Co-development at stake

During the 20th century, migration and development have been explored in the policy arena of European states in different ways, depending on the period. After the oil crisis of the 1970s, when a paradigm based on ‘border closure’ gained ground, some authors refered to the emergence of the French approach to co-development. This linked to a subsequent policy shift at the beginning of the 1980s where – taken together with a limitation on immigrant access – integration policies, or the reformulation of ways to cooperate with origin countries, became new lines of intervention (Giménez Romero et al., 2006, p. 41). Later on, in 1997, Sami Naïr connected migration and international development cooperation in the expression

‘development’. Therefore, as reflected in the expression’s coinage,

co-development was mainly attached to the policy sector of international cooperation and aid¹⁰.

Co-development enters the academic and policy sphere as inherently attached to policymaking, migration management, the comprehension that migrants are development agents of their countries of origin, and the simplified idea that more development in origin implies less migration flows. Further, co-development has been a predominant perspective regarding the comprehension of the nexus in both academia and policy spheres. This has been especially so during the third phase of the relationship between migration and development, which has been marked as optimistic and also been influenced by the neoliberal socio-economic turn that characterised the 1990s onwards (Faist and Fauser, 2011).

Co-development policymaking is predominantly a European affair.¹¹ However, co-development practises are not widespread throughout the EU. The literature reveals examples of this approach from France, the UK, The Netherlands, Italy and Spain (de Haas, 2007; Faist, 2007; Grillo and Riccio, 2004; Lacroix, 2014; Nijenhuis and Broekhuis, 2010; Østergaard-Nielsen, 2011; Piperno and Stocchiero, 2006).

However, the research shows that at a policy level, co-development has been heterogeneously developed. At national level, the more structured and old approach is found in France (Ceschi and Mezzetti, 2014; Datola, 2014; Grillo and Riccio, 2004).

In Spain the perspective influenced international development policy-making at national level until around 2012 (according to interviews), but the approach has mainly been developed at a local level (Cebolla-Boado and López-Sala, 2015; Centre

10 Some say Sami Naïr coined this term when he was the responsible for the French Mission interministérielle pour le Codéveloppement el la Migration Internationale (MICOMI). In the report elaborated by this Mission, which aimed to recommend orientations to the French government in relation to migration policies, co-development is presented as a new way to theoretically and methodologically rethink French cooperation and foreign policies to address the management of migrant flows. This flow management is sought in order to foster [my translation] ‘legal immigrants’

stabilization, social integration, control of access to France, respect towards residence normativity’

(Naïr, 1997, p. 2).

11 In this regard, it is worth recalling that well-known programmes such as the 3x1 Program for Migrants do not conform to the definition of co-development used in this research because it is led by migrants’ sending country. I.e., in the case of the 3x1 Program, it is a national social spending program in which the Mexican local, state, and federal government matches HTAs’ collective remittances to improve public services through cross-border public–private partnerships) (Fox and Bada, 2008;

Iskander, 2015).

de Cooperació per al Desenvolupament Rural et al., 2010; Giménez Romero et al., 2006; Østergaard-Nielsen, 2011; Østergaard-Nielsen and Acebillo-Baqué, 2016).

Co-development is contested as a concept and a policy field to the extent to which it is linked to migration management, voluntary return and control of migrants.

However, empirical evidence provides more nuances to the dynamics involved. For instance, experiences at some regional and local levels in Spain show that co-development policies have been increasingly intended to develop migrants’ countries of origin but also to work upon migrant’s incorporation into their new localities. In this vein, co-development policies are interrelated to deepen local citizenship (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2011).

Apart from this, there is also research on why migrants and migrant organisations get involved in development projects. Thus, empirical studies stress that migrants do co-development projects for reasons such as a facilitation of circulation and the legitimation of the status of ‘in-betweenness’ (Lacroix, 2009, p. 1674), or a way of bringing something back to the community at home (Nijenhuis and Broekhuis, 2010;

Østergaard-Nielsen, 2009). In addition, evidence from the US and Europe suggests that transnational practices, such as the political transnational practices of migrants, occur simultaneously with activities in the residence countries (Bermudez, 2010;

Lacroix, 2009; Morales and Jorba, 2010; Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003a; Portes et al., 2008). Hence, critiques of the motivation and rationale of policymaking towards the fostering of migrant transnational activities do not exclude the fact that migrants themselves may be appropriating and signifying those initiatives for collective and individual purposes. Here, it is worth stressing that migrant transnational development activities did not start with Naïr’s report.

Whatever the motivations underpinning the actions of migrants and governments, co-development interventions as a modality of international cooperation collect optimistic and pessimistic opinions. The most significant are now pointed out.

