"It actually made me feel like I didn't even want to stay here": Experiences of "Voluntary Return" in a Sanctuary City

During the near decade of Conservative rule in Canada, from 2006 2015, rancorous anti-refugee and anti-migrant discourse and policy were circulated, which manifested in a large-scale overhaul of the immigration system. Social, economic, and physical exclusions increased as a reassertion of state sovereignty through the reconstitution and solidification of borders, as well as the increased precariousness of migrant bodies. The primary goals of my dissertation research have been to learn why some migrants chose to leave Canada voluntarily and to understand the factors that have forced them to do so. Among the key questions this dissertation attempts to answer are the following: 1) What factors push migrants to make decisions on the spectrum of forced voluntary return? 2) How does gender, as it intersects with other identities and social relations, influence migrants experiences of forced voluntary return? 3) What does the addition of forced voluntary return, a non-binary concept, offer to current research on voluntary and involuntary migration? This research proposes that particular spaces and relationships became laden with feelings of exclusion and criminalization, which for the migrants centred in this dissertation, resulted in a loss of hope for a future in Canada. Participants identified loss of hope as one of the primary factors that pushed them to leave voluntarily, so as to relieve the pain associated with staying. The exclusions were importantly impacted by gender, class, racialization, age and ability, which came together in ways that pushed some into a forced voluntary return. I offer the spectrum of forced voluntary return to capture some of the tensions and messiness within migrant experiences of return that are neither completely voluntary nor forced.