Participants

Reintegrate is a 5-year project (2021-2026) funded by the European Research Council that aims to understand how reintegration is governed and how reintegration governance influences returnees’ experiences. Many people do not have the right to stay in countries of migration and return to their countries of origin through different types of programmes and policies. This return can be chosen, or it can be forced.  Little is known about how different countries govern the process of reintegration once people return and how individuals feel about the return process. The Reintegrate project thus aims to understand processes of reintegration governance and returnees’ experiences of reintegration governance.  

Data collection for this project will be conducted in Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Serbia.  In addition to interviewing returnees and their families in each case country, the project team also intends to interview key informants such as government officials, staff at relevant NGOs, IOs, development organizations, and CSOs in order to capture their insights in the study

Interviews should last no longer than one hour and will focus on respondents’ experiences and knowledge regarding reintegration governance and return migration in the country. Participation in these interviews is entirely voluntary, and there are no risks or direct benefits to participating. The research team will ensure the confidentiality and anonymity of respondents, in accordance with individual preferences, because interview files will be assigned anonymous codes and stored securely, and no personally identifying information will be shared outside of the research team (unless individual respondents give explicit permission for their interview responses to be presented with reference to their organizational affiliation or professional role/identity).  All interview data will be kept under password protected and encrypted files.  

The interview data will be analyzed, synthesized with other secondary data sources, and presented in a series of research outputs that will aim to understand reintegration governance and its influence on return migrants’ experiences. The data will be stored for 10 years in line with Dutch research standards. The research findings will make an important contribution to understanding reintegration processes. We expect that research results will be available starting in 2024. All results will be available on our website.