Ideas of ‘home’ and ‘return home’ in voluntary return messaging – A contemplation on the impact of passage of time and sense of failure on asylum-seekers’ engagements with voluntary return in Ireland 

This article explores how asylum-seekers currently registered in Ireland’s ‘direct provision’ system feel about the prospect of assisted voluntary return to their country of origin. One of the article’s recommendations is that organizations active in the field of voluntary return should invest more time in trying to understand how asylum-seekers remember and imagine their ‘home’; how migrants construct allegiances while in their host country; and the importance of community-based allegiances with fellow migrants.