An Approach to the Voluntary Return Migration Policies: The Case of Bolivia and Brazil

This paper examines some of the results of the study  entitled “RETTRANS, Return from transnationalism” (financed by the Ministry of Education of Spain and conducted by the Group of Study on Immigration and Ethnic Minorities – GEDIME - Autonomous University of Barcelona). Taking into account the increasing political and academic interest in the "voluntary" return and the programs and activities carried out by the sending countries in this regard, the article analyzes the institutional programs and instruments for two Latin American countries, Bolivia and Brazil. From a conceptual framework, part of the transnational perspective, the paper first identifies the main elements that configure the framework of return policies and afterwards applies it to the empirical study of the three selected cases. The paper concludes with a section of final remarks that seek to contribute to the progress in the classification of return policies and instruments to analyze their impacts in order to improve the living conditions of returnees.