1.1 The Rise of Political Nativism

Immigration has become one of the most divisive issues in domestic politics across Western countries, fueling the success of populist and nationalist leaders in recent years. From Donald Trump’s “Build the Wall” campaign in the US, to the rise of far-right parties in Europe, politicians have increasingly won elections by promising stricter immigration enforcement and by portraying migrants as threats to national identity, public safety, or welfare systems (see Kapelner, Reference Kapelner2024). Yet even before this recent nationalist movement, few issues were more politically intractable than immigration, reflecting deep-seated anxieties about race and cultural identity, fears about the erosion of national sovereignty, and concerns about labor market competition and social welfare burdens (Dennison & Geddes, Reference Dennison and Geddes2019; Newton, Reference Newton2008).

Immigration policy tends to be cyclical, as restrictive policies are often followed by permissive ones, and vice versa. In the US, for example, the restrictiveness of the first Trump administration was followed by relatively open policies during the Biden administration, which have been followed by an even harsher crackdown during the second Trump term. Yet even as policies have often oscillated, voter support for tough immigration policies has increased across several Western democracies (Van Hauwaert & Vegetti, Reference Van Hauwaert and Vegetti2025).

This political climate has had two major consequences. First, it has entrenched deterrence-oriented migration policies, such that deportation, detention, and militarized border control became the default responses to political pressure. Second, it created incentives for governments to search for alternative tools that could be framed as tackling migration at the source. Foreign aid emerged in this context as a way for governments to signal that they were managing migration without bearing the social and ethical costs of ever-stricter border enforcement.

1.2 Background on Aid–Migration Nexus

Building on these dynamics, donor governments increasingly deployed aid with explicit migration objectives, in alignment with an idea that has been advanced in academic research for decades.Footnote ¹ Aid disbursements were often framed in terms of reducing migrant outflows and securing the cooperation of migrant-sending states. For example, in the 2010s, the US government provided approximately $1 billion to Central American countries to slow migrant outflows (Gerschutz-Bell, Reference Gerschutz-Bell2022), while the EU directed approximately €3 billion to slow emigration from African nations (Clemens & Postel, Reference Clemens and Postel2018).Footnote ²

As we will see, the effectiveness of these programs has varied. Yet there is significant reason to believe that aid can impact the movement of people. It can do so directly through programs and projects that are explicitly designed to decrease or increase the international flow of migrants. Programs to decrease migration often focus on creating jobs in border communities, building border management capacity, or compelling governments to erect barriers to emigration. For example, European donors have provided aid to the Jordanian, Lebanese, and Turkish governments in exchange for commitments to house Syrian refugees that would probably flow into Europe otherwise (Tsourapas, Reference Tsourapas2019). In contrast, some donor governments provide aid to train or recruit workers abroad to fill labor gaps at home. For example, Australia’s Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS) provides funds to several Pacific nations to help them recruit and train individuals to work in Australia.Footnote ³

Aid also has indirect impacts on migration when it stimulates the push and pull factors that encourage or discourage people to emigrate. For example, in instances where aid generates economic growth or improves political institutions in recipient countries, those countries’ residents should become more satisfied with their opportunities and rights at home, reducing their interest in moving abroad. By the same token, if aid inadvertently reduces the accountability of leaders to citizens (see Morrison, Reference Morrison2009), people will be inclined to seek better representation in foreign nations.

Aid provision can also affect pull factors in the countries that migrants wish to move to. For example, if aid creates a fiscal burden on donor countries or diverts resources that could otherwise be used to address domestic needs, then human welfare in these countries will worsen and they will become less desirable destinations. Indeed, economic downturns are generally accompanied by declines in immigration, as fewer labor market opportunities are available to new residents (Villarreal, Reference Villarreal2014; Winter, Reference Winter2020).

