« The uncertain return of Aya and Prince »

Thinking uncertainty and intermediation of voluntary returns from a female trajectory pending to leave from Morocco

Abstract

“Voluntary returns” implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are a contemporary form of deportation, which relies singularly on the “voluntariness” of migrants themselves. Although this “voluntariness” has largely been discussed by the academic literature, it seems nevertheless relevant to interrogate the nonlinear and partly contingent process leading migrants to engage in a return procedure with the IOM. Drawing on the return trajectory of Aya and her son Prince, both awaiting departure from Morocco, the article examines the interactions between the migration intermediaries’ practices and migrants’ agency in the production of a voluntariness to return. It observes the beginnings of an emerging return decision, the role of intermediary actors in transforming it into a request for assistance from the IOM, and the uncertainty that persists in the outcome and modalities of a voluntary return procedure. Thus, the article demonstrates that voluntary return emerges from a relational space of intermediation that is positioned at the interface of border violence and migrants' capacity for action. It is precisely in this nub of indeterminacy that control mechanisms on the one hand, and migrants’ agency on the other, converge, oppose and distort each other.