Blog Post by Jeff Crisp, Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, Refugee Law Initiative Affiliate, and former Head of Policy Development and Evaluation at UNHCR.

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‘Return hubs’. What are they? Why are European governments so keen to establish them? What difficulties might they encounter? And why is UNHCR’s qualified support for them problematic? This blog addresses the key questions raised by an important development in European asylum and migration policy.

A longstanding issue

While there is no legal definition of a ‘return hub’, they are generally understood to be locations outside the European Union to which unsuccessful asylum seekers can be sent, pending the time when they can be returned to their country of origin. According to some interpretations, new arrivals at the borders of European states, and who are not admitted to the asylum procedure, might also be removed to such locations.

In recent months the return hub notion has attracted a great deal of interest from the European Union, its member states and the UK. While the concept is a new one, such hubs are intended to resolve a longstanding and intractable issue for European states: how to deal with people whose claims to refugee status have been rejected and who have exhausted all of the appeals opportunities available to them.

European states have generally taken the position that unsuccessful asylum seekers should be regarded as illegal immigrants and deported as quickly as possible to their country of origin. To facilitate such removals, a number of politicians and pressure groups have also suggested that asylum seekers who arrive in an irregular manner should be held in detention while their claims to international protection are examined, thereby preventing them from ‘absconding’ and evading deportation.

In practice, however, the removal of unsuccessful asylum seekers to their country of origin has proven to be a far more difficult undertaking than it might first appear. People who have devoted a great deal of time, effort and money in the quest to reach and remain in Europe are often unwilling to abandon those aspirations and will not meekly go back to where they came from. They may feel that life would be too dangerous or difficult for them in their homeland, even if they have been deemed not to be refugees.

Given the length of time that it takes for asylum applications to be processed in most European countries, unsuccessful refugee claimants might well have found partners, had children, established friendships, been reunited with family members and entered the labour market by the time that their asylum claims have been definitively rejected. For all of these reasons, some will resist any effort to remove them, ignoring the  deportation orders served on them and going ‘underground’ to evade the authorities.

This scenario has presented serious challenges for European states. Apprehending, detaining and deporting rejected asylum seekers is a costly and complex process. It runs the risk of provoking local protests and jeopardizing relations between the security services and ethnic minority communities. In the worst cases, detention and deportation can lead to the death, injury and traumatization of the people targeted for removal, generating negative and unwelcome publicity for states and their enforcement agents.

Even if these obstacles to deportation can be overcome, governments of countries of origin are not always prepared to readmit their citizens, to acknowledge their nationality or to provide them with the documents that they need to be readmitted to their homeland. In the case of crisis-affected countries such as Somalia and Syria, European states have paradoxically acknowledged that asylum seekers whose claims for protection have been rejected cannot return or be deported because it is too dangerous to do so.

In an attempt to find a way out of this impasse, governments have experimented with a variety of different initiatives. These include providing financial incentives to unsuccessful asylum seekers who agree to return; the establishment of ‘assisted return and reintegration’ programmes that provide administrative and material support to people who have no right to remain; and the imposition of sanctions (such as visa refusals and the withdrawal of aid) in the case of countries of origin that have refused to cooperate in the process of deportation and readmission.

While European governments have dedicated a great deal of effort and resources to such removal strategies, they have had a limited impact. The EU Agency for Asylum has reported that the gap between negative asylum decisions and returns is growing, and that in 2023, around 500,000 refugee claims were rejected, while the number of returns stood at less than 100,000. Europe has consequently been left with a substantial population of people who cannot or will not return to their homeland, and whose continued presence is thought to act as a ‘pull factor’ for others who have an interest in making irregular journeys to Europe and seeking asylum there.

Proposals and problems

The ‘return hub’ notion thus represents the latest of many attempts to resolve the issue of rejected asylum seekers in Europe. it has risen to prominence in the past year, in the context of the EU’s efforts to formulate a ‘comprehensive approach’ to the issue of migration and asylum, including the externalization of the continent’s migration management strategy to states outside the bloc.