1.3 Broader Debates on Foreign Aid

Any discussion of the aid–migration nexus must also be situated within broader debates over the purpose and effectiveness of foreign aid itself. Since its inception in the post-World War II era, foreign aid has been alternately championed as a catalyst for development and stability (see Sachs, Reference Sachs2014) and criticized as wasteful, ineffective, or even harmful (see Easterly, Reference Easterly2006; Moyo, Reference Moyo2009). Research finds that well-targeted aid reduces poverty (Alvi & Senbeta, Reference Alvi and Senbeta2012), promotes good governance (Jones & Tarp, Reference Jones and Tarp2016), and fosters resilience in fragile states (Savun & Tirone, Reference Savun and Tirone2011, Reference 84Savun and Tirone2017). Yet other work counters that aid generates dependency (Ouattara, Reference Ouattara2007), entrenches corrupt elites (Morrisson, 2015), and distorts local economies (Economides et al., Reference Economides, Kalyvitis and Philippopoulos2008), producing few sustainable benefits (Easterly, Reference Easterly2003).

This fragmented and mixed evidence creates further confusion as to whether and how aid can impact migration outcomes. What remains clear is that aid produces inconsistent results. Additionally, conservative and nationalist forces have often framed the totality of foreign aid as charity that should be used at home rather than abroad – a sentiment that is often shared by voters (Heinrich et al., Reference Heinrich, Kobayashi and Bryant2016). This has contributed to considerable reductions in foreign aid funding and programming around the world.

1.4 Clarifying the Aid–Migration Nexus with a Conceptual Framework

Given the elevation of strict migration controls that are unlikely to foster long-term results, inconsistent aid effectiveness, and a pause in much of the world’s aid provision, this is an opportune time to reflect systematically on the relationship between foreign aid and migration. Doing so can provide conceptual clarity to scholars, while offering policymakers guidance on building a new foreign aid regime that avoids mistakes of the past.

Foreign aid affects individuals’ migration decisions and behaviors in different ways, depending on the type, purpose, and delivery of aid, as well as the context and the characteristics of potential migrants. The empirical literature hints at this complexity, as studies suggest that the relationship between aid and migration is conditional on aid project type (Lanati & Thiele, Reference Lanati and Thiele2018), the region to which it is directed (Andreas et al., Reference Andreas, Gröger, Heidland and Wellner2023), and the consistency of its delivery (Gamso et al., Reference Gamso, Yuldashev and Lu2021). Yet we have lacked a clear and coherent framework that can help us to identify the main factors and mechanisms involved, evaluate the effectiveness of aid for this purpose, and generate evidence-based recommendations and best practices for designing and implementing coherent and complementary aid and migration policies.

This Element fills the void. Our framework lays out one direct pathway and three indirect pathways by which aid may affect international migration, as well as a feedback loop. This framework is visualized in Figure 1, briefly discussed in the subsequent paragraphs, and detailed in the sections that follow. Crucially, these pathways should not be thought of as proposed hypotheses, but rather as conceptual lenses to guide structured empirical assessments and policy analyses of the aid–migration nexus.

Figure 1

A conceptual framework for explaining the relationships between foreign aid and international migration.

On the far left and right of the illustration are foreign aid and international migration. Each is a complex and multifaceted topic in its own right. Approaching aid in a systematic fashion requires one to reflect on the strategic objectives of donors (Alesina & Dollar, Reference Alesina and Dollar2000), politics in donor countries (Milner & Tingley, Reference Milner and Tingley2010), and the consistency of aid delivery (Hudson & Mosley, Reference Hudson and Mosley2008), among other things. Understanding international migration requires us to consider what leads individuals to seek new lives abroad (Carling, Reference Carling2024), what types of individuals are more and less likely to migrate (Feliciano, Reference Feliciano2005), how individuals decide where to move (Crawley & Hagen-Zanker, Reference Crawley and Hagen-Zanker2019), and what they do when they arrive (Abramitzky et al., Reference Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson2020).

