Abstract
Pacific Island states face high levels of criminal deportations arriving from the United States, Australia and New Zealand—with the expectation that returnees will simply reintegrate. However, reintegration into a country that individuals often do not remember, or know the language or cutural protocols of, can be difficult. Returnees may face social stigma and/or subsequent surveillance and legal requirements on their return: the latter known in scholarly literature as ‘crimmigration creep’. In this article, we examine the case of Samoa, which has taken a unique culture-centric approach to reintegration through the establishment of the quasi-governmental Samoa Returnees Charitable Trust, rejecting external ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches. We argue that this exertion of Samoa’s agency has led to a delay in crimmigration creep.
Publisher
Queensland University of Technology