Voluntary return programmes in Bolivia and Spain in the context of crisis

Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals_106-107
Publication date: 09/2014
Author:
Sònia Parella Rubio, Alisa Petroff and Olga Serradell Pumareda
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From 2008 onwards, the economic crisis experienced by countries such as Spain marked a turning point in migratory flows. As a result, faced with the serious reality of unemployment and the precariousness of the Spanish labour market, the option of return has become the last resort for some immigrants, and an attractive strategy for governments (of both countries of origin and destination), which attempt to manage return using special programmes. From this point of view, the aim of this paper is to examine the assisted voluntary return programmes in Spain and Bolivia and their suitability to the dynamics of return, beginning with an exhaustive review of the programmes and the perceptions on them expressed by Bolivian immigrants as part of the survey «Circulation and Return», carried out within the framework of the RETTRANS project.

Key words: return migration, assisted voluntary return (AVR), return policies, Spain, Bolivia

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