Migration in the Development Studies Literature: Has It Come Out of Its Marginality?

migration, development studies, growth

Rescuing exclusion from the poverty debate

This paper discusses the conceptualisation of group deprivation - particularly of Dalits and Adivasis - in recent poverty analyses in India. While the poverty debate highlights the severe inequalities that groups based on social identity are exposed to, it pays insufficient attention to the nature of exclusion these groups suffer from, and the causes of historically rooted deprivation. This paper explores the ways in which ‘SC/ST’ (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) categories are applied in analysis and policy, the role of these categorisation in India’s targeted poverty programmes and recent BPL (Below Poverty Line) Census, how these understate different manifestations of discrimination, and the risks that targeted programmes enhance stigma of groups

Aid: the drama, the fiction, and does it work?

The international community is under increased pressure to show results from the money invested through aid agencies. While support for international development has been large, there has also been a forceful critique. This paper argues that much of the public debate tends to be counter-productive, as it takes insufficient account of the diversity of aid motives, agencies, modalities, and problems addressed. Critical to the debate on aid, in my view, is to focus on the accountability towards both the funders and recipients of aid, and the international community needs to ensure strengthened accountability -- rather than producing "results" -- enables increased space for the development of developmental social contracts

Will China change international development as we know it?

What do China's dramatic transformations over the last 30 years imply for development studies and practice? China has lifted a record number of people out of poverty, and has had sustained levels of economic growth close to ten per cent per annum, albeit at well-documented environmental and social costs. China now appears to be developing effective responses to the global financial crisis, and fairly recently China's global role has seen an enormous surge. It is making these transformations with institutions that continue to surprise international observers, while China experts usually merely emphasise the pragmatic nature of its post-1978 reforms. The "rise of China", thus, is challenging our perspectives and practices in international development. While China's experience has largely remained outside the mainstream development debate, an increasing number of studies and essays have started to articulate the lessons from China's development path for the international development community, and particularly for Africa. This paper reflects on the different interpretations of these lessons, as well as the process of lesson learning, which so far has been strongly supply-driven. It further discusses China's new global economic and political role, and the position of China's aid as "soft power" within the new global structures. These new trends make it essential to reflect on how we understand development and globalisation. To do so we need better mutual understanding and particularly a better understanding of how and why China achieved what it did over the last 30 years, and its remaining challenges. This essay is a modest attempt to promote this

Inclusive growth?

This paper discusses the relationship between labour migration and poverty in India. This is placed against the on-going debates on changes in patterns of employment and job creation in India, during the periods of economic liberalization, under the Inclusive Growth policies since 2004, and under the impact of the global financial crisis, and growing inequalities. The paper focuses on the migration patterns of deprived social groups, analyse whether migration form a routes out of poverty, and what specific policies for these groups exist or should be recommended. The paper first discusses general findings on the links between poverty and internal labour migration. These stylized facts are used to structure the insights into the changes in migration patterns in India, highlighting the under-recording of migration of most vulnerable groups. The third section discusses the implications of these insights for a notion of Inclusive Growth, concluding there is a need to address the invisibility of migrants and to review common policy aspirations to reduce migration. The conclusion reflects on the analysis of migration and policies to enhance migrants’ well-being and ability to participate in India’s disequalising growth

Poverty and Social Exclusion in North and South

This IDS Bulletin is an oddity: a publication by an institute specialising in developing countries, which consists almost entirely of papers about developed countries. There is a justification, however. It lies in the rapid growth in writing about a new concept, 'social exclusion'. Despite some pioneering work by the International Institute of Labour Studies on social exclusion in the South2, most writing on social exclusion has been in and about the North, originally in France, but now more widely. The new writing represents new thinking on a new problem, namely the rapid growth of poverty in rich countries. Poverty has been driven rapidly up the policy and research agendas of the European welfare states, of the USA, and also of Eastern Europe's transitional countries. Increasingly, it is discussed in the vocabulary of social exclusion