Drivers can be understood as forces leading to the inception of migration and the perpetuation of movement. This article considers key drivers of migration and explores different ways that they may be configured. We modify existing explanations of migration to generate a framework which we call push-pull plus. To understand migration flows better, analysts could usefully distinguish between predisposing, proximate, precipitating and mediating drivers. Combinations of such drivers shape the conditions, circumstances and environment within which people choose to move or stay put, or have that decision thrust upon them. In any one migration flow, several driver complexes may interconnect to shape the eventual direction and nature of movement. The challenge is to establish when and why some drivers are more important than others, which combinations are more potent than others, and which are more susceptible to change through external intervention. Drawing on Afghan and Somali movements featuring 'mixed migration', the article concludes that proximate and mediating drivers, rather than those in the structural and precipitating spheres, appear to offer greater potential for intervention. To be effective, though, migration policy should be understood not simply as a stand-alone lever, but within the wider political economy.
In September 2001, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned a study of the present and potential links between migration and development. In January 2002, the new Danish Government announced a decision to enhance the links between its aid and refugee policies as part of the overall focus on poverty reduction. The present paper provides a state-of-the-art overview of current thinking and available evidence on the migrationdevelopment nexus, including the role of aid in migrant-producing areas. It offers evidence and conclusions around the following four critical issues: Poverty and migrationPeople in developing countries require resources and connections to engage in international migration. There is no direct link between poverty, economic development, population growth, and social and political change on the one hand, and international migration on the other. Poverty reduction is not in itself a migration-reducing strategy. Conflicts, refugees, and migrationViolent conflicts produce displaced persons, migrants, and refugees. People on the move may contribute both to conflict prevention and reconciliation, and to sustained conflicts. Most refugees do not have the resources to move beyond neighbouring areas, that is, they remain internally displaced or move across borders to first countries of asylum within their region. Aid to developing countries receiving large inflows of refugees is poverty-oriented to the extent that these are poor countries, but it is uncertain what effect such aid has in terms of reducing the number of people seeking asylum in 4 Nyberg-Sørensen, Van Hear, and Engberg-Pedersen developed countries. Furthermore, such aid may attract refugees from adjacent countries experiencing war or political turmoil. Migrants as a development resourceInternational liberalization has gone far with respect to capital, goods and services, but not to labour. International political-economic regimes provide neither space nor initiatives for negotiations on labour mobility and the flow of remittances. There is a pressing need to reinforce the image of migrants as a development resource. Remittances are double the size of aid and target the poor at least as well; migrant diasporas are engaged in transnational practices with direct effects on aid and development; developed countries recognize their dependence on immigrant labour; and policies on development aid, humanitarian relief, migration, and refugee protection are internally inconsistent and occasionally contradictory. Aid and migrationAid policies face a critical challenge to balance a focus on poverty reduction with mitigating the conditions that produce refugees, while also interacting constructively with migrant diasporas and their transnational practices. The current emphasis on aid selectivity tends to allocate development aid to the well performing countries, and humanitarian assistance to the crisis countries and trouble spots. However, development aid is more effective than humanitarian assistance in preventing violent conflicts, promoting...
While once a mainstay of social science, class has lately been eclipsed in much of migration studies by consideration of other forms of social difference, affinity, and allegiance such as ethnicity, gender, generation, and lately religion. This article puts the case for renewing attention on the part class plays in shaping migration – particularly who is able to move and to where. It argues that the form of migration and ultimately its outcomes are shaped by the resources that would‐be migrants can muster and that in turn the capacity to mobilize such resources is largely determined by socio‐economic background or class. Drawing on Bourdieu, class can be conceived in terms of the disposal of different forms of capital – economic, social, and cultural. Having access to combinations of such capital shapes the routes and channels migrants can follow, the destinations they can reach, and their life chances after migration. The article first reflects briefly on ideas of class in social science and sketches treatment of mobility in the migration literature, before considering the ways in which class, mobility, and immobility shape each other. The article concludes by considering the interplay between migration, class, and collective action among those who move and those who stay, against the background of broader currents of social change and transformation.
Migration and development are linked in many ways -through the livelihood and survival strategies of individuals, households, and communities; through large and often well-targeted remittances; through investments and advocacy by migrants, refugees, diasporas and their transnational communities; and through international mobility associated with global integration, inequality, and insecurity.
Spouses form the largest single category of migrant settlement in the UK. Research and policy making on marriage-related migration to the UK has been dominated by a focus on South Asian populations, which are among the largest groups of such migrants. This article brings together the available evidence on marriage-related migration and settlement to provide a much broader perspective on this phenomenon. The varied and dynamic picture which emerges challenges conventional understandings of marriage-related migration to the UK. It also exposes the limitations and lacunae in existing research, highlighting the danger that policy made on the basis of partial evidence will produce unexpected consequences.
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