Migration and Development

Migration and Development

1. Migration optimists and pessimists

   • Optimists: neoclassical / functionalism
     • Both treat migration as a problem to be solved, and provide some (although limited) agency to the migrant
       • Relationship between migration and development:
         • Restrictions fail to stop . immigration >> development as a solution to the "migration problem".
           • Is addressing the "root causes" a smart solution?
             • EU has embarked on a migration and development drive. Co-development programmes (France in West Africa), the European Neighborhood Instrument, the EU Africa Trust fund, and other migration compacts are all examples of this.
               • To what extent is aiding rural communities a way to "keep people in their place"?
             • Why is the focus on addressing root causes so persistent?
               • Power dynamics and the influence of donors from receiving countries
                 • Whatever the problem is, its over there, ignores systemmatic issues
               • Development for development's sake
   • Pessimists: historical - structural / dependency

2. Mobility transitions and policy

   • Zelinsky (1971) on Mobility Transitions: [T]here are definite patterned regularities in the growth of personal mobility through space–time during recent history, and these regularities comprise an essential component of the modernization process’
     • Links modernization process (vital transition) to the migration process.
       • Modernization:
       • Mobility
       • Premodern society
         • A: High fertility + mortality
         • Little migration
         • Early and late transitional
           • B and C: Rise in fertility then decline
           • Rise un rural-urban mig., then slackening
           • Advanced society
             • D: Controlled fertility
             • Stabilized mobility, high urban-urban
             • Superadvanced society
               • E: Leveling off
               • Leveling off
               • Lucassen and Lucassen (2009): Historical debate- pre-modern societies DID have a lot of mobility

3. Skeldon's (1997) Migration and development "tiers"

   • Identifies relationship between state formation, economic development and patterns of mobility
     • There are old and new "core countries". This is an expanding core (high emigration and immigration plus rural-urban mobility), in addition to Labour frontier’ (e.g. Mexico, Morocco, Turkey): high emigration and rural-urban. There is a resource niche as well (sub-Saharan Africa, central Asia).
       • The US inserts itself int the labor frontiers (MX), and resource niche (Cariib.)m and draws on them. This encourages regional migration. We need t look at the region, even if we start from a case study perspective.
         • Limitations on Transition theories:
           • No human agency. These processes happen at a nation level, so it doesnt explain why some people stay.
             • De Haas (2010: limited ability to explain causal mechanisms – correlation confused with causation
               • Evolutionist assumptions (modernisation theory): are ‘transitions’ indeed ‘fatalistically irreversible’ (Zelinsky) and automatic
                 • Sedentarist assumptions
                   • Overemphasis of economic and demographic determinants
                     • Internal vs international migration: how are processes linked?

4. A grounded view

   • local vs global – how to account for context?
     • What kind of development? Sedentary bias of interventionist, state- centric policy with roots in colonial practice – call for other models (Bakewell 2008)
       • Whose development – ‘change driven by and for whom’? (Skeldon 2012; cf Bakewell 2008)
       • Capabilities and Aspirations (De Haas, 2007):
         • Higher development means more education, infrastructure, security and information >> higher aspirations as well as capabilities to migrate.
           • Migration capabilities: social, human and material capital individuals can mobilise in order to migrate
             • Aspirations: awareness of opportunities elsewhere and perception of relative deprivation
               • Development (after A. Sen): the process of expanding the substantive freedoms that people enjoy
                 • Migration conceptualised as a function of opportunity differentials
                   • Hypotheses:
                     • Development increases migration capabilities and aspirations
                       • First for internal migration, then for international skilled migration, and finally for international low skilled migration
                     • Applicability:
                       • Collier (2017): Syria refugees. Most in neighbouring countries. Is ‘root causes’ or aspirations-capabilities thinking applicable in this forced migration setting
                         • Spain – going in reverse
                         • Mexico: Can development make a difference? Can we reverse it?
                         • SUMMARY:
                           • Need to conceptualise migration as intrinsic part of development and social change, rather than see development as a solution to the migration ‘problem’. Migrants’ own capabilities and agency need to be accounted for: networks and ‘feedback effects’ making migratory processes resistant to government control - but do transition theories allow for enough ‘agency’?
     • Senegal and Mali: Circular and regional patterns of mobility the norm, not exception

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