This issue unpacks the geopolitics of returns in the international system, drawing attention to the diversity of actors, practices, and policies that shape return governance regimes. It examines the complex landscape of actors, sites and practices involved in returning refugees, rejected asylum seekers or irregular migrants within and across regions (Europe, South America, the Middle East, and South Asia). It problematises how the exercise, as well as the fragmentation and dispersion of power in various geopolitical environments, shape return processes. At the same time, shifting the gaze from the enforcement and codification of return regimes by states and international organisations, it attracts attention to the role of migrants and refugees in shaping return policymaking processes. In so doing, it focuses on the geopolitics of return from above and below as a twin site of governance while accounting for how both levels (from above and from below) intermesh. The following research questions have guided the contributions in this special issue:

The following research questions have guided the contributions in this special issue:

• What conceptual tools and levels of analysis allow us to understand how return processes are governed in the international system?
• How do local, national, regional, and international actors – situated in various geopolitical environments and with diverging interests – engage with return processes? What spatial, geostrategic, and discursive dynamics of power shape their interactions?
• And finally, how do migrants and refugees as actors in their own right challenge return regime infrastructures through ‘subaltern imaginaries’?