Rejecting Conditions of Resettlement: Displaced Persons ‘Returnees’ and the Question of Agency

This article examines the overlooked phenomenon of displaced persons (DP) who, after postwar resettlement under United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration/International Refugee Organization (IRO) schemes, sought to return to Europe – the ‘returnees’ – to illuminate the frictions between promises and lived realities. It contextualizes the shift from early repatriation to large-scale resettlement in the late 1940s and frames return as a lens on migrant agency within an emerging migration regime and against the background of Cold War constraints. Through case files, it identifies recurring triggers for rejection of resettlement – mismatched and exploitative work, health limitations, family separation, mental distress and unmet expectations – while tracing how migrants mobilized letters, language and appeals to negotiate options in a system that cast them primarily as labour for reconstruction. This study also charts institutional reactions: reluctance to facilitate returns, stigmatizing labels (‘deportee’, later softened to ‘returnee’) and inter-governmental disputes over costs and responsibil-ity despite the relatively small numbers resettled under schemes like ‘Westward Ho!’. These dossiers reveal both migrants' agency and the IRO's learning curve, recasting ‘unsuccessful resettlement’ as a site of contestation, circular movement and adaptation by officials and migrants alike.