Disentangling the migration-development nexus using QCA

Under what circumstances does human development facilitate or constrain emigration? Moreover, under what conditions is migration a driver for rather than an obstacle for development? Empirical evidence identifying the drivers of the two-way relationship between migration and development is still rather mixed, in part also because of conceptual and methodological shortcomings of the methods generally applied to this subject matter, which often cannot handle the complex links and interactions between migration and development. This paper engages with the opportunities and challenges of investigating the migration–development nexus using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as a methodological approach to explore the complex configurational two-way relationship between migration and development processes. We hereby address a methodological gap in the scientific literature investigating the migration-development nexus and propose QCA as a method for enriching the empirical base and expanding our knowledge and understanding of this complex relationship.

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