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Calculated deprivation of rights

A statement by Maximilian Pichl, jurisprudence scholar and political scientist

Offers relating to purportedly voluntary return prove to be highly problematic in asylum practice. Sometimes asylum-seekers are asked to “voluntarily” discontinue their ongoing asylum procedure and leave the country. Such offers are based on the fact that it is difficult for many refugees to obtain proper legal counselling or good asylum lawyers. Even in supposedly hopeless cases, legal representation can succeed in obtaining the right to stay by exhausting the possibilities offered under the rule of law and due process. Government authorities, or even organisations such as the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), assume that they are sometimes the first ones to come into contact with the asylum-seekers and that access to legal advice is then hardly possible. Especially in large camps or anchor centres, which are designed in such a way that civil society and advocacy have virtually no access, such an approach is part of a larger disenfranchisement structure. The voluntary return system is thus based on conditions in which asylum-seekers do not even come close to being informed in full about their legal situation.Offers relating to purportedly voluntary return prove to be highly problematic in asylum practice. Sometimes asylum-seekers are asked to “voluntarily” discontinue their ongoing asylum procedure and leave the country. Such offers are based on the fact that it is difficult for many refugees to obtain proper legal counselling or good asylum lawyers. Even in supposedly hopeless cases, legal representation can succeed in obtaining the right to stay by exhausting the possibilities offered under the rule of law and due process. Government authorities, or even organisations such as the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), assume that they are sometimes the first ones to come into contact with the asylum-seekers and that access to legal advice is then hardly possible. Especially in large camps or anchor centres, which are designed in such a way that civil society and advocacy have virtually no access, such an approach is part of a larger disenfranchisement structure. The voluntary return system is thus based on conditions in which asylum-seekers do not even come close to being informed in full about their legal situation.