While much more could be said about aid and international migration as stand-alone topics, our purpose is to explore the relationships between them. Our framework does so with attention to several underlying mechanisms, or pathways, by which they are connected. We differentiate direct from indirect pathways. The direct mechanism, which we call the migration aid pathway and connect with a solid line in Figure 1, refers to aid projects specifically designed to encourage or discourage people from leaving their countries of residence. Projects along these lines may attempt to create jobs in areas of migrant sending countries that are prone to emigration, compensate leaders for blocking migrant outflows, or offer controlled paths for immigrants to enter a donor country to fill labor gaps. These sorts of direct aid projects are the focus of Section 3.

Indirect pathways, which are denoted in the figure with dashed lines, offer mediating outcomes that aid projects are designed to affect, which, in turn, impact international migration flows. Our framework offers three such pathways: (1) quality of life (QoL), (2) crisis management, and (3) global politics.

The first indirect pathway, which centers on QoL, begins with the notion that aid can create economic growth (Headey, Reference Headey2008), improve political institutions (Jones & Tarp, Reference Jones and Tarp2016), support clean air and water initiatives (Barkat et al., Reference Barkat, Alsamara and Mimouni2024), and generate other positive impacts on individual and societal well-being in recipient countries. To the extent that aid is effective in achieving QoL improvements, the opportunity costs of an uncertain move to a foreign nation become greater, and so people should be more inclined to stay where they are. Yet a rival explanation offers that improvements in QoL have the opposite effect, providing resources to individuals that they can use to emigrate. Section 4 explores these contrasting narratives further, assessing if and how various dimensions of life quality affect international migration flows, whether positively or negatively.

The second indirect pathway focuses on crisis management. People are often inclined to flee locations that are experiencing crises, such as catastrophic natural disasters (Boustan et al., Reference Boustan, Kahn and Rhode2012), severe economic downturns (Bazillier et al., Reference Bazillier, Magris and Mirza2017), or extreme political violence (Boutton & Carter, Reference Boutton and Carter2014; Garriga & Phillips, Reference Garriga and Phillips2014; Schmeidl, Reference Schmeidl1997). In some cases, aid inflows help to stabilize affected regions in a manner that reduces outflows of people. Yet in other instances aid makes the situation worse, as is widely argued to have occurred in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake (e.g., Katz, Reference Katz2013). Much of that aid was captured by political leaders, thereby doing little to assist disaster relief and even undermining relief efforts by shielding policymakers from the demands of the public (Buss, Reference Buss2015). In this situation, and in others like it, aid is unlikely to reduce emigration and may instead have the opposite effect. Section 5 explores crisis management aid in greater depth, breaking down its components and their impacts on cross-border flows.

The third indirect pathway focuses on global politics. Donors frequently provide aid in hopes of advancing their geopolitical power, with hard power aid supporting the military capacities of recipient countries and soft power aid acting as a diplomatic tool (Blackwill & Harris, Reference Blackwill and Harris2016). Such aid can shrink institutional and cultural distance between donor and recipient nations, which eases migration between them (Berthélemy et al., Reference Berthélemy, Beuran and Maurel2009; Lanati & Venturini, Reference Lanati and Venturini2021). On the other hand, geopolitical aid could foster resentment in donor or recipient countries that leads to heightened migration barriers or discourages the movement of people. Section 6 develops this pathway further.

The framework also offers a feedback loop. This refers to the manners by which international migration, whether prompted by aid or otherwise, affects foreign aid provision. Positive feedback may proceed through lobbying by members of a diaspora, as when Somalians residing in Norway successfully lobbied Norwegian officials to initiate the Special Financing Facility to channel aid to Somalia (Tellander & Horst, Reference Tellander and Horst2019). A negative feedback loop occurs when migrant inflows create a backlash that leads to the empowerment of nationalist political actors who cut aid donations. Crucially, this facet of the framework, which is the focus of Section 7, shows that the relationship between aid and migration is not unidirectional.

