Migration-Development Regimes

Abstract Chapter 2 explains the book’s methodological approach and analytical framework of Migration-Development Regimes. To do so, it draws on the global literature on migration to identify four sets of forces and actors that shape sending-state emigration practices. The first highlights the power of northern-imposed development ideologies/norms, particularly neoliberal globalization. The second exposes how, at certain moments, sending states act as agents in and for themselves—striving to ensure domestic material accumulation, political legitimacy, and material redistribution at the global level. The third reminds us how poor and elite emigrants, as well as their transnational organizations, sometimes resist and reshape sending state emigration practices. The final emphasizes the role of history. Building on this global migration literature, this chapter explains the MDR framework. MDRs are defined as the full set of emigration practices and policies that enable sending countries to ensure domestic capital accumulation as well as their own political legitimacy at the global and domestic levels. MDRs enable us to capture the multiple forces shaping sending states’ class-based emigration, expose the contingent nature of emigration practices, and compare sending states’ emigration regimes across time.