Race, capital and the British migration–development nexus
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221127581 |
| Author | Maya Goodfellow |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2023, Vol. 25(4) 577 –594
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481221127581
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Race, capital and the British
migration–development nexus
Maya Goodfellow
Abstract
Over the past 20 years, migration and development policy have been connected in British politics
in two overlapping ways – one argument is centred on migration being used for development, the
other using aid to reduce migration. In this article, I argue that two seemingly contradictory policy
configurations – development and migration – and the different articulations of their relationship
– migration for development and aid to stop migration – stem from the same framework of
racialised capitalism. I show how these relationships are in flux; related to the demands of capital
and to the different ideological approaches towards migration. In different ways, the nexus helps
to produce varying forms of exploitable subjects and enacts control over surplus populations
across the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ world.
Keywords
development aid, immigration, international development, migration-development nexus, racial
capitalism, UK asylum policy, UK immigration policy
Introduction
In March 2017, former Prime Minister David Cameron argued in favour of maintaining
the international development budget. Reducing immigration was a central part of his
reasoning – specifically that ‘poverty abroad’ results in ‘mass migration to Britain’. ‘If we
don’t play our part in ensuring that everyone has an education and hope of a decent life’,
he wrote in the Guardian, ‘then the waves of migration we have seen in recent years will
be nothing, compared with in decades to come’ (Cameron, 2017: 2, 3).
By framing his defence of aid in this way, Cameron explicitly brought development
together with migration, one of his other major policy focuses. Although not often com-
pared directly, in liberal and left discourses, the two had been conceived of in distinct,
arguably antipodal ways; the Conservative government’s development policies seen as a
symbol of British benevolence, while their migration policies were understood as restric-
tive and cruel (Guardian, 2015, 2016). But here, Cameron argued they were related; the
former as integral to reducing the latter.
Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute, The University of Sheffield, UK
Corresponding author:
Maya Goodfellow, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield,
S1 4DP, UK.
Email: maya.goodfellow@sheffield.ac.uk
1127581BPI0010.1177/13691481221127581The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsGoodfellow
research-article2022
Original Article
578 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25(4)
This was not the first time they had been connected.1 This relationship, known as the
migration-development nexus (hereafter the nexus), was also a matter of relative impor-
tance under New Labour, though often with a seemingly reverse line of reasoning, namely,
that migration to Britain would help the ‘developing’ world and the British economy.
However, by making the argument for the nexus in this way, Cameron was linking devel-
opment to an intensely racialised debate about exclusionary immigration policy. This
should lead us to question, how exactly are these policy areas connected? Is there a racial
logic underpinning them? And if there is, given that New Labour promoted somewhat
divergent thinking about the nexus, what are the different ways this might operate?
Existing scholarship has gone some way to addressing this first question; drawing
links between the nexus and uneven capitalist development, and showing how it is related
to immigration regimes. Yet it has presented an incomplete picture because it does not
conduct, nor provide us with the tools to conduct, a rigorous comparison of the two, over-
lapping rationales behind the nexus – one that migration helps development, the other that
aid can be used to reduce migration. In turn, we do not have a sufficient explanation of the
complex but complementary relationship between migration and development policy.
Furthermore, race has largely been overlooked in this analysis. A handful of this work
has paid fleeting attention to the role race might play in some of these dynamics (Glick
Schiller, 2009; Pinkerton, 2018); however, it has largely been treated as peripheral.
In this article, I examine the British nexus over the past 20 years2 to argue that these
two seemingly contradictory policy configurations – development and migration – and
the different articulations of their relationship – migration for development and aid to stop
migration – stem from the same framework of racialised capitalism (Robinson, 1983/2000;
Tilley and Shilliam, 2018). Drawing on theories of racial capitalism, I show how they are
connected epistemologically and materially.
Importantly, I do not argue that race structures the nexus in a homogenising or static
way. I show how these processes are in flux; capitalism creates different forms of racial-
ised inclusion and exclusion. However, this is not a purely functionalist argument, I also
consider the ways shifting ideological approaches to immigration shape how the nexus is
framed and which policies are foregrounded.
This article is structured into three parts. The first section analyses existing scholarship
on the nexus. I argue that this work does not adequately account for the knotty relation-
ship between migration and development policies, nor for the role that race plays in this.
The second section examines theories of racial capitalism to establish how development
and immigration policies reproduce and create racialised forms of exploitation and exclu-
sion. Then, I turn to the empirics, which are divided into three parts. First, I analyse the
policies connected to the ‘migration as a tool for development’ argument. Second, I con-
sider how ideological approaches to immigration relate to the policies that are privileged
at different times. Third, I look to the ways development aid has been used to curb migra-
tion. Ultimately, I argue we can understand the nexus through racial capitalism, which
helps produce varying forms of exploitable subjects and enacts control over surplus popu-
lations across the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ world.
The migration–development nexus: Overlooking policy
differences and sidelining race
While migration and development could be considered antithetical policy configurations,
there is a body of analysis that unpicks some of the ways they are connected. A portion of
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