Transnational Solidarity — Not Aid : The Perspective of Migration on the Hype about Migration & Development

Migrants have organized transnational support for non-migrants, stay-at-homes, citizens and noncitizens, as well as for developmental or integrationist nation state projects for decades. These solidarities have been framed as “cultural programs,” “autochthone support of hometowns,” “development aid” or “diaspora politics.” Since the turn of the century especially those projects that could be framed as “development aid” have gained a lot of interest from official development aid and its agencies. More and more programs have been launched to coordinate and professionalize the transnational support labor of migrants under the aegis of development. This is what I call the hype about migration&development.1 In this article, I want to show why the notion of “migrant development aid” used in the hype falls short of what is at stake when it comes to transnational migrant solidarities. Thereby, I want to argue that looking at migration through its governance and through migration or development politics is short-sighted and insensitive towards the desires, ethics and politics of migration. This is the reason that a perspective of migration—such as that propagated by the autonomy of migration approach—needs to be brought into debates on migration&development.

tifaceted objectives and activities are in stark contrast to the framing of migrants' transnational projects as solely "developmental" that has been prominent in the international realm for the last decade (cf.Kunz, 2011).Consequently, I will argue in the following that looking at migration through its governance and migration or development politics is short-sighted and insensitive towards the desires, ethics and politics of migration.Therefore, a perspective of migration-such as that propagated by the autonomy of migration approach (AoM) -needs to be brought into debates on migration&development.
Kofi Busia, just like Aurelien, has been active in and for his hometown in Ghana for decades now.He has erected a schooling and occupational training center there and is spending several weeks a year in the village to talk to the different actors and to visit "his school" (K.Busia, personal communication, September 10, 2009).Long ago, the project turned into his "life-task" that he "cannot withdraw from anymore"-although, from time to time, the sixtysomething would certainly love to do exactly that, because he is spending "more time on this organization than on my private life".He is constantly on the road, giving lectures and readings to raise money for his organization, for the Ghana Community and the Ashanti Union in Germany.He is repeatedly putting his own money into the project whenever there are too few donations.Kofi exhausts himself beyond selfabandonment just to keep the school, his school, running.The kind of responsibility he takes is accompanied by a strong personalization of "his project," with the effect that he considers the school to be "his school".In conflicts and negotiations with other members of the organization he repeatedly has voiced sentences such as "The organization is me!", "The school is me" or "These are my children!".Kofi feels a "perpetual responsibility.I feel responsible for this building as long as I live," he explains.As for Aurelien, calling Kofi's activities for his hometown "developmental" would be reducing his multifaceted aims, wishes and desires to one dimensionand a governmental one at that.This is the reason I want to explore the ways in which migrants frame their transnational actions (in their hometowns) here.
I met Kofi Busia and Aurelien Fedjo when researching what I call "the hype about migration&development."That is the recent and enormous interest in the nexus between emigration (particularly from so-called developing countries) and development, or put more specifically, in the developmentality, the development potential, of migrants or diasporas.In my research project on the hype, I was especially interested in the effects and changes the hype brought about for migrants and migrant organizations that had already sometimes been transnationally active for decades: What did it mean to them to "have been discovered," as one of my interview partners framed it (Muriel, 2010, p. 4)?To answer this question, I conducted more than thirty interviews with members of (transnational) migrant organizations (in three countries: Germany, Cameroon and Ghana), development agencies and municipal administrations between 2009 and 2011.4I followed a networking project to bring migrants into municipal development aid in Munich.I attended meetings of various migrant organizations and did three internships, each of three months, in Yaoundé/Cameroon, Kumasi/Ghana and Munich/Germany with migrant organizations and Munich's international office.Kofi Busia and Aurelien Fedjo are the heads of the organizations I followed to Ghana and Cameroon.
