From political narrative to enforcement practice: Ineffectiveness, discretion and the punitive logic of expulsions in Spain

In recent years, the European Union has framed return policy around “effectiveness,” primarily measured through return rates and removal figures, while progressively narrowing procedural and substantive safeguards. Despite extensive evidence of the fundamental rights harms associated with return practices, policy evaluations largely assess effectiveness independently of these impacts. Persistently low return rates are instead constructed as policy failure, repeatedly justifying regulatory escalation. This paper critically examines how the narrative of “ineffectiveness” operates in practice, focusing on its translation during policy implementation. Using Spain as a case study, it analyses how narratives of (in)effectiveness are interpreted, negotiated, and mobilized by frontline actors involved in deportation governance, and with what consequences for enforcement practices and rights, particularly judicial review, access to asylum, and due process. Drawing on documentary analysis and ethnographic research, the paper foregrounds the enforcement perspective showing that while policymakers invoke numerical benchmarks as indicators of success or failure, frontline actors widely recognize significant increases in return figures as structurally unattainable. Rather than increasing removal numbers, enforcement agents develop practice-based understandings of “effectiveness” that redirect return policy instruments toward other forms of control. The paper shows that claims of return policy ineffectiveness function primarily as symbolic political diagnostics, but acquire regulatory force during implementation, legitimizing punitive enforcement practices that normalize coercion and undermine fundamental rights.