Voices of Return: Leveraging the Influence of Returnees in Migration Information Campaigns

As part of the Awareness Raising and Information Campaigns on the Risks of Irregular Migration in Pakistan – II (PARIM-II) project, this report explores the role of returnees in migration decision making processes and investigates their potential engagement in the design and implementation of migration information and awareness-raising campaigns. Whether forcibly or voluntarily returned, returnees are living testimonials of both the challenges and opportunities associated with migration, and their experiences can significantly influence their community members’ perceptions of migration. In this sense, not only can they affect potential migrants’ migration intentions and behaviours, but they can also play an important and direct role in the implementation of migration information campaigns. This report explores these pathways of influence on migration decision-making and builds on those conclusions to discuss the potential role of returnees in migration information campaigns. It also takes into account challenges and ethical considerations for engaging returnees in campaigns.

Role of returnees in the migration decision-making process
The mechanisms through which returnees may influence migration decision-making aligns with frameworks that discuss how social networks influence migration decision-making. However, based on our fieldwork, there are some differences between returnees and the rest of social networks in terms of the kind of information and support that the former can provide.

• Social networks play a pivotal role in shaping migration decisions and plans, influencing potential migrants during all stages of migration. However, social networks are really variegated, and the role played by family and friends, the local community, contacts abroad, agents, and returnees is different. Our research reveals that while personal contacts abroad may have a stronger influence on the decision-making phase, instilling the idea of migration on the individual, returnees in the community can play a more important role during the following phase of migration planning, to strengthen migration decisions or gather more information on the journey.
• Returnees are generally identified as valuable sources of information, sharing both positive and negative experiences that impact the decision-making process. Probably by virtue of their negative migration experiences and the risks they faced during the journey, forced returnees from our sample do not seem keen to advice other people on pursuing irregular migration – and in fact they are not even willing to re-migrate or, if they are, only through legal means. Whether failed attempts at migration and high rates of return migration discourage potential migrants from attempting migration, however, is not clear from our research.
• As part of a broad and variegated social network, returnees can only influence certain aspects of the decision-making process and the migration plan of potential migrants. The choice of destination, for example, may be influenced more efficiently by friends and family abroad, rather than by returnees. Similarly, family and friends can provide potential migrants with financial support, while none of the respondents from our sample mentioned receiving any money from returnees at the time of their migration, nor giving any to others contemplating migration. However, returnees might be helpful to provide information on the routes to take and on the ways to enter Europe. Based on our sample, it appears therefore that the support that returnees can provide does not go beyond information and guidance.
• Just like in all social networks, the degree of influence of returnees’ advice may depend not only on the type of information that returnees share with potential migrants, but also on the strength of their relationship. As potential migrants are exposed to mixed messages and information, they tend to be more influenced from ‘positive’ stories rather than from warnings and failures, and to follow what they want to hear. Due to the limitations of our sample, it is not possible to demonstrate whether returnees actually dissuaded potential migrants from embarking on irregular journeys. Yet, the strength of the relationship between the returnee and the potential migrant might influence the decision-making process of the latter.

Role of returnees in migration information campaigns
As emerged from our findings, the information that respondents had gathered before starting their migration process was often incomplete, biased, and unreliable. As a result, their migration journey was longer, riskier, and more expensive than expected, while their overall migration experience was negative, leading to an early return or to a sense of shame and failure when they came back in their community of origin. The interviews show the need for more and better information on the actual risks and costs of irregular migration, including information on health challenges, risks of kidnapping, duration of the journey, modes of conveyance often used in clandestine journeys, the actual cost of migration, challenges experienced at the destination, the unreliability of agents, and the emotional toll associated with the risky and expensive journey. Given their first-hand migration experience, returnees can indeed provide more reliable and trustworthy information on the whole migration process and add a more direct and impactful emotional connection with the audience. However, it is important to take into consideration some methodological and ethical aspects when engaging returnees in information campaigns:

• Possibility of engaging with returnees: While it is relatively easy to find returnees, it is not straightforward that they want to engage in the implementation of migration information campaigns, as they might not feel comfortable in sharing their experiences. Even when returnees accept to participate in the campaign, it is important that their experience is not perceived as a failure, in order not to increase their sense of shame.
• Level of engagement of returnees: Campaign participants are generally volunteers that do not
  receiving any financial contribution, as a testament of their genuine engagement in the campaign and their selfless relationship with their community. However, it is important to reflect on the often-stark economic differences between returnees and campaign organisers.
• Relationship between returnees and participants: In order for the campaign to be effective and sustainable, it is important that returnees and participants share the same ethnic, demographic, and religious backgrounds, especially in highly diversified countries like Pakistan. The stronger the relationship, the higher the expected influence on migration decision.
• Message of the campaign: Messages should always have the best interest of the target group at their heart. Campaign messages, therefore, should concentrate not only on the negative experiences of returnees but also on more positive stories, and provide correct and reliable information on migration journeys, the rights of migrants in the countries of transit and destination, and legal alternatives to irregular migration.