In this article, my aim is to contrast their perspective on what they are doing transnationally, diasporically and in their hometowns to discourses of migra-tion&development.Furthermore, I will explore their perspective on the hype and on "being discovered" by development actors.To do so, I will follow the AoM and the Migration and Border Regime Analysis (MBRA) that operationalizes the notion of AoM.I will argue that what is at stake here from a perspective of migration is transnational solidarity and not aid.In a first step, I present both AoM and MBRA as the methodological perspective chosen here to engage with the existing research and literature on migration&development, that I summarize in the second part of this article.Finally, I contrast these two perspectives by looking at migration&development debates in the context of a project in Munich (Germany) and by introducing the notion of solidarity.

Bringing the Perspective of Migration into Research: The Autonomy of Migration Approach and the Ethnographic Migration and Border Regime Analysis
An increasing number of critical migration researchers (cf.Bojadžijev, 2011;Bojadžijev & Karakayali, 2007;King, 2016;Papadopoulos, Stephenson, & Tsianos, 2008) have argued for "a 'different sensibility', a different gaze" on migration (and border regimes) during the last decade (Mezzadra, 2011, p. 121).A gaze "that prioritize[s] the subjective practices, the desires, the expectations, and the behaviours of migrants themselves" (Mezzadra, 2011, p. 121), yet, at the same time, does not regard migration as an individualistic, but a political and social project.Within this thread of research, migration is understood "as a creative force" within social, cultural and economic structures (Papadopoulos et al, 2008, p. 202), as a force changing borders and border regimes (cf.Hess & Tsianos, 2009) and as the primum movens of history.Building on operaismo and Yann Moulier Boutang's (1998;2006) notion of autonomy, to the AoM, [m]igration is not the evacuation of a place and the occupation of a different one, it is the making and remaking of one's own life on the scenery of the world.World-making.You cannot measure migration in changes of position or location….Even if migration starts sometimes as a form of dislocation…, its target is not relocation but the active transformation of social space.(Tsianos, 2007, p. 169f) Migration seen from this perspective is, therefore, an intensity, a transformative power or rather a voting with one's feet.The AoM aims to take the desires and struggles for rights, security and solidarity that are expressed in migration seriously and to put them center stage (Bojadžijev, 2011, p. 142).Instead of staring at border infrastructures and governance attempts, the AoM, thus, looks, for example, at the "sharing of knowledge and infrastructures of connectivity, affective cooperation, mutual support and care among people on the move" at "social spaces below the radar of existing political structures" (Papadopolous & Tsianos, 2013, p. 1).
In this perspective, (b)orders are regarded as places of negotiation, as places where struggles and fights about rights, in-and exclusion take place.Here, not only the forces of border control, but also of migration manifest.This is also the reason why Sabine Hess and Vassilis Tsianos, in an attempt to operationalize the AoM and to bring it into research designs and interpretation, have picked up Giuseppe Sciortino's regime concept and called their methodology "Ethnographic Migration and Border Regime Analysis" (2009).According to Sciortino, negotiations, "turf wars," "quick fixes" and "continuous repair work through practices" (Sciortino, 2004, p. 33) are the basis of structures and stratifications.With his notion of "regimes," he is propagating a decentral concept of power that does not focus on instances of governing, such as the production of borders through border guards, but on negotiations and practices around the border.Voting with the feet and its management and attempts to control physical and social movements are in constant interplay: "A central element in producing migration [and migration regimes] are [thus] the actions of (potential) migrants themselves, developing strategies to realize and perpetuate spatial movements" (Pott & Tsianos, 2014).
Translating these perspectives into methodology, Hess and Tsianos (2009) suggest using ethnographic approaches, i.e., to be in the field, get involved, experience oneself, do interviews and participant observation, do informal talks and collaborations.This preference for ethnography arises from its open-endedness, its processuality and its closeness to daily life and agency.

The Shifting Tides of Discussions on Migration&Development: And What Is Missing from It
Although several authors and institutions have diagnosed a new "enthusiasm" (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 2008), "mantra" (Hilber, 2008) or "trend" (Kunz, 2011) about migration&development and this trend has been critically explored and commented on by various researchers (cf. Delgado Wise & Márquez Covarrubias, 2007;Faist, 2010;Glick Schiller, 2010;Kunz, 2011;Raghu-ram, 2007), the AoM approach and the perspective of migration has not yet been brought into the debate.One reason for this is that most of the critique on the "hype" addresses its discourses and the subjectivities it creates.The structural (i.e., neoliberal) context in which it occurs is also problematized.Thomas Faist (2010) and Nina Glick Schiller (2010), for example, have both highlighted that the hype has emerged at a time in history at which the relationship between state, community and market is being heavily transformed and, increasingly, responsibility is being transferred to the citizen him-or herself.For migrants, this comes down to the appeal to take responsibility for their countries of origin and to act as a kind of insurance for their relatives and compatriots in times of diminishing social security structures-as voiced in the hype (cf.Glick Schiller, 2010).Raúl Delgado Wise and Humberto Márquez Covarrubias have, therefore, argued that the notion that migration has to contribute to development also "contributes to presenting a 'human face' to negate the climate of social un-sustainability" (Delgado Wise & Márquez Covarrubias, 2007, p. 102).Making migration productive for development is deepening inequality by transferring responsibility for the effects of global disparities to those who have already tried to change something by migrating.One of the most pronounced and nuanced dissections and critiques of the current hype has been voiced by Parvati Raghuram (2007).She has not only highlighted the discursive power of international organizations, but also the comeback of modernist paradigms of development in the current debates on migration&development.Furthernore, she has carved out the colonial assumptions of the hype: While migrant destination countries are seen as "spaces of acquisition" of wealth and knowledge, countries of origin are seen as "spaces deserving redistribution" (2007, p. 11).In addition, Rahel Kunz (2011) has shown that the hype invisibilizes not only non-migrants, but also women, who are mostly regarded as unproductive receivers of remittances.She also highlights forms of resistance to these governmentalities and, thus, is one of the rare authors who have explored the situational, life world effects the hype has (cf.Kunz, 2011).A critique that comes closest to the argument followed in this article is that by Thomas Faist (2010), who finds that questions of social justice and transnationality are totally ignored by the current literature on migration&development.Although it puts the migrant and migrant organizations center stage, the hype invisibilizes the perspective of migration I would argue and follow.
One last thread of literature on the hype must be mentioned here, because it historicizes the current debates and interest: While a lot of international, national and local organizations from migration and the development sector have been interested in migrants' potential for development projects since the beginning of the 21st century, this interest is not at all new.Instead, activities of migrants in their hometowns have been called developmental by colonizers since the 1930s (cf.Geschiere, 2009, p. 15;Mercer, Page, & Evans, 2008).Since that time, the nexus between migration and development has been discussed with changing premises.The sociologist Thomas Faist (2010) has argued that the discourse is moving in waves: While migration was thought to have positive effects on development in the 1960s, in the 1970s, the brain drain perspective and, thus, a negative perspective was dominant, which was then balanced out by an emphasis on brain circulation in the 1990s.Faist has stressed that these changings paradigms are strongly connected to the economic situation in the global North (a lack in labor force would lead to brain gain perspectives, an economic crisis to brain drain perspectives).The sociologist Hein de Haas (2007) has highlighted that they are also strongly connected to the changing development theories favored since the 1950s: The strong critique of development aid that was formulated in the 1980s, for example, led to a strong emphasis on self-aid, capacity building and micro-credits.The call on migrants to develop fits this new, neoliberal paradigm in development politics very well.
Although the nexus between migration and development has been discussed since the 1930s, what is to be emphasized here is that until the beginning of the new millennium, this nexus had never been put center stage in development or migration politics.This changed with the "discovery" by the World Bank in 2003 that migrants transfer three times more money to development countries via remittances than Official Development Aid (cf. von Hagen, 2004;World Bank, 2009).The "discovery" has entailed a plethora of projects by international and national development and migration organizations trying to make migrants agents of development, to train them developmentally or to inform them about ethical standards or project management. 5n addition to the historic context of neoliberal transformations and changing paradigms of development, the hype can only be understood if it is situated within a recent shift in migration governance towards migration management.This has not only brought about the notion that migration could be a "benefit for all" (Geiger & Pécoud, 2010) if managed properly, but also a highly economic perspective on migration that ignores aspects of social and political rights (cf.Kunz, 2011).

