The migration-development nexus, i.e. the two-way relationship between migration and development, has been discussed in various academic disciplines for several decades. However, less scholarly attention has been paid to the strategic considerations and governing rationalities that are at the core of this nexus. This essay argues that the states of the so-called Global North have instrumentalised the migration-development nexus to serve their economic and strategic ambitions. Western states have implemented an ontology that presupposes the nation state as the primary unit, framed international migration as development failure and thus as an irregularity that contrasts with the norm of sedentarism. Development projects and aid payments have become tools to reduce migration by addressing root causes or through its conditionality on border enforcement. In addition, Northern governments determine who is allowed to cross their borders based on people's contributions to the country's economic development. Thus, 'development' has become a tool to inhibit as well as a justification for controlling migration.
Introduction
The "migration-development nexus1" is a long-standing theme of academic debate in various disciplines.2 Engagement with the nexus peaked in the 1960s and 1980s, reaching its third climax in the late 2000s.3 Throughout the decades, the debate has changed its evaluation of the two-way relationship between migration and development, swinging "back and forth like a pendulum from optimism until the early 1970s to pessimism until the 1990s, and back again to more optimistic views".4 The nexus-debate has currently reached a fourth climax due to the worldwide attention paid to the arrival of migrants at the borders of the European Union (EU) and United States (US).5 Hence, revisiting this nexus is highly topical.
However, in line with scholars like Wimmer and Glick Schiller, Geiger and Pécoud, and Landau,6 this essay engages with migration and development neither as outcomes or causes to be calculated for subsequent state manipulation, but in their interaction with the Western regulatory system. Jung rightly points out that "the governing rationalities underlying the migration-development nexus have received less attention" than other aspects.7 However, this essay argues that the governing rationalities are not solely underlying the nexus, but that they constitute the relationship between migration and development in a world of "regimes of mobility".8 The nature of the North's control-oriented instrumentalisation of the nexus is outlined through an analysis of migration from countries of the so-called Global South, i.e. former colonies and countries with lower incomes, to the industrialised and economically powerful states of the Global North, such as the US, the EU member states, Canada and Australia.
This essay is structured into two main sections according to both sides of the migration-development nexus. The first section outlines how 'development' as an idea as well as practice is invoked to influence our perception of migration and to reduce cross-border mobility. The second section discusses the usage of economic development in the Global North as a justification to limit certain immigration, create an ideal migrant figure and to introduce a market-oriented temporality into migration dynamics.
The Strategic Core of the Nexus: Instrumentalising Development for Migration Management
The problematisation of international migration has its origins in the division of the world, and particularly the Global South, into nation states. After WWII, the European overseas empires collapsed and their colonies formally gained independence, giving rise to the notion that the entire world is structured into nation states and that every person belongs to one territorially bound unit.9 The Western development industry considers the nation state as the principal entity of concern and development actors orient their work towards people residing within national borders.10 Raghuram argues that development "reinforce[s] the state as a prefigured entity" and establishes a "form of here–there binary logic to our spatial understandings of migration–development".11 From the assertion that the world is naturally divided into nation states, it follows that cross-border movement is an exception to the norm.12 Unauthorised migration in particular, threatens the Western principle of territorial sovereignty.13
Moreover, by portraying migration as a consequence of failed development, migration is negatively connoted and the blame for migration is placed on the countries of origin. Bakewell famously outlined that the guiding idea behind Western development interventions is that migration is "a symptom of development failure".14 The OECD for example states in its Perspectives on Global Development report, that migration occurs due to "the incapacity of some governments to implement adequate economic and social reforms".15 Instead of a historically intrinsic part of human life,16 people's cross-border mobility is framed as the reaction to a failure of their governments. This is not to question that economic hardship, war and persecution are part of the reasons why people become mobile. Rather, this shows the strategic attribution of responsibility for the emergence of migration to the 'incapacities' of countries in the Global South. Consequently, development actors perceive migration as something problematic that requires treatment.17 Since the cause (development) is a failure, the consequence (migration) is also a failure of the proper way of life.
However, due to the colonial origins of many of the socio-economic struggles of the Global South and the wealth of the West, the nexus could also be approached from a different perspective. According to Glick Schiller and Faist, "the development of Europe depended on profits made from enslaved, indentured, and colonized migratory labor in other regions of the world".18 The prosperity of the North – which now tempts people to migrate – has been and is still financed to a significant extent by the labour of migrants.19 As the affluence of many European states has been realised through the extraction of resources and people from the colonies, this should give the citizens of the former colonies the right to benefit from this wealth today, i.e. to migrate.20 An awareness of the historical flow of resources from colonies to Europe21 complicates the current framing of migration as 'enormous and unmanageable flows'.22 Rather than a burden, migration would represent a rebalancing "of an asymmetrical system initiated by many of the very same state sovereigns that now self-righteously" inhibit immigration.23 However, through US President Truman's initiation of the Western development project in 1949, development was delinked from colonialism.24 Therefore, the perception that migration occurs due to the self-inflicted development failures of Global South countries remains the dominant framing.