Positive views defend co-development as a way of better connecting projects and development programmes to the needs of origin contexts. Migrants speak local languages and sometimes donors and other development agents have to deal with weak institutions, which may configure migrants as better interlocutors (Bakewell,

2009; Nijenhuis and Broekhuis, 2010). Co-development has bestowed upon it the potential to function as a ‘bottom-up’ approach to development and thus, its development activities are conferred with a higher legitimisation (Nijenhuis and Broekhuis, 2010). At the same time, co-development can potentially strengthen transnational social networks, which are also considered as contributing to sustainable development (Nijenhuis and Broekhuis, 2010). Besides, functionalist views perceive co-development as a tool to foster economic development, controlling illegal immigration, increase access to remittances (for sending countries) and the return and circulation of workers (Weil, 2002).

At the same time, scholars and practitioners raise important concerns related to the field of co-development. First, the assumption that a stronger, more knowledgeable relationship between migrants and the ‘homeland’ is fostered by co-development remains contested (Bakewell, 2009). In part, this is also connected with views questioning the validity for the responsibility of development being placed upon the

‘agency of migrants rather than on institutional structures’ (Skeldon, 2008, p. 14).

Second, there are concerns about to what extent co-development enhances development activity from a supply driven perspective rather than from a true interest arising ‘from below’ (either in origin or settlement contexts). Third, co-development policies are observed as mechanisms to co-opt migrant’s associations representatives and, by extension, the rest of the community (Cebolla-Boado and López-Sala, 2015).

Fourth, co-development is also criticised for not challenging current power relationships in the development aid system. This last set of critiques would include, for instance, the relatively small budgets linked to co-development or the migrant’s exclusion in decision-making processes (Nijenhuis and Broekhuis, 2010).

Overall, from the above-critiques, one issue stands out in the context of this dissertation. That is, namely, that co-development needs to be framed within broader debates affecting the governance of ‘international aid’ and conceptions of development. Hence, it is not surprising that co-development as policymaking is contested when considering how much the policy area surrounding development is itself questionable. Hence, taking the aftermath of WWII as the beginning of the official aid system, as it is now understood, then there are numerous explanations and analyses unravelling the connection of aid to questions such as: colonialism;

imperialism; international relations and realpolitik; control over resources; and the promotion of donors’ own socio-economic and cultural interests (see, as a selection of contributions, Cornwall and Eade, 2010; Duffield, 2001; Escobar, 1988; Rist, 2008).

Moreover, 'development' is a highly contested concept (even if migration is also subject to contestation, it is beyond the scope or purpose of the dissertation to discuss this in more detail). Any attempt to speak about development involves making a connection with certain conceptions of the future, and this inevitably involves normative associations in relation to what living a good life means. In the Western world, development has also been intimately linked with the idea of progress. The field study of development, was largely put on a level with economic development and, basically, there were only economists populating the field (Sen, 1998). In parallel to the theoretical trends seen when discussing the various migration development approaches, one could also classify classical views on development as optimistic or pessimistic perspectives. These views, in turn, are broadly based on functionalist or structuralist theories (Hunt, 1989) and cohabite alternative postmodern views, which question the very significance of concepts such as progress or development throughout history (Rist, 2008).¹²

In this regard, this research avoids ultimately engaging with the deconstruction of policy narratives of development and, instead, connects with anthropological critical analyses of development interventions that pay ‘closer attention to development’s routines, practices, and subjectivities’ (Mosse and Lewis, 2006, p. 6). These types of accounts apply the idea of brokerage in the analysis of international development.

Particularly developed by French Africanists, these contributions identify brokers as those social actors that are key in the management of development funds, and, by doing so, become political actors who intermediate between donors and local populations within post-colonial states (Bierschenk et al., 2010a; Mosse and Lewis, 2006). Within these accounts, for instance, research has explored the dynamics of

12 In relation to discourses adopted by multilateral institutions and official donors, conventional conceptual and policymaking views equating development basically with economic growth were challenged in the 1980s by what can be identified as two perspectives: the Sustainable Development and the Human Development paradigms, which have in turn been integrated at great length into official development discourses, and often overlap (Rist, 2008).

Senegalese migrants involved in development interventions in Northern Senegal (Lavigne Delville, 2010).

In sum, in this research the question on whether the ODA has been successful in providing development (Faist, 2007) is not centre stage, as the responsibility is not bestowed upon migrants to make the international aid system work. Rather, co-development is seen, in the analysis, as the background by which we can observe migrant political transnationalism and the civic and political engagement of migrant associations.

1.3 Methodology and case study: the relevance of Senegalese