In October 2024, 12 EU states introduced a proposal for the establishment of “sites for the temporary hosting of migrants who have been ordered to leave the EU or denied entry”. This was followed by a statement from European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, underlining the need “to explore possible ways forward as regards the idea of developing return hubs outside of the EU.”

In March 2025, Italy announced that return hubs would be operated from detention centres it had constructed in Albania, and which were originally intended for the processing of asylum seekers who had been rescued or intercepted at sea. Two months later, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed his intention to emulate the Italian approach, describing return hubs as “a really important innovation” and acknowledging that he was engaged “in talks with a number of countries” concerning their establishment.

Many questions remain to be answered with respect to the proposed hubs. Where, for example, would they be established? Who would manage them? What standards would they be expected to meet? What rights would the people who are sent there be able to exercise? Would any rejected asylum seekers be exempt from removal to a return hub – and if so, which of them?

Would such hubs be subject to independent monitoring? How long would people sent to the hubs be expected to remain there, especially those who, for one reason or another, cannot be sent back to their homeland? What legal challenges might be expected in relation to such hubs? What forms and degrees of compulsion might be used to ensure the removal of rejected asylum seekers, first to a return hub and subsequently to their country of origin? Once they have arrived in their country of origin, would any effort be made to ensure that they are not victimized as a result of their failed attempt to seek asylum elsewhere?

UNHCR’s position

UNHCR has always taken the position that states have a right to return rejected asylum seekers to their country of origin, and that the organization has a ‘residual interest’ in the treatment of such people. In the current context, that interest has been reinforced by the strong political momentum behind the return hub notion, as well as the organization’s need to retain Europe’s financial and diplomatic support.

Given these considerations, it is not surprising that UNHCR has given its qualified support to the return hub concept. Thus, in a March 2025 position paper, the agency stated, in a somewhat diffident manner, that the concept “could appropriately be explored,” and that UNHCR could potentially be involved in their implementation of return hubs, as long as its engagement is “in line with human rights standards” and consistent with its refugee protection mandate.

More specifically, the UNHCR paper indicates that return hubs should use detention only as a last resort, that children should generally not be sent to such locations, and that “adequate accommodation and reception arrangements” should be in place for those adults who are placed in such facilities. With respect to rejected asylum seekers who are removed to a return hub but who are unable to go back to their country of origin, “pathways to self-sufficiency should be contemplated.”

This position is a problematic one. First, it concedes the principle that rejected asylum seekers can be forcibly relocated to locations to which they have no connection, for an unspecified period of time and, in certain circumstances, in prison-like conditions, despite the fact that they have not been convicted of a criminal offence. While the UNHCR paper seeks to legitimize return hubs by reference to an Executive Committee Conclusion and the Global Compact on Migration, many refugee advocates will find this position legally questionable and ethically unacceptable.

Second, there is a need to ask whether, in their determination to establish return hubs, European states really strive to meet the conditions and standards stipulated by UNHCR, and what position will the organization take if they do not? Is there not a risk that the organization’s qualified support for the return hub notion will be used as an alibi for an inhumane approach to the issue of returning rejected cases?

Third, rather than endorsing the return hub approach, should UNHCR not be promoting alternatives to it? In the spirit of the Global Compact on Refugees, could the organization and its partners do more to create conditions in countries of origin that are amenable to the voluntary return of rejected asylum seekers? Are there unexplored opportunities for UNHCR to promote the regularization of unsuccessful refugee claimants, by allowing them, for example, to join the workforce in sectors of the European economy where skills and labour are in short supply?

As UNHCR suggests in its position paper, the integrity of asylum systems depends on the ability of states to make both positive and negative decisions on requests for protection, and to find rights-respecting solutions for those people whose applications for refugee status are unsuccessful. Serious doubts remain as to the role that return hubs might play in the attainment of such outcomes.

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