This article analyses how European governments and civil society actors engage diasporas in Europe as agents for the development of their countries of origin. Through a critical examination of diaspora engagement discourse and practice in various European countries, we identify three implicit understandings. First, development is conceived of as the planned activities of Western professional development actors; second, diasporas are seen as actual communities rooted in a national ‘home’ and sharing a group identity; and third, migration is regarded as binary mobility. We argue that these interpretations are informed by notions of ethnic or national rootedness in given places and that they lead to further assumptions about why, and in pursuit of what goals, diasporas engage. We conclude that such essentialized understandings limit the potential of diaspora engagement as a means of innovating the development industry by broadening understandings of what development entails and how it can be done.

This article explores the topic of return migration as it is understood and practised by different actors who engage with this theme, albeit from different perspectives. Return migration is paraded in policy debates as a triple-win scenario, bringing advantages to receiving states, countries of origin and migrants. Yet this article reveals how return migration is understood differently by policymakers in Senegal and Europe and by the migrants targeted by their policies. Interpretations are based on conflicting underlying assumptions of what return is, its benefits and its relation to transnational movement. Inspired by the discursive paradigm in political studies, this article utilizes interpretive tools to examine the structures that support and give meaning to understandings of return among institutional actors and migrants. It concludes that new theorization is needed to grasp the full complexity of return migration as a phenomenon that is marked by different temporalities and aspirations.

Humanitarianism is increasingly used to address migration in Europe, from search and rescue operations at sea to reception on land. Scholars often interpret humanitarianism as a means for states to depoliticize migration and prioritize securitization. In this article, I analyze perspectives on humanitarianism among civil society volunteers and workers who, alongside institutions, deliver humanitarian support to migrants. Civil initiatives in this field by independent volunteers, non-governmental organizations and charities have surged, thus shifting tasks traditionally under the responsibility of the state to non-state actors. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in and around the premises of the Hub (a center providing humanitarian assistance to migrants transiting in the Italian city of Milan), I show that engaging in such civil support initiatives raises the levels of political awareness and activism among ordinary citizens. Through insight into the daily actions, motivations and aims of the men and women operating at the Hub, I show that their involvement in humanitarian assistance marks the beginning of a personal journey in which they gradually conceive what they do as far from being in support of depoliticizing state securitization policies and rather as politically loaded.

Building “resilience” to insecurity and crisis is high on the European Union (EU) agenda. EU uptake of this buzzword is especially significant with regard to migration and forced displacement. Uncertainty, however, remains about what resilience is, how it translates into practice, and what its implications are. In this article, we analyze EU humanitarian and development policies and provide empirical insight into resilience-building in Jordan and Lebanon. We show that EU resilience thinking highlights strengthening the humanitarian-development nexus, responsibilizing crisis-affected states, and framing refugees as an economic development opportunity for refugee-hosting states. We also find that how resilience translates into practice depends on the local context and interests of the actors involved. For the EU, resilience-building is primarily a refugee containment strategy that could jeopardize the stability of refugee-hosting states. We conclude that resilience-building in Jordan and Lebanon may ultimately threaten rather than safeguard the security of Europe.

Men are seldom a topic of concern in migration research as gendered subjects who experience the implications of social justice, for instance in aspects relating to lives in their families such as fairness of representation, consequences of material redistribution, and management of emotions. Economic migrants in particular, who are seen as matching the role of breadwinners and confirming the status of dominant patriarchal men, are a particularly underrated case. Using the experiences of Wolof men who emigrate from Senegal to become the main providers for their families, this chapter questions this assumption by drawing insights from a theorization on ‘transnational families’, ‘intersectionality’ and ‘masculinity’ as developed within migration and gender studies. The chapter discusses how male gender roles become interlocked with other categories, as asymmetries (be they real or perceived) intervene between the migrant and the stay-behind, and as geographic distance forces them to revisit the propriety of arrangements that enable them to enact their gendered responsibility within families. Caught between pressures deriving from their economic and moral obligations towards family and kin on the one hand, and personal aspirations of fitting the part of successful men on the other, the ethnographic research presented in this chapter shows that migrants engage in an emotional journey that may challenge, rather than confirm, their expectations of ‘hegemonic’ masculinity.