, the study will adopt qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to identify the set(s) of conditions leading to the existence of an outcome (agreements, arrangements, partnerships, deals), which will help us with theory testing and development about ‘return diplomacy’.

The research group is currently in the process of initiating research design, including case pair selections and defining macro conditions (e.g., incentives, cost, norms, symbolic gains, negotiation process, regime type), their measurement, and piloting. The research will also involve in-depth case analysis at different levels.

Speaker:

Zeynep Şahin Mencütek
Senior Researcher at Bonn International Centre forConflict Studies (BICC), Germany

Ms. Mencütek co-leads a Horizon Europe project, called GAPs on migrant returns and return policies. She is also a Research Affiliate with the Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and conducts joint research on the thematic area of Governance of Migration in a Globalizing World. She held the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (June 2020–May 2021) and an international fellowship at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research in Duisburg (2019–2020). Previously, she worked as an Assistant Professor in Turkey, and in 2018 achieved the rank of Docent in the field of international relations. Zeynep received her PhD in politics and international relations from the University of Southern California in 2011. Her research interests include politics of migration, migration governance, return migration and Middle East politics. She has published in a wide variety of international peer-reviewed journals in the fields of migration and international politics, Besides dozens of book chapters, she also published a monograph, Refugee Governance, State and Politics in the Middle East(Routledge 2018) and recently co-authored the book, Syrian Refugees in Turkey (IMISCOE Series, 2023) and an edited volume titled, Migration and City ( IMISCOE Series, 2024). She is the associate editor of Journal of Migration Studies and board member of Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies.