300667 Migration and Development (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

This course explores the links between international migration and development. Does migration foster development? Does development make migration unnecessary? One of the dominant perspectives that drives migration policy-making rests on the premise that international mobility fosters economic development: We often hear that international migrants are needed in (western) economies to supply the required number of specialised workers. Therefore, specialised migration schemes are being developed to attract skilled workers. At the same time, migrant-sending nation’s economies are profiting from the remittances that migrant workers send and, in some places, specialised ministries are being created to cater for the needs of living-abroad migrants and their offspring. There is, however, also research that contradicts this narrative by highlighting that this view on migration is very biased towards an economically centred notion of development and, at the same time, a very restrictive view of the migrant as a worker, and does not recognise the lived realities of non-working family members, children or also undocumented migrants and refugees. In this course, we will scrutinise claims about the links between development and migration by looking closely at a) different development theories and definitions of development b) different theories about migration and its significance for economic and social progress and c) examples and cases from current research that shed light on overlooked aspects on the link between migration and development.