On Being Discovered: The Perspective of Migration on the Hype about Migration&Development
When Kofi Busia and Aurelien Fedjo were both invited by the city administration of Munich in 2009 to participate in a one-year project to "connect local, developmentally active migrant organizations to other municipal or local developmental initiatives (one world organizations, partnership organizations, etc.)" (Wilhelmy & Held, 2008, p. 68), Aurelien decided to participate, while Kofi decided not to participate.Just like Lucia Muriel, another of my interview partners and a development expert from Berlin, Kofi found it absurd that he now was "discovered" as a development actor, while he had carried out projects in his hometown for twenty years.In the words of Lucia Muriel: For us, the migrants, the white trend topic [of migra-tion&development] is a topic that we have collected expert knowledge and experience on for decades.We reached our limits on the topic and went through existential identity debates…!These processes were not a luxury that we pursued because we had nothing better to do, but an existential necessity, a survival strategy!And now we have been 'discovered.'(Muriel, 2010, p. 4) Just like Kofi and Lucia, a lot of my interview partners who had been invited to the project were irritated by the call on them to become developmental-as migrants.Some had a problem with being categorized as migrants, others with the category of development aid, and some had a problem with both categories.Daniel, for example, one of my interview partners stated: I always regard myself to be a person from these poor countries, that is a problem.Because somehow, when you come from these countries and you also have so many relatives that are so poor, that need so much support…well, you just are afraid to get involved in something where there is so much responsibility, you just are yellow of that.And then you think: I do not even manage to [support my relatives] and now I am expected to do something institutional.(D.Razafindrasamba, personal communication, August 15, 2009) This resistance to become developmental is also caused by the circumstance that developmental activities quickly become life tasks for migrants, as Kofi had underlined in our conversations.Others addressed as migrants expressed that they just did not want to work with other migrants, that they did not want to be collectivized in a migrant development organization or migrant development project, because they could not trust other migrants.Daniel explained: Migrants have gone through so much on their way here, that they have forgotten who they are in the end.They do not believe in anything anymore, they are totally changed.They are afraid of everything.They have done things, they never thought they would do.Furthermore, he criticized the belief that migrants should do development work for free while development workers should be paid: "You need a lot of patience for that!".
The quotes cited here express what is at stake subjectively for people being positioned as migrants when it comes to the hype about migration&development.They express subjective expectations, positionings, experiences and practices and, thus, introduce the perspective of migration (cf.Mezzadra, 2011).They make it obvious why the perspective of migration is so important here, especially when seen in contrast to the project's aims.In the project description the following benefits of bringing together migration&development were named: From…the [project's] perspective, the role of migrants is important for…international cooperations or educational work: (1) As a benefit for "German" development agencies (including the municipal administration), to be able to use local, regional and cultural knowledge of migrants as well as their authenticity to raise awareness of problems in their countries of origin; (2) As a benefit for migrants, who find support and reinforcement for their activities with "German" development agencies; (3) As a benefit for countries of origin, because projects become more culturally sensitive and, thus, get higher quality.Structural racism in development cooperations due to "white experts" can be cut down when more and more migrants are employed as development experts in their countries of origin; (4) As a benefit for urban society: It is merging through the cooperation between migrants and "German" organizations-a contribution to integration.(Unpublished protocol of the 1st project workshop in Munich in 2009) In this quote, the developmentality of the project becomes obvious: Migrants and their organizations are seen as a benefit for German development aid and the only benefit for migrants is the support of their development projects.The needs, desires and aims of migrants and the question whether they want to do development projects at all are not addressed.The guidelines of cooperation are prescribed: They have to be about development.However, it becomes obvious from the examples of Kofi and Aurelien and the quotes given above that it is not development per se that migrants aim for necessarily in their transnational support labor.As it happens, Kofi and Aurelien have sometimes called their involvement in their hometowns developmental during our talks; most notably, however, they have emphasized the direct support they are giving, the