The Trade-Development-Migration nexus in the EU’s approach to its Southern Neighbourhood: mapping the policy narratives

However counterintuitive it may sound, there is little evidence that more development in the developing countries necessarily translates into less migration towards the developed countries, and the vast literature on the relationship between socio-economic development and migration is, at best, inconclusive. Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, the EU has increasingly focused on development cooperation and trade policy as a means to address irregular migration. As a result, a "pseudo-causal narrative" of the migration-development nexus was embraced in the concept of "addressing the root causes of irregular migration", which soon after became a fundamental assumption underlying numerous EU policy initiatives. Thus, the EU currently links migration, development, and trade in its approach towards developing countries (i.e. the trade-development-migration nexus – hereafter, T-D-M nexus), and in this context trade has been framed as part of crisis solutions in the EU's external migration policy. This paper aims to map and juxtapose the policy narratives surrounding the EU's T-D-M nexus towards its Southern Neighbourhood over time, focusing on the cases of cooperation with Morocco and Tunisia. Employing Narrative Policy Analysis (NPA), the study examines the EU's T-D-M nexus from 1995 to 2022, including the Association Agreements, the negotiations for a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, and selected Team Europe Initiatives. The research findings have the potential to contribute to understanding the mechanisms linking pseudo-causal policy narratives and policy outcomes in the EU's T-D-M nexus. Ultimately, they should bring greater clarity to the field by examining the gap between knowledge and scientific evidence on the one hand, and policy narratives and practices on the other.