There are migrants in the European Union caught in a de facto “legal limbo”. They are referred to as “unreturnable” because they cannot be deported. Often times the reason they cannot be deported is because they are stateless, people without citizenships or passports. In some cases, the countries where they were born no longer exist. In others, such as the case of a Roma man born in Macedonia, they are stateless because the countries where they were born refuse to acknowledge them as nationals. Other “unreturnables” have lost their passports (or they never had one to begin with) and the embassies of their countries of origin refuse to issue them new travel documents. There are many reasons why an undocumented migrant can become “unreturnable” in Europe. When that happens, they become targets of pointless detentions and subjected to further loss of rights. Detaining an “unreturnable migrant" is pointless because the detention can never be followed up by deportation (which is the justification to detain undocumented migrants to begin with). As a result, “unreturnable people” are detained for weeks, months or years and then released with absolutely no support system only to risk detention again in a never ending cycle of State violence.
“Point of no return” is a project led by the Flemish Refugee Action Foundation that interviewed 39 “unreturnable migrants” about their personal histories and the numerous detentions they have faced in Belgium, France, Hungary and the United Kingdom. Click through to read their stories and the lack of legal support for their situation across the EU.
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