Trading Liberty: Assisted Repatriation in Liberal Democracies

Surging flows of international migrants challenge the state's capacity to control borders. This problem is especially acute when it involves unwanted, yet often the most vulnerable, incomers. In liberal democracies, policymakers are caught in the dilemma of how to block their presence without contravening the state's fundamental liberal principles. Against the backdrop of these realities, this article traces the development of monetized means of inducing the voluntary repatriation of such migrants. In contrast to the conventional view that associates this political phenomenon with the neoliberal marketization of belonging, I contend that the growing practice of incentivizing migrants to leave is better conceptualized as a subset of immigration control policies rooted in the liberal ideals that imbue the institutional orders of liberal democracies. From the state's perspective, such post-arrival measures pay greater attention to the individual rights of migrants. This argument is advanced with special reference to the underexplored case of Japan.