discussions they are leading with people in Yaoundé and Kumasi, the problems they are solving, and the goal-orientness and emotions with which they pursue their initiatives.Aurelien, for example, highlights: "I prefer there being more emotions than protocols when doing this kind of work" and goes on: "My people in Cameroon…do not live any better because I do some networking here [in Munich]."His commitment is neither about himself "feeling comfortable in Germany," nor about "discussing for hours with other people [in Germany]," instead, he wanted to be in direct interaction with people in Yaoundé and to find solutions for their problems."If I only collect [money], what do I learn from this then?Nothing.But if I somehow go one step further, I can…discuss with people about certain topics, what kind of solutions there are" (A. Fedjo, personal communication, September 20, 2009).Kofi, in turn, stresses that his work would create a different understanding of the world, a (cultural) exchange.Thus, what they talk about is not (only) development.Instead, they express their aim of acting in solidarity and to bring about a different understanding of global connectedness-as I will argue in the last part of this article.

Solidarity-Not Aid
In opposition to the governmental perspective on migrants' translocal and transnational activities that frame it in an economic way and leave out questions of social and political rights (cf.Kunz, 2011), I do not want to understand and frame it to be developmental, but to (transnationally) express solidarity.When Aurelien Fedjo and Kofi Busia stress the direct support, the problem solving and the emotionality of their work, this rings a lot of similarities to how Paul Mecheril (2014) has defined solidarity.
Mecheril, a professor in educational sciences, writes that solidarity is "a commitment that aims at enabling or preserving ways of life" (2004, p. 81), that claims a just, livable state of affairs not only for some, but ultimately for everybody and, thus, goes beyond compassion, indignation or morality: "Characteristic for solidarity is a commitment that changes or even impedes a state of affairs in which social cooperation partners close and distant to me cannot thrive and develop-or at least solidarity is concerned with doing so" (2004, p. 86).In activities grounded in solidarity, the other is not considered to be needy, but independent and responsible.They do not aim at dissolving differences-instead solidarity means "connectivity despite difference" (2004, p. 86).Solidarity is based on an unease and exasperation, on an understanding of common suffering in an unjust world which needs to change.While some authors, such as Richard Rorty (1989) have emphasized that solidarity can only emerge in groups-which also draws on the prominent use of the concept in the labor movement-others have noted that what is most important about solidarity is its addressing of injustice (Bayert, 1998) and its groundedness in emotions (Bierhoff & Fetchenbauer, 2001).Thus, solidarity is support between equals to create a more just world.
In contrast to solidarity, development aid aims to optimize nations or populations economically and to fight poverty.Neither does this change in more recent human capital approaches that do not only aim to strengthen human rights, political empowerment and social systems, but also want every single human to optimize his or her (cap)abilities and, thus, at least partly, remains in capitalist logics.Thus, there is a huge difference between framing and understanding migrants' transnational support labor as solidarity, on the one hand, or as developmental, on the other hand.A developmental understanding always implies-as I have reasoned in other publications (cf.Schwertl, 2015)-positioning migrants as learning, as developees and project workers, as translators and bridges for development.To understand the activities of Kofi Busia und Aurelien Fedjo as solidarity, means to recognize that they are not only about projects, schools and the rights of handicapped people in Cameroon, but also about changing the relationship between parts of the world, changing the global state of affairs, and about doing this not in and from Germany, but transnationally.The ethics and politics that is the foundation of Kofi Busia and Aurelien Fedjo's actions in their "countries of origin," thus, exceed developmental logics.They want more or different things than Official Development Aid.They are putting emphasis, for example, on the structural racism they and "millions of Cameroonians living abroad" face: "If you are a foreigner here, you have to struggle," "people only see a black face, black skin…and they ask strange questions like 'are there…peanuts…or…houses in Africa?'" (K.Busia, personal communication, September 10, 2009).Thus, they do not only seek recognition for themselves, but also want to bring about some societal changes and changes in the relationship between global South and North.Their work is more than developmental, it is also antiracist and grounded in enabling different forms of life.This solidarity remains invisible from the perspective of governing.Furthermore, governmental forms constantly try to capture and captivate migration and the perspective of migration on transnational projects.They try to define them in developmental ways.
