Questions of migration control have long been of central concern to wealthy Western states that attract large numbers of new immigrants. While border control measures aimed at deciding who is allowed to enter state territory and who is prevented from doing so are generally accepted as a legitimate sovereign prerogative, the removal of resident non-citizens tends to be far more controversial. Deportation, i.e., the enforcement of legal obligations to leave the country, is often considered a “cruel power” (Gibney 2008: 147) on the part of the state because it bears the potential of tearing vulnerable individuals from their families and breaking other social ties. In liberal democracies, return enforcement has therefore traditionally been considered a measure of last resort, rather than a normal policy option. This normative assessment is closely interlinked with liberal-democratic states’ emphasis on individual rights (Hampshire 2013: 44-47). This rights-based identity leads to instances in which not only non-citizens’ right to physical integrity, but also their right to family life and their claims to social belonging in their country of residence may trump the state’s prerogative to control access to its territory, and delegitimize forced return. In line with these considerations, the enforcement of former colonial citizens’ legal obligation to leave the United Kingdom (UK) was denounced as “un-British” during the late 1970s.2 In Germany and elsewhere in Europe, so-called guest worker programmes became discredited as domestic authorities proved unwilling or unable to enforce the idea of strictly temporary stay (Pagenstecher 1995). In addition, both the UK and Germany have over the course of the past four decades enacted a number of one-off regularizations of asylum seekers whose applications had been rejected, but who were granted legal residence on the basis of their extended stay in the respective country (cf. Baldwin-Edwards/Kraler 2009)