Correcting the alleged development failures that underlie migration is framed as a laudable effort that hides, or at least justifies, Western governments' strategic ambition to reduce migration. As pointed out by Sachs,25 achieving development has become a universal justification under whose banner any intervention becomes legitimate. Hence, to alleviate the development failures behind international migration, Western governments are allowed to intervene in the Global South through development projects. The strategy of the EU for example, "is rooted in exterritorial interventionism, whose formal objective is to foster 'good governance', the 'rule of law', 'cooperation', or 'development', according to Geiger and Pécoud.26 However, these seemingly desirable objectives are also permeated by less overt intentions, such as preventing unwanted migratory movements.27 Thus, development efforts of Northern governments operate as a disguise under whose protection migration can be controlled.
Furthermore, the West pursues "containment development"28 to reduce migration from the Global South. Whether a development programme is considered successful no longer depends on the aspects of concern, like healthcare or education, but on metrics on migration.29 The UK Foreign Secretary, for example, stated in 2024 that a £84 million aid package "will improve education, boost employment … across the Middle East and North Africa – to help bring down migration figures".30 This ambition to tackle the root causes of migration already became a guiding principle of the development industry in the 1980s.31 In 1991, European states convened in several conferences to formulate strategies to address the root causes of migration.32 Root causes are "the conditions of states, communities, and individuals that underlie a desire for change, which in turn produce migration aspirations".33 However, empirical research remains inconclusive if development aid is effective in reducing migration.34 Nonetheless, most European governments by now pursue a reduction in migratory movements by addressing its root causes through development aid.35 In other words, development is being instrumentalised to manage migration.
Underlying the 'root causes agenda' is not only the ambition to eradicate the drivers of migration but to fully sedentiarise people in the Global South. The root causes approach follows an "agrarian epistemological logic", where Africa metaphorically "is a field that needs tending" as the problem of migration is "grounded in national soil that has "roots" that can be "uprooted"".36 Historically, the development industry promoted sedentarisation, as it perceived geographical stasis as the desirable human condition.37 This is reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which conceptualises development as a process that is bound to a specific territory and therefore seeks to improve living conditions for people in their respective home countries.38 Through discourse and development practice, Western states impose the objective of "building a sedentary life dedicated to 'development at home'" on other people.39 Even more, the normalisation of sedentarism aims at "geographically localising Africans' desires and imaginations", in order to disconnect them from the rest of the world, and especially Europe.40
Moreover, the repeated emphasis by Western states that migration can have a positive impact on the development of migrants' home countries follows the same logic as the root causes agenda, which is to ultimately make migration superfluous. The EU frames migration "as a powerful – though challenging – development vehicle in both the country of origin and destination".41 The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration similarly states that "migration contributes to positive development outcomes … when it is properly managed".42 Managing migration thus becomes justified to harness its development potentials. Migrants are heralded as "development resource" or "agents of development" for their origin country.43 In this way, both origin and destinations countries place a moral responsibility on migrants to remain connected to and support their home countries.44 The rationale of Western destination countries in particular, is that migrants' remittances promote the development of the country of origin and thus reduce the need to migrate.45
However, containment development is also achieved through physical restrictions on mobility, whereby the provision of development aid is made conditional on the implementation of stricter border controls. Already in 1999, the European Council pledged several billion euros to countries that guaranteed to prevent migrants from moving on to the EU.46 Aid conditionality for border controls became a standard component of the agreements of the EU and its member states with countries in the Global South.47 This border externalisation shifts "bordering practices from the conventional ground of state lines to an itinerant and stretched border zone made out of mobile border posts, development projects and transnational military operations".48 The externalisation of the borders of Northern states into the territories of the Global South is increasingly facilitated through the use of development funds.49 Dreher et al. observe that aid payments to countries neighbouring the origin countries of refugees in the Global South influence them to obstruct movements towards Western donor countries.50 In West Africa, aid dependency could now mean that peoples' free movement is no longer upheld.51 Thus, the relationship between development in the Global South and migration to the Global North clearly operates within the confines of the North's strategic objectives.
