No One-Size-Fits-All: Outreach and Counselling for Irregular Migrants

Tackling irregular migration to Europe has long been high on the EU agenda. The strategies proposed and adopted for addressing this issue have evolved over time, resulting in an increasingly diverse set of tools. These include strengthened border controls, voluntary and forced return efforts, new legal pathways to offer alternatives to irregular movement, and regularization.

In recent years, European countries have also added to the toolkit to address irregular migration by conducting outreach and counselling for specific groups of irregular migrants. The reasons include informing them about available return and reintegration support, raising the visibility of pathways out of irregularity (such as regularization options, where they exist), and ensuring all members of a society have access to certain essential services.

As interest and investments in this area grow, this MPI Europe issue brief explores the diversity of initiatives, actors, and practices in this field. It draws, among other sources, on interviews with government and nongovernmental stakeholders in eight European countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) and on roundtable discussions among public officials, local administrations, civil-society actors, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations.