Migration and Development Framework and Its Links to Integration

This chapter centres on the relationship between migration and development (M&D). Taking a theoretical and historical perspective, it traces how analysis of this relationship has swung between positive and negative interpretations over the seven decades of the European post-war era. Throughout this historical-theoretical treatment, three processes are offered as potential triggers of home-country development: remittances, return migration, and diaspora involvement. Then the dual conceptual lens of M&D is broadened: migration and return are refocused as encompassing a diversity of transnational mobilities; development is reconceptualized as being less about economic measures and more about human wellbeing; and the analysis of remittances is broadened from financial transfers to include social, cultural, and political elements. The final part of the chapter aims at a synthesis between the M&D frame, on the one hand, and the integration frame, on the other. Two questions are asked. First, how does the multifaceted integration process impact on migrants’ capacity to stimulate development in their home countries and communities? Second, for those migrants who return-migrate or who lead multi-sited transnational lives, what are the challenges to their reintegration in their countries of origin?

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