Reintegration or a facade? Nigerian returnees challenge promise of starting again

At the World Social Forum in Cotonou, Nigerian return migrants questioned the promise of reintegration, arguing that returning people home without addressing trauma, poverty, stigma and the reasons they left is not the same as helping them rebuild their lives.

For many migration programmes, the story appears simple: a migrant leaves, encounters difficulties, returns home and receives support to start again.

But for Nigerian return migrants who gathered at the World Social Forum in Cotonou in 2026, the reality is far more complicated.

Behind the language of assisted voluntary return and reintegration are stories of detention, coercion, trauma, stigma, inadequate training, failed businesses and a painful question that echoed through the panel discussion:

Reintegration into what?

The participants did not speak as statistics or beneficiaries of migration programmes. They spoke as people who had lived through the migration system and returned to confront many of the same social and economic conditions that had pushed them to leave.

Their central argument was stark: physical return is not reintegration.

And where programmes present packages, training or financial assistance as evidence of successful reintegration while deeper problems remain unresolved, they described the process as a “reintegration façade.”

“I Was Sent on My Way”

For Udo, the failure began almost immediately after returning to Nigeria.

He said he came back in a severely distressed mental state after being held in what he described as a notorious detention centre. What he needed, he said, was medical attention, psychological support and time to recover.

Instead, he was lodged for one night.

The following morning, he was sent on his way.

Two months later, he was recalled for business training and given a small amount of money to start a business he had no prior knowledge of. He was also paired with people he did not know as business partners.

For Udo, the arrangement was almost destined to fail.

The experience, he said, destroyed much of the confidence he had left in the reintegration process.

His story exposes one of the central weaknesses raised at the Forum: support cannot be meaningful if it is disconnected from the person’s actual condition, skills, interests and circumstances.

A returnee who has just emerged from detention and trauma may need counselling before entrepreneurship. Someone without business experience may require sustained training and mentorship rather than a small start-up grant. And someone whose original reasons for migrating remain unchanged may find little reason to believe that returning home has solved anything.

“The push factor of my migration was still evident and untreated,” Ude’s testimony suggested.

That, for him, was the fundamental contradiction.

He had been returned.

But he had not been rebuilt.

When “Voluntary” Does Not Feel Voluntary

For several participants, the problem begins even before reintegration—with the word “voluntary.”

Rhoda questioned whether a return can genuinely be called voluntary when a migrant is detained and returning home appears to be the only available route out.

“If someone is in detention and the only option available to them to leave that situation is to return to their country, can we really say that the return is voluntary?” she asked.

Awe offered an even more personal account.

He described his return from Libya as anything but voluntary, saying he was confronted with conditions in which remaining appeared to mean risking his life.

He recalled being presented with two choices: return to Nigeria or remain in Libya amid violence and insecurity.

“I had to return back instead of staying in Libya to die,” his testimony stated.

For the participants, such experiences challenge the neat language often used to describe return programmes.

A decision made under detention, fear, violence, insecurity or the absence of realistic alternatives may technically be recorded as a return, but the participants argued that the circumstances surrounding that decision matter.

Consent cannot be understood separately from the conditions under which it is given.

The Business Package Is Not the Person

Another major criticism centred on the economic component of reintegration.

The participants questioned a model in which returnees are frequently directed towards small businesses and short vocational courses, as though entrepreneurship were a universal solution to the complex consequences of migration.

Rhoda put the question simply:

Why should entrepreneurship be the answer for everybody?

Some returnees want employment. Others want to return to school. Some want to learn technology, pursue a profession or develop a completely different career.

The problem, she argued, is what happens when programmes are designed for returnees without being designed with them.

Olu made the same point from a broader perspective.

For him, reintegration must empower migrants rather than become a mechanism for discouraging migration.

People with lived experience, he argued, must be involved in shaping migration and reintegration policies.

“Nothing about migrants without the voice of migrants,” was the principle underpinning his intervention.

Ido was particularly critical of the vocational training component of reintegration programmes.

He argued that training lasting only a few days or a few months cannot necessarily produce competent artisans or professionals capable of sustaining themselves in competitive markets.

He cited examples of returnees being trained as tailors, barbers, hairstylists and solar-energy installers within very short periods.

The question is not whether these skills are useful.

It is whether the intervention provides enough time, equipment, mentorship, market access and follow-up for those skills to become sustainable livelihoods.

A sewing machine, barbering kit or business grant may make for an attractive programme statistic.

But a returnee’s survival cannot be measured by the number of items contained in a reintegration package.

The Trauma That Does Not Appear in the Package

Perhaps the most persistent concern raised at Cotonou was the psychological dimension of return.

Immaculate argued that reintegration must recognize the whole person.

A migrant may return carrying trauma from detention, violence, exploitation, disappointment and dangerous journeys. Those experiences do not disappear at the border.

Yet economic support can sometimes dominate reintegration programmes while psychosocial care receives less attention.

The result can be a person who has technically received “reintegration assistance” but remains emotionally and socially unable to rebuild.

Immaculate posed a series of questions that go beyond whether a package has been delivered:

Is the business sustainable?

Does the returnee have access to counselling?

Is the family supportive?

Are there employment opportunities?

Has the community accepted the person?

