The Migration and Development Pendulum: A Critical View on Research and Policy

Abstract

At the dawn of the new millennium, international development agencies and governments have “discovered” the potential of migration and remittances to stimulate development in poor countries. However, migration and development is anything but a new topic. The debate about migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from optimism in the postwar period to deep “brain drain” pessimism since the 1970s towards neo‐optimistic “brain gain” since 2000. Influenced by growing policy disappointment, we might now be at the beginning of a backswing towards more pessimistic views. While these shifts are rooted in deeper ideological and paradigmatic shifts, a review of empirical evidence yields a much more nuanced picture. Despite the often considerable benefits of migration and remittances for individuals and communities involved, migrants alone can generally not remove more structural development constraints and migration may actually contribute to development stagnation and reinforce the political status quo. Despite their development potential, migrants and remittances can therefore neither be blamed for a lack of development nor be expected to trigger take‐off development in generally unattractive investment environments. Recent views celebrating migration as self‐help development “from below” are partly driven by neoliberal ideologies that shift the attention away from structural development constraints and, hence, the responsibility of migrant‐sending states to pursue political and economic reform. Immigrant‐receiving countries can increase the development potential of migration by creating legal channels for high‐ and lower‐skilled migration and integration policies that favour socio‐economic mobility of migrants and avoid their marginalization.

Remesas internacionales sur-sur y norte-sur en Paraguay: patrones sociodemográficos, destino de los fondos y medios de circulación

“…Esta decisión se fundamenta en que las perspectivas teóricas actuales convergen en considerar al hogar como la unidad de análisis privilegiada ( (Wood, 1982;Massey, Alarcón y Durand, 1990;Faist, 1997;De Haas, 2012).…”

El nexo migración-desarrollo y la economía política de la vivienda en América Latina

“…a servicios básicos y promueve la inversión "productiva" (en vivienda) como el mecanismo por excelencia para hacer uso "apropiado" de las remesas. El nuevo entusiasmo en torno a este tipo de programas de migración para el desarrollo está fundamentado en intereses políticos y económicos, y exagera los beneficios y los efectos multiplicadores que las remesas pueden tener en los países de origen de los migrantes (De Haas, 2012;Gamlen, 2014). Sin embargo, el discurso de migración para el desarrollo y sus políticas se ajusta a los intentos de los gobiernos del Norte para controlar y manejar la migración internacional (Datta, 2009; Delgado-Wise y Márquez Covarrubias, 2010; Gamlen y Marsh, 2011) y a una ideología que busca "amplificar el neoliberalismo", es decir, busca la creación de nuevas formas globales de gestión económica tecnocrática y de políticas sociales invasivas (Gamlen, 2010;Peck y Tickell, 2002, pp.…”

Mobility, multilocality and translocal development: changing livelihoods in the Karakoram

“…Migration studies and development studies have to some extent converged around the idea of livelihoods being sustained in translocal social networks, based on spatial mobility . Consequently, the need for a contextualised, relational and translocal perspective is strongly emphasised in the ongoing debates on the migration-development nexus (de Haas, 2010(de Haas, , 2012Skeldon, 2010).…”