Paper short abstract:

Based on qualitative fieldwork among translocal households in semi-rural Nicaragua, this paper argues that insight in migrants' socially shaped individual characteristics is of fundamental importance for advancing our understanding of the migration-development nexus.

Paper long abstract:

Our understanding of the migration-development nexus remains fundamentally limited because of a tendency to explain this nexus in terms of either determining structural processes or unlimited individual agency. This tendency is misleading since it omits the various dynamic, interlinked and multi-level dimensions that constitute migration and development. In an attempt to overcome this structure-agency divide and advance our understanding of the migration-development nexus, this paper focuses on the 'embedded agency' of migrants. More specifically, it investigates how migrants' individual characteristics are socially shaped through a context that is both enabling and constraining, and what this means for their migration and development endeavors. Based on qualitative fieldwork on South-South migration, transnational family life and local development in semi-rural Nicaragua, I argue that these socially shaped individual characteristics play a vital role in people's motivations, aspirations and efforts regarding migration and development. The stories of more than 20 migrant families illustrate how their past experiences and future expectations lead them to interpret their (im)possibilities and act accordingly. As such, the interplay between migrants' agency and their environment translates into time- and place-specific opportunities and limitations for migration and development. Socially shaped individual characteristics are thus important for grasping why some migrants are able to improve their lives while others never seem to catch up. This not only means that we should take these 'individual' dimensions into account, but also that a focus on the contextualized interplay between individual agency and structural processes provides a more productive understanding of the migration-development nexus.