And what happens when the initial assistance runs out?

These questions point to a different definition of reintegration—one based not on delivery of assistance, but on whether a person’s life is actually improving.

From Survivor to “Success Story”

Ife and Ewa raised another uncomfortable dimension: the way return migrants’ stories can be used by institutions and campaigns.

Ife described a situation in which migrants are invited to recount experiences of trauma, only for those stories to become tools for discouraging others from migrating.

The returnee’s suffering becomes a campaign message.

The migrant’s pain becomes evidence.

The survivor becomes a warning.

But what happens to the person behind the story?

Ife challenged the tendency to portray migrants primarily as helpless victims, arguing that their skills, knowledge, resilience and capacity to create change are frequently overlooked.

The labels can be damaging.

Returnees may be described as victims, greedy, ungrateful, entitled, unruly or insatiable, while their abilities and aspirations disappear behind the label.

The participants called for a shift from the victim narrative towards one that recognizes return migrants as people with agency.

That does not mean denying the trauma they experienced.

It means refusing to allow trauma to become their entire identity.

“They Covered Their Noses”

Ewa’s testimony brought the issue of stigma into sharp focus.

She recalled returning to Nigeria in 2017 and encountering people who presented themselves as humanitarians but responded to survivors with discrimination.

She remembered people covering their noses because they believed survivors smelled.

It was a small gesture, but for her it represented something much larger: the humiliation that can accompany return.

Instead of being welcomed with dignity, survivors can return to judgment.

Some are told they were greedy.

Others are told they should never have travelled.

Some are made to feel that the abuse, exploitation or violence they experienced was ultimately their own fault.

For survivors, such attitudes can compound trauma rather than heal it.

Ewa also recounted experiences in which organizations allegedly took returnees to rehabilitation centres without adequate consent, restricted communication with families and placed people in skills programmes they had not chosen.

She said she had to fight for her own release before she could return to her family.

Her account raises a fundamental principle for reintegration programmes:

Support should never become another form of control.

A System Designed Without the People It Claims to Help?

Ara described reintegration as a mechanism that can be used to control migrants and consolidate power rather than provide the support promised.

Ido went further, arguing that the concept of reintegration can allow European migration policies to distance themselves from the consequences of those policies while responsibility is shifted onto African governments.

His criticism reflects a broader concern expressed during the Forum about externalization—the shifting of migration-control responsibilities beyond Europe’s borders.

For the participants, this creates a troubling sequence.

Movement is restricted.

People become stranded or detained.

They return under difficult circumstances.

They receive limited assistance.

Their stories are then used to discourage other migrants from making similar journeys.

And all of this can be presented as a successful reintegration intervention.

Ife captured the contradiction bluntly:

After restricting people’s freedom of movement and returning them under difficult circumstances, institutions then use their experiences to advance migration-control agendas—and call that reintegration.

Reintegration Must Begin With Listening

The Nigerian participants at the World Social Forum were not simply rejecting support.

They were demanding a different kind of support.

One that begins with listening.

One that recognizes that returnees are not identical.

One that does not assume that everyone wants to become an entrepreneur.

One that provides psychosocial support alongside economic assistance.

One that offers meaningful training rather than short courses designed primarily to tick programme boxes.

One that includes long-term follow-up.

One that respects consent and freedom of choice.

And, above all, one that allows returnees to participate in designing the interventions that are supposed to rebuild their lives.

The participants’ argument is ultimately about accountability.

A reintegration programme should not be judged simply by how many people returned, how many received packages, how many attended training or how many businesses were launched.

The more difficult questions are:

Did the person recover?

Did the business survive?

Did they find meaningful work?

Did their mental health improve?

Did their family and community accept them?

Did they regain control over their lives?

And are the conditions that drove them to migrate still there?

If the answer to these questions is no, then a return may have taken place—but reintegration remains incomplete.

The Question Cotonou Leaves Behind

The debate at the World Social Forum did not end with a rejection of reintegration.

Instead, it demanded that the word itself be taken more seriously.

For Ude, reintegration failed because a traumatized person was given inadequate support and expected to build an unfamiliar business.

For Rhoda, the word “voluntary” deserves scrutiny when people make decisions under detention or extreme pressure.

For Awe, return was a choice made against the backdrop of danger.

For Ido, short vocational training and inadequate economic interventions cannot deliver the independence programmes promise.

For Immaculate, reintegration must extend beyond a package to encompass mental health, family, community, employment and sustainability.

For Olu, migrants with lived experience must have a seat at the table.

For Ife, returnees must not be reduced to stories of suffering that serve other people’s agendas.

For Ewa, dignity must be at the centre of the return experience.

And for Ara, the power dynamics behind reintegration must be confronted.

Together, their testimonies point towards one uncomfortable conclusion:

A person cannot be reintegrated simply because they have been returned.

Reintegration is not a suitcase handed over at the airport.

It is not a cash grant.

It is not a three-month skills course.

It is not a photograph of a returnee receiving equipment.

And it is certainly not a success story written before the returnee has had the chance to rebuild.

True reintegration must mean restoring agency, dignity, opportunity, belonging and hope.

Until those things become central to the process, the question raised in Cotonou will remain difficult to escape:

Reintegration into what?