‘Our aim is to assist migrants in making a well-informed decision’: how return counsellors in Austria and the Netherlands manage the aspirations of unwanted non-citizens

European governments widely celebrate and extensively fund ‘assisted voluntary return’ (AVR) programmes assume that return counsellors play an important role for their implementation. At the same time, relevant legislation only vaguely defines this reduces it to a passive neutral provision of ‘objective information’. In article, we therefore ask how much what kind agency individual exercise affects aim nature AVR. We argue fulfil highly ambiguous function within system overall aims bring unwanted migrants’ decision-making in line with restrictive immigration law. This requires considerable autonomy choose use various kinds information they provide. conceptualise work as ‘aspirations management’ mediates ‘asymmetrical negotiation’ between precarious status migrants seeking deport them. Based on original qualitative data from Austria Netherlands, analytically distinguish three fundamentally different counselling strategies: facilitating existing aspirations, obtaining compliance without and/or inducing aspirations return. framework not helps us AVR counsellors’ specific agency, but will also be useful analysing other actors manage non-citizens.