The Humanitarian-Development Nexus and the Jordan Compact: Tensions and Trajectories in Global Capitalism

The humanitarian-development nexus (HDN) frames protracted refugee situations as win-win development opportunities, building on dominant tropes like sustainable development and global risk management. Focusing on the Jordan Compact as part of the HDN, we question for whom it presents opportunities, highlighting its politics and tensions. We argue that the HDN and Jordan Compact are not win-win strategies whereby refugees and host countries benefit equally, but rather fail forward strategies with longstanding material roots in the power relations and paradoxes of global capitalism. Moreover, the neoliberal fail forward practices both frameworks embody legitimate themselves by depoliticising capitalism’s underlying contradictions. We highlight how the HDN, similar to its undergirding tropes, is a political project that advances the interests of private actors over those of its intended beneficiaries.