This is due to the political sensitivity of migration, the inadequate knowledge and expertise on the relationship between migration and development and the multiplicity of development strategies often in place in single states.
Debates over immigration, said Joseph Chamie, director of the United Nations Population Division, are characterized by "a yawning lack of data, absence of theories to explain international migration, a weak understanding of the complex interrelationship between migration and development, and concerns about the social, economic and political consequences".
The resources will finance programs that create employment opportunities, provide basic services, improve overall governance, and also specifically aim to decrease migration by "containing and preventing irregular migration, effective return and readmission, international protection and asylum, legal migration and mobility, and enhancing synergies between migration and development".
Framed within the "Global Approach to Migration and Mobility" of the EU, this rather new concept (1) is promoting new ways of legal migration, (2) is combating irregular migration and human trafficking, and (3) strengthening the nexus between migration and development.
Divided into three, then later four pillars, the Mobility Partnership is expected to evenly address the facilitation of legal migration unto the territory of the EU, the enhancement of the link between migration and development, the fight against irregular migration and the international protection of migrants.
With remittances being now recognized as one of the main sources of external funding for developing countries, most of the analyses investigating the relationship between migration and development have focused on the financial returns of migration for origin countries.
Developing migrants' countries of origin is increasingly understood as providing an alternative to emigration and the European Commission has since 1994 pushed for enhanced synergies between migration and development with the aim to reduce migratory pressures (European Commission, 2002, p. 7).
With the focus of this paper on the linkages between migration, entrepreneurship and development, it is important to take a step back and look at the linkages between migration and development more generally because (migrant) entrepreneurship is but one possible channel.
Further research along these lines is therefore needed in order to fully understand the dynamics guiding the interactions between migration, entrepreneurship and development.
