Changing norms in EU return policy? A longitudinal analysis of commission documents on return

Returning migrants without an authorisation to stay has become a central concern of the EU’s migration policy since the 2015/2016 ‘migration crisis’ fostering the perception that return increasingly dominates both internal governance and external relations. Existing scholarship, however, largely relies on case studies of specific instruments or partner countries, leaving the broader trajectory of EU return policy underexplored. This article provides the first longitudinal and comprehensive assessment of the evolution of return-related norms in EU migration policy. We analyse a novel corpus of about 700 Commission policy documents and press releases issued between 1985 and 2020, using descriptive methods and topic models. We find that the prominence of return overall has not consistently increased over time. We also do not find a linear increase in the external dimension and cooperation with non-EU countries, but rather a change in focus from development funding to connecting return to visa facilitation and back to questions of development. Moreover, border control has gained prominence within return-related documents over time. The findings shed light on our understanding of the EU’s return policy and of the norms the Commission highlights both in policy and in public communication.