1.5 Significance of the Element

Foreign aid is, perhaps, the most widely investigated topic in the field of development studies, with scholars having investigated the motives and interests of donors and recipients, as well as the impacts of aid on various facets of recipients’ economies and societies.Footnote ⁴ It has also ignited vigorous public debate, with advocates supporting additional aid provision and detractors calling for aid funding to be reallocated to donor countries’ domestic priorities (see Prather, Reference Prather2024) – this latter call has been answered most dramatically in the US through the closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (Moynihan & Zuppke, Reference Moynihan and Zuppke2025). International migration is a similarly contentious topic in the academicFootnote ⁵ and policy spheres, with many across the political spectrum calling for restrictions on migrant inflows (Alonso & Claro da Fonseca, Reference Alonso and Claro da Fonseca2012), even as others tout the positive impacts of migration and advocate for fewer barriers to international movement (e.g., Krueger, Reference Krueger2024). Yet when policymakers, scholars, and students have engaged in dialogue on how these two complex concepts affect each other, the lack of conceptual clarity has impeded understanding, knowledge development, and the establishment of useful policy insights.

This Element offers a clarifying framework that should be of value to scholars working on aid, migration, and the intersection of the two, and to policymakers across the political spectrum. It will help researchers to situate their own analyses, whether those be theory building, hypothesis testing, or normative assessments. At the same time, the Element can help policymakers to design and implement aid and migration policies that are coherent, evidence-based, and responsive to the needs and interests of key stakeholders.

1.6 Layout of the Element

Before turning to the framework itself, Section 2 provides essential background on immigration policy and management, highlighting both security-oriented and development-based strategies. The subsequent sections investigate the framework in greater depth. Section 3 focuses on the direct migration aid pathway, Section 4 focuses on the QoL pathway, Section 5 explores the crisis management pathway, Section 6 investigates the global politics pathway, and Section 7 centers on the feedback loop. Section 8 closes the Element by tying together the components of the framework and considering the implications for research and policy.

2.1 Restrictive Approaches

Restrictive migration policy approaches emphasize deterrence, with the goal of reducing migrant arrivals through tighter border enforcement, increased deportations, and the externalization of migration controls to third countries. They are often framed as immediate responses to the threat of migration and linked with public concerns about national sovereignty, increased unemployment, and the loss of control and identity among previously dominant societal groups (Cantat et al., Reference Cantat, Pécoud and Thiollet2025).

Border enforcement is perhaps the most emblematic restrictive measure. Along the US-Mexico border, for example, successive US administrations have invested in walls, surveillance technologies, and expanded patrol capacities in an effort to deter irregular crossings and signal the prioritization of security (Andreas, Reference Andreas2022). In Europe, maritime operations in the Mediterranean, ranging from European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) patrols to coordinated naval missions, aim to intercept boats before they reach European shores (see Kalkman, Reference Kalkman2021). Deportations and detention policies complement these measures, signaling to domestic audiences that unauthorized migration will be met with firm consequences (Wong, Reference Wong2015).

Restrictive strategies increasingly rely on externalization – that is, outsourcing border control to third countries. This includes deals in which destination countries provide funding, equipment, or training to governments in migrant-sending or transit states, with the expectation that they will prevent departures or host displaced populations. Examples range from European support to Mediterranean and North African governments, such as maritime security assistance to Libya, to broader agreements like the EU-Turkey deal, under which Turkey committed to hosting millions of Syrian refugees in exchange for aid transfers (Liguori, Reference Liguori2019).

Restrictive policies are costly, often requiring sustained financial and political investment. Yet evidence of their effectiveness is mixed, with studies suggesting several reasons that they fail to sustainably reduce migration. First, restrictive measures have to go through the policy-legal-implementation funnel in order to have an impact on migration outcomes. By the time these policies are enacted, legislation is passed, regulations are issued, and enforcement is carried out, gaps have diluted their effects (see Czaika and De Haas, Reference Czaika and De Haas2013). Second, restrictive measures do not address the underlying factors leading people to emigrate (e.g., Wong, Reference Wong2015; Castles, Reference Castles2004). With root factors still pushing them to move, migrants react to restrictive policies by following dangerous alternative routes and relying on smugglers, instead of staying in their countries of residence (Fontana, Reference Fontana2022). Third, restrictive strategies raise significant human rights concerns, as they expose migrants to violence, detention in poor conditions, and prolonged uncertainty (see Pécoud & de Guchteneire, Reference Pécoud and de Guchteneire2006). This can make restrictive approaches untenable, as public discomfort with human rights violations leads to policy reversal.

