Migration, Development and the Biopolitical Borders of Europe

According to its proponents, the ‘migration-development nexus’ points to the mutually-beneficial relations that can be produced between migration and development policy in order to ameliorate the global economic inequalities that give rise to mass migration. With an empirical focus on migration to the EU from countries currently receiving substantial amounts of EU developmental aid, this paper will argue that the nexus operates as a biopolitical mechanism which attempts to manage the conduct of migrants by constituting them as key actors within a global system of development. I will argue that the migration-development nexus enacts a ‘biopolitics of incorporation’ at two distinct but complementary levels: firstly, around migrant populations within the EU, through mechanisms such as visa regimes, work permits, citizenship tests and language training; and, secondly, around developing countries globally, through (neo)liberal assistance and intervention strategies which seek to integrate developing countries into structures of global governance. The focus on these dual processes of incorporation will allow for a conceptualisation of biopolitics contra to that prevalent in the literatures on migration and development, which frame it as congruent with practices of exclusion, securitisation or marginalisation. By making connections between practices of international development policy and global migration management, the paper will examine EU activities in these areas as a biopolitical governance strategy that operates through practices of inclusion as well as those of exclusion. This focus will allow the paper to interrogate the role that the discourses of the migration-development nexus play in the constitution of the biopolitical borders of Europe.