Taking Culture Seriously: The Unexplored Nexus between Migration, Incorporation and Development

Abstract

Most discussions about the relationship between migration, incorporation, and development suffer from two misguided assumptions. First, they focus too much on the economic at the expense of the socio-cultural. It’s as if we just get the money right, all else will follow. Second, they assume that redressing poverty in immigrant communities and alleviating underdevelopment in the communities migrants come from are two separate goals when, in fact, they are often two sides of the same coin. Economic and political incorporation into a new country and economic and social outcomes in the homeland can be strongly linked. It is not possible to achieve one without taking the other into account. My comments try to redress these weaknesses. First, I propose a transnational optic that redresses the methodological nationalist assumptions that pervades so much of migration scholarship, particularly in the United States. Second, I suggest a way of “bringing culture back in” to debates about the migration-poverty equation and show how thinking culturally elucidates aspects of this nexus that are often obscured. Finally, I conclude with some reflections on the dangers of pinning development hopes solely on migrants.