The Strategic Core of the Nexus: Subordination of Migration to Northern Development Needs
The other side of the migration-development nexus, i.e. how migration relates to development, is also determined by the strategic ambitions of the West. Concerns about migration's negative consequences for the development of Western countries guides their migration management. In the Global North, the consolidation of the nation-state system during the turn of the 20th century saw the emergence of fears that immigration would jeopardise the destination countries' stability.52 Such concerns intensified after WWII. The implementation of stricter immigration controls in the UK during the 1960s arose from the perception that migrants threaten the cultural cohesion of society and the "finite nature of employment … the welfare state's health, education, housing and financial resources".53 In the 1970s, the worsened economic situation due to the oil shock and a global recession saw an intensified scapegoating of migrants, increased calls to stop immigration and the subsequent implementation of control measures across Europe.54 States justify the exclusion of migrants on the grounds of preserving the prosperity and culture of the West.55 A recent public opinion survey in Germany has shown, that negative attitudes towards migration are still closely linked to the fear of losing one's jobs.56
However, concerns about the economic development of Western states do not translate in the prohibition of all migration. The permeability of borders depends on whether foreign populations are beneficial for the economies of Western countries. Essentially, borders guard what lies within them and screen who or what is allowed to cross them.57 The power to deny people access is in the hands of the destination countries and the likelihood to immigrate falls and rises with the qualifications of migrants.58 Highly skilled migrants are both welcome and much desired in the Global North.59
Two main concerns drive the willingness of Northern states to allow and attract certain migration. First, as their populations are ageing, countries are encouraging the migration of nurses and doctors who care for the elderly, as well as young people, to balance out the relative decrease in a workforce supporting more retired people.60 The South-North mobility of skilled labour is highly unequal, as illustrated by the migration of nurses from Mexico to the US, which primarily serves the interests of the US to overcome its shortage of health care workers.61 Secondly, countries attract highly qualified and talented people from abroad to remain competitive with other countries in strategically important areas.62 Even refugees and asylum seekers, who have a quasi-right to stay,63 are subsumed to this economic logic and "demonised as bogus … scrounging at capital's gate".64
Furthermore, temporary migration schemes showcase how the strategic management of migration for the economic development of the North fundamentally alters the nature of migratory movements. Already after WWII, West Germany recruited so-called "guest workers" to obtain cheap labour for its industrial development without the socio–economic burdens of permanent immigration.65 The term guest worker suggests that people only remain temporarily as guests and come merely for the purpose of working. Currently, more countries are implementing temporary migration programmes.66 The increasing temporality and circularity of international migration, even for highly skilled people from the Global South, has been realised through Western immigration regulations.67 These follow a particular economic logic, as temporary immigration keeps salaries and social transfers for migrant workers low.68 At the same time, this global trend towards "just-in-time and to-the-point migration" satisfies the needs of the Western markets.69 Temporary migration is becoming widespread, as illustrated by the increase from 8,000 to 35,000 migrants temporally working under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme in the last four years.70
Moreover, both migration sending and receiving countries contribute to the creation of a migrant figure that serves the needs of Western markets. The countries profiting from labour immigration as well as the different actors involved in the "migration industry" invest to ensure that adequate migration occurs.71 The West is not only providing development aid to reduce migration, as previously discussed, but also to create potential future labourers. In Tunisia, European employment projects are training Tunisians to make them capable of working abroad and, where appropriate, to meet the demands of the European labour market.72 Through such development projects, the management and filtering of certain desired migrants does not happen in Europe, but already in the countries of origin.73 Even if asymmetrically, origin countries of migrants are also involved in this process. Gardiner Barber outlines that the government policies of both the Philippines and Canada have led to the construction of an "ideal immigrant".74 Rodriguez and Schwenken also observe that countries like India and the Philippines "are creating institutional environments that favour the emigration of … people with specific skills and personal characteristics". 75 Particularly noteworthy is that the creation of an ideal migrant figure for the Western labour market takes place long before emigration, i.e. in the country of origin.76
Conclusion
The strategic ambitions of Western states are influencing both sides of the migration-development nexus. Western states have been largely successful in implementing an ontology that presupposes the nation state as the primary unit. This gives rise to a view of international migration as an irregularity that contrasts with the norm of sedentarism. The development industry has reinforced this vision through their projects as well as by framing migration as development failure. Moreover, development projects and aid payments have become tools to reduce migration by addressing root causes or through its conditionality on border enforcement.
Geographically moving the analysis from the migrants' origin countries to their destinations in the Global North also reveals a relationship shaped by Western strategic objectives. Governments decide who is allowed to cross their borders based on people's contributions to the country's economic development. However, the decision as to who is allowed to enter is no longer only made at the borders. Development projects train a labour force in the Global South that meets the needs of the Western national economies. The migrants' countries of origin also participate in this migration industry to create an ideal migrant for the Western market.
Underlying the main argument of the essay is the notion that if a state is 'developed', it can govern migration; if not, its migration is governed through and for development. As has been mentioned, not all of the strategic ambitions of Northern governments are successful. Nonetheless, it is evident that using development as a tool to inhibit as well as a justification to control migration shapes contemporary South-North migration.
About the Author
Jan Bieniek is currently pursuing an MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include colonialism, political economy and migration movements. In his MPhil dissertation, Jan Bienek is analysing the links between Tunisia's history under French colonial rule and the current border externalisation of the European Union in North Africa.
Footnotes
Download footnotes here.