The European Commission and the migration-development nexus: accessing resources and increasing the mandate

The migration-development nexus (MDN) denotes interdependencies between international migration and development. The article identifies six different causal relations between migration and development in the scientific literature and applies them to understand EU policy on the nexus. At EU level, the nexus often serves the central policy objective of limiting irregular migration to Europe, the so-called root causes approach. Yet, contrary to prior research, this article finds that an opposing nexus conceptualization that calls for enabling migration is actually the dominant causality promoted by the European Commission. Unlike studies that explain the dominance of the root causes approach as a lowest-common-denominator choice, this article argues that the Commission’s DGs also use the nexus strategically. They promote contradictory approaches, which however all call for an increased Commission mandate and financial resources, selectively omitting those nexus frames that would decrease their role. The migration literature often relegates the MDN to a sub-theme of migration policy. This study shows that MDN is central to the entire EU migration policy area and transpires much of its migration discourse. The nexus and its conceptualizations are thus instrumental for broader migration policy debates beyond the EU as they touch upon demographics, social security, and welfare questions.