Ultimately, while restrictive approaches remain politically attractive, their capacity to address the underlying drivers of migration is limited. This speaks to the need for alternative or complementary strategies.

2.2 Development-Oriented Approaches

In contrast to deterrence-oriented policies, development-based strategies aim to address the underlying causes of migration by improving the conditions that drive people to leave their home countries. The core assumption is that migration flows are shaped by structural factors, such as poverty, unemployment, political instability, and weak governance, and that reducing these pressures will lessen the incentives for people to migrate. Governments and international organizations have sought to pursue this approach through foreign aid, trade, and foreign investment.

Foreign aid has been the most prominent tool in this category. US administrations have repeatedly directed aid toward Central America with the stated purpose of reducing migration. These programs have intended to promote economic opportunity, strengthen governance, and curb violence in the region (Gerschutz-Bell, Reference Gerschutz-Bell2022). Similarly, the EU has deployed aid through programs such as its Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), channeling billions of euros to projects framed around job creation, border management, and stability in African states (Clemens and Postel, Reference Clemens and Postel2018). Beyond aid, trade and investment initiatives have been promoted as ways to generate employment and improve livelihoods in migrant-sending countries, thereby reducing the economic pressures that fuel emigration. For example, advocates of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) argued that the agreement would create jobs in Mexico, promoting development and curbing irregular migration northward (Skonieczny, Reference Skonieczny2001).

Despite its intuitive appeal, the evidence on development-oriented strategies is mixed. As noted in Section 1, some studies of foreign aid offer evidence for a reducing effect, while others find that aid amplifies international migration or has no discernible effect at all. Likewise, while NAFTA expanded trade and investment flows, it also disrupted small-scale agriculture and contributed to new patterns of labor displacement, intensifying migration pressures in the short run (Hartman, Reference Hartman2010). This migration hump effect underscores the complexity of linking development gains to immediate reductions in emigration.Footnote ⁶ Moreover, the instrumentalization of aid, whereby aid is deployed primarily to serve donor interests in migration control rather than to advance development goals on their own terms, should raise normative concerns, particularly when aid is diverted away from pressing humanitarian priorities to projects narrowly designed to stem migration flows.

Development-oriented approaches therefore occupy an ambivalent space in migration management. They promise longer-term, more humane alternatives to deterrence, but they lack immediate payoff and are empirically uncertain as well as ethically contestable.

2.3 Tensions and Emerging Trends

In practice, governments often blend restrictive and developmental approaches to migration management, yet they operate under conflicting logics: Restrictive strategies define migration as a problem to be contained, with success measured by fewer arrivals and greater deterrence, while developmental strategies treat migration as the outcome of deeper structural drivers and focus on long-term improvements in those areas. When deployed together, these logics may clash. For example, when governments ramp up deportations while simultaneously funding job-creation programs abroad, migrants and recipient-country partners may interpret the latter as insincere, leading to the erosion of trust in aid.

Additionally, restrictive and developmental strategies pull in different directions politically. Border security and deportations provide visible signals to domestic audiences that governments are acting, while developmental approaches are slower, less tangible, and harder to sell, especially to economically struggling voters who see foreign aid as charity (Heinrich et al., Reference Heinrich, Kobayashi and Bryant2016). The result is that development initiatives are often subordinated to security imperatives, with aid redirected toward short-term containment measures, such as funding coast guards, detention centers, or migration enforcement capacity, rather than addressing the underlying drivers of migration.

