Minors in Assisted Voluntary Return (and Reintegration) Situations in the Case of Austria. Practices, Challenges and Recommendations

The research focus has been established in collaboration with practitioners from the IOM Austria office, with whom two meetings have been organized. The meetings and the documents provided within these meetings gave access to great qualitative and quantitative data for the Austrian case, which serve as valuable sources for this paper. Based on this, this paper has a country-based focus concentrating on AVR (and reintegration) of minors from Austria to non-EU countries, considering that the procedures concerning these assistances, such as institutions involved in the pre-return phase and their responsibilities, vary substantially among different countries. Whereas IOM is not the only institution that provides return assistance in Austria, this paper focuses explicitly on the work they realize in collaboration with their partners, mainly because of the quantitative importance IOM has in this field.