Migration and Development after 2015

Abstract

In this paper, I will interrogate the new ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs), with a view to understanding the place of migration therein. This analysis is undertaken for the purpose of anticipating (or forecasting) the unintended consequences of the inclusion of migration within this new development agenda. The key argument advanced in this paper is that the SDGs represent a normative framing of migration that sustains a problematic understanding of migration, and reproduces a vision of development that has long been implicated in the production of unequal and deleterious migrant mobilities. I show that while the SDGs redress the previous silence on migration in the Millennium Development Goals, they continue to normalize a problematic understanding of the role of migration in the global organisation of development. This will, in all likelihood, do little to transform the structural and political impediments to sustainable and equitable migrations, and thus deny the promises of development to many people on the move.