These tensions are evident in policies such as the EU-Turkey deal, which promised both humanitarian support for refugees in Turkey and stronger border enforcement to reduce irregular crossings into Europe. The deal exemplifies the abovementioned contradictions, offering resources to support migrants closer to their region of origin while simultaneously restricting pathways for onward movement and reinforcing securitized approaches. Likewise, the halting of most US development aid, much of which had been channeled to Central America’s Northern Triangle for the purposes of migration management, even as the US electorate has soured on immigration and the government has leaned heavily into restrictive policies and rhetoric, speaks to the difficulty of selling development as a means to reducing immigration.

2.4 Rethinking Development-Based Migration Policy

The recent shuttering of USAID (Walker et al., Reference Walker, Khurana and Zhang2025), along with less dramatic reductions in foreign aid from other donor countries (Kent, Reference Kent2025), creates a moment of both challenge and opportunity. By many accounts, aid reductions are already having deleterious effects on health and well-being in poor countries (e.g., Houreld & Haroun, Reference 75Houreld and Haroun2025; Stover et al., Reference Stover, Sonneveldt and Tam2025), yet policymakers and scholars now have a chance to rethink aid – which even supporters must admit has been riddled with problems. This rethinking extends to the aid–migration nexus, which has rarely been assessed in systematic terms.

Against this backdrop, the sections to come delve into our framework for understanding the connections between aid and migration. Our hope is that this framework will guide more careful, responsible, and effective approaches to research and policy when a new foreign aid regime emerges.

3.1 Foreign Aid for Border Security

Aid for border security encompasses efforts by donors to help recipient countries manage their national borders. Two subtypes of aid fall into this category. The first is aid for building border management capacity, which seeks to enhance a recipient state’s ability to secure its borders, prevent illegal activity, and manage the cross-border movement of people in a more structured and sustainable manner. The second is aid for border closure. This is typically quid pro quo in nature, where donor countries provide financial or technical assistance and, in exchange, recipient states restrict the departure of migrants. This form of aid is usually reactive, occurring during migration surges, and it is highly sensitive to political dynamics in both donor and recipient countries.

3.2 Foreign Aid for Migration Management

The second category of direct migration aid centers on migration management initiatives in developing countries. These efforts encompass aid for migration services, managing transit migrants, relieving migratory pressure, and return migration services. For example, the US government’s Collaborative Migration Management Strategy, launched in 2021, focuses on stabilizing populations in Central America by expanding lawful migration pathways while promoting regional cooperation on migration management (Seelke & Meyer, Reference Seelke and Meyer2023). Similarly, the EUTF has invested in migration management and facilitated migrant return and reintegration (Bisong, Reference Bisong, Rayp, Ruyssen and Marchand2020).

Such aid can enable better migration governance, reducing irregular migration flows while facilitating safe and orderly movement. Moreover, to the extent that this sort of aid addresses underlying migration pressures, it should have a more sustained impact on emigration than the programs described in Section 3.1. However, migration management aid can come with its own challenges and must be deployed with care to be effective and avoid unintended negative side effects.

The remainder of this section discusses the four abovementioned subcategories of migration management aid. In most cases, these sorts of aid projects are designed to be migration-deterring, but some are intended to be migration-enabling.

3.3 Key Themes, Policy Implications, and Future Research

Several key themes emerge from this section. The first distinguishes aid to manage borders from aid to support the livelihoods of vulnerable populations. While either approach may be effective, the latter is more likely to lead to sustained decreases in emigration, since it addresses the underlying factors that lead people to move abroad. The second theme is that migration aid can be preventive, as when it is deployed to create the conditions for individuals to live full lives in their countries of origin or residence, or reactive, as when aid is provided in the face of migration surges brought about by large-scale crises (e.g., the civil war in Syria). The third theme is about program design. Various factors may enable or impede the effectiveness of migration aid, including corruption and the incorporation of local knowledge, and so aid program designs that incorporate these factors are essential.

As policymakers draw insights from these themes, they should