Reshaping the Intersection Between Development and Migration Studies

This essay argues that our understanding of the relationship between development and migration is distorted by a focus on areas of greatest policy concern. It calls for more research into broader processes of mobility, which may be of little interest to policy but play a critical role in the lives of poor people. It develops the argument in three points. First, in the last 20 years there has been a marked shift from interest in how migration may contribute to development towards a concern with how development may help deal with the challenges of migration. Second, this discussion assumes that only orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration can make a positive contribution to development, rendering important forms of mobility as problematic and antithetical to development. Third, the analysis of migration and mobility remains too much of a niche subject within development studies, being mainly the domain of migration scholars exploring the ‘migration-development nexus’. As a result, there is still limited understanding of the complex interlinkages between migration—especially the important but often unseen migration—and development.