Migration drivers and migration choice: interrogating responses to migration and development interventions in West Africa

Abstract

The notion of migration as being at least partly about ‘choice’ is deeply rooted in both academic thought and public policy. Recent contributions have considered migration choice as step-wise in nature, involving a separation between ‘aspiration’ and ‘ability’ to migrate, whilst stressing a range of non-economic factors that influence migration choices. But such nuances have not prevented the emergence of a significant area of public policy that seeks to influence choices to migrate from Africa through ‘irregular’ channels, or at all, through a range of development interventions. This paper explores evidence from West Africa on how young people formulate the boundaries of such choice. Drawing on approaches in anthropology and elsewhere that stress the value of a ‘future-orientated’ lens, we show how present uncertainty is a central framing that fundamentally limits the value of thinking about migration as a choice. This has important implications for policy on ‘migration and development’.

Climate Variability and Development Interventions Influence Migration Aspirations and Capabilities of Project Beneficiaries in Southern Ethiopia

“…The trend of the body of literature that explores the role of development cooperation on migration has been to study the macro-level effect of development aid on international migration, using cross-country analysis (Clemens, 2014;Dreher et al, 2019;Gamso & Yuldashev, 2018). There are fewer studies (Black et al, 2022) that explore the influence of individual development interventions on migration movements at the regional and local levels. These macro-level studies have generally applied a narrow definition of development: development as a rise in per capita income only (Glick Schiller, 2020).…”

How freedom of movement infringes on the right to leave

“…The capacity in which those gendered and racialized can act on their right to leave grows increasingly narrow as they engage with the "free movement regime" that is implemented across Treaty, Common Agenda, and GCM and freezes people increasingly inside a country. The assumptions around youth, willingness to be illegitimately mobile, and a lack of understanding for why mobility is undertaken, e.g., to get away from forced marriage and to be free to build one's own life (Black et al, 2022) inform programming which, in the end, orders and categorizes.…”

The role of educational conditions in defining migratory potential: the case of the young people of the Ivory Coast

“…Si può parlare di un comportamento proattivo verso la migrazione, che fa accrescere le proprie aspirazioni per un futuro (Czaika & Vothknecht, 2014) possibile o potenziale (Collins, 2018); un'aspirazione al miglioramento, dunque, delle proprie condizioni di vita, con uno sguardo orientato al domani (Appadurai, 2007), verso uno spazio immaginario in cui pensare ad un futuro possibile, come alternativa al proprio presente (Schiffauer, 2018). Un orientamento al futuro che, anche quando è frutto di una scelta intenzionale e di un processo decisionale consapevole, non può escludere che possa portare ad un percorso incerto e in divenire, al di là della possibilità e della capacità personale di intraprendere un progetto di migrazione (Black, Bellagamba, Botta, et al, 2022). Nella letteratura internazionale che si è occupata dei drivers della migrazione 1 emerge una carenza di studi che si sono concentrati sulla dimensione individuale legata ad aspirazioni, esperienze e risorse personali (Czaika & Reinprecht, 2020), nonostante sia ormai consolidata l'importanza dei fattori non economici nel processo decisionale della migrazione (Schewel & Fransen, 2020).…”