Paper short abstract:

The paper interrogates migration-development nexus literature borrowing conceptual tools and analytical concerns from Border Studies. At its broadest, the paper offers fresh and critical analytical insights at the intersection of migration, development and border scholarship.

Paper long abstract:

Mainstream theorisations of the migration & development nexus rely on two assumptions: 1) development can reduce migration "pressures" 2) migrants can contribute to development, most notably via remittances. The win-win-win scenarios posited by this conceptualisation, whereby migrants as well as sending and receiving countries could all potentially benefit, remain thus within a non-critical paradigm that begs for critical interrogation. As a way of offering a spatially aware, historically informed, and non-technocratic understanding of the nexus, the paper interrogates this literature borrowing a series of conceptual tools and analytical concerns from the field of Border studies.

In particular, first, it interrogates the state-centric perspectives typical of this literature through Border Studies scalar concerns, to offer a more accurate spatial theorisation of the nexus. Second, it interrogates assumptions about migrants' rationality typical of this literature through Border Studies concerns with situated, perspectival and process-based analyses, to offer a nuanced, embodied and subjective understanding of the nexus. Third, it interrogates the narrow concerns with the flow, distribution and productive use of remittances typical of this literature through the lens of border management. Using borders as an analytical prism opens up the possibility of thinking about migration & development policies as part of a wider range of border interventions, which include the opening up of markets to FDI, the securitisation of migration, etc. Interrogating policies concerned with "harnessing" the potential of migration for development in relation to a broader range of development policies, offers more politically significant understandings of the nexus.