‘The UDI shall facilitate planned and legal, but controlled, immigration. We have a particular responsibility to motivate and help people without residence permits to return to their home country. The best thing by far is if these persons return home voluntarily. That is why the UDI is investing in extensive research on voluntary return,’ says Director Anne Siri Rustad.
 
The plan is for all three research projects to be concluded in 2010.

Historical review

Different measures have been used to ensure return in the course of the last nine years. In order to strengthen the coming return efforts while at the same time laying the foundation for further research in the field, the UDI has initiated a historical review and analysis of the work on voluntary return from 2000 until the present. The plan is that the project will be the first part of a more extensive and complete evaluation of work on return in Norway.

‘We believe the project can contribute to further developing and improving the current measures aimed at voluntary return,’ says Ms Rustad.

The Institute for Social Research is responsible for the project.

Evaluation of voluntary return to Iraq

The UDI has also initiated an evaluation of the IRRINI programme (Information, Return and Reintegration of Iraqi Nationals to Iraq) for voluntary return and repatriation to Iraq.

The project aims to provide insight into whether the voluntary return programme for Iraq contributes, overall or in part, to sustainable return to and reintegration in the country. The study will also draw up proposals for how the return programme can best attend to returned asylum seekers’ need for support in the re-establishment phase in Iraq.

‘It is also an aim of the project that it should produce knowledge that can be used in the work on voluntary return in general,’ says Ms Rustad.

The project is being conducted by Chr. Michelsen Institute.

Return of families with children

It is especially important for Norwegian authorities that children are given special consideration in the migration field. On assignment for the UDI, Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) has therefore initiated a project aimed at developing methods and ways of working for the return of families with children.

Experience shows that children more easily form attachments to the local community and life outside reception centres for asylum seekers. Work on returning families with children is therefore a particular challenge.

‘The project aims to help to address this challenge by devising a return policy that attends to the needs of the children in the family and that takes the special situation of families with children into consideration. If more families with children choose to return voluntarily as soon as possible after their application for a residence permit has been rejected, it would clearly be in the best interests of the children,’ says Anne Siri Rustad.