The court case about returns of failed asylum seekers to Afghanistan was dismissed last week, with a sad ending. The court ruled that failed asylum-seekers, including former unaccompanied minors, are to be sent back to Afghanistan, amid concerns the country was too dangerous.

In 2001, the pilot project European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM), led by the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford, attempted to organise the administrative deportations of unaccompanied minors. The study shows how bureaucratic networks in the European landscape of asylum policy interpreted the need to find “durable solutions” for unaccompanied minors as providing justification for institutionalizing their mass deportations.

We publish here the Research Brief of this project, since it raises concerns which are (unfortunately) still valid now. The need to identify sustainable solutions that protect unaccompanied minors is becoming more and more urgent.