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Families navigation of Readmission and reintegration in Serbia

European Union
Governance
Human Rights
Migration
Asylum
Policy Implementation
Nodira Kholmatova
University of Amsterdam
Nodira Kholmatova
University of Amsterdam
Katie Kuschminder
University of Amsterdam

Abstract

This paper examines returnees’ experiences of readmission in the process of return and reintegration in Serbia and how returnees navigate the hardships of parenting and familial relationships in the context of lack of employment, housing, and social welfare support in Serbia. Serbia has had long-lasting cooperation with the EU and has aspired to EU accession for two decades as part of European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations. Serbia developed and implemented a reintegration policy following the signing of a readmission agreement with the EU in 2009. Serbia has since been implementing a return and readmission policy as a national reintegration policy— establishing a special multi-ministerial council for migration with a bottom-up approach to policy implementation. Under the readmission agreements, returnees are Serbia's responsibility and are bound to follow the measures and practices that would assist them in reintegrating into Serbia. Drawing on thirty-eight key stakeholder interviews with governmental institutions and international and local CSO organizations, we discuss the current status of implementation of readmission policies across three different sites in Serbia. This paper then addresses the impact of the EU return and readmission policy on migrants by examining how families experience the readmission system in Serbia. In practice, a fair number of returnees are families. The literature and normative discourse in the field of return and readmission frames returnees as individual migrants who were returned from the EU to their country of origin. Semi-structured interviews with families in Serbia in 2023 show that families experience traumatic deportation in the host country, such as Germany and Sweden, and involuntary return to Serbia. The paper makes three contributions: firstly, a theoretical contribution to the research and literature on family deportation under readmission policies; secondly, we show how institutionalized practices of return and reintegration treat and process the returnees under the readmission and reintegration policies between the EU and Serbia, and thirdly, these discrepancies lead family returnees to precarious situations and experience trauma and gendered violence.