What is needed when trying to understand migrants' transnational projects and activities, therefore, is a perspective that does not reproduce the perspective of governance.The aim of critical migration studies should not only be to reconstruct or deconstruct the logics of migration politics and technologies, as has been done by several critical authors (Kunz, 2011;Raghuram, 2007).Instead, we need to bring the perspective of migration into our research.The AoM approach looks at the "sharing of knowledge and infrastructures of connectivity, affective cooperation, mutual support and care among people on the move" (Papadopolous & Tsianos, 2013).It, therefore, helps us to understand that migrants' transnational activities are not (necessarily) developmental.They are multifaceted and, in the instances and positionings I have highlighted in this article, they are about global justice and solidarity (cf.Faist, 2010).

Conclusion
The recent awareness of migration in the development regime and vice versa has invisibilized not only that migrants have ooorganized transnational support for non-migrants, stay-at-homes, citizens and noncitizens, as well as for developmental or integrationist nation state projects for decades.There have been migrant organizations supporting their hometowns at least since the 1930s.These solidarities have been framed differently, depending on the current development and migration policy perspective as "cultural programs," "autochthone support of hometowns," "development aid" or "diaspora politics."Yet, they can never be reduced to these governmental logics.This is also why the city of Munich's project caused so much resistance and debate: People opposed being positioned as migrants or developmental or both.Furthermore, when talking about their projects, they did not talk about project management, but they wished for something to change.
What follows for research on migration&development is that we should not only talk about politics here, but also about ethics and morals.As anthropologist Michael Lambek has stated: Ethnographers commonly find that the people they encounter are trying to do what they consider right or good…or are in some debate about what constitutes the human good.Yet anthropological theory tends to overlook all this in favor of analyses that emphasize structure, power, and interest.(Lambek, 2010, p. 1) Taking seriously what people want and desire, what they wish for and how they treat themselves and others is important to understand their daily politics.Solidarity is not taking place so much in (development) project management, but at its fringes; it is a question of relations and relationships as well as of politics.
Furthermore, we should not consider migration to be about moving across borders or changing places.We should take the changes in relationality that it brings about seriously.Seen from the perspective of migration, the relationality migrants' transnational projects and activities bring about can be hugely different from the one brought about in development cooperation.Instead of developers, developees and bridge-builders (i.e., migrants), there are people working together.But to see this, we have to listen to what people are actually saying, how they explain what they are doing and what they fight.The AoM and MBRA bring about research designs and perspectives that enable the researcher to do exactly that.
Bringing together AoM and MBRA with debates about migration&development, therefore, has two effects: 1) The AoM's perspective on transnational and global struggles is strengthened.Movements of migration are not only about the right to move and stay, but also about changing global and transnational relations.Research in the perspective of AoM often focuses on the former, but the latter is equally important, as Sandro Mezzadra has highlighted repeatedly; and 2) Another form of critique is possible when it comes to migra-tion&development.A critique that shows that migration is always excessive and can never be reduced to developmentality.
(D. Razafindrasamba, personal communication, August 15, 2009)   Becoming a migrant changes you, according to him, and it changes your relation towards your country of origin.As Edouard explained to me: When you are here and each time you look at news on your country of origin something challenging comes up, you stop thinking about doing anything about this.…We are just losing the overview of what one could actually do.(E.Kome, personal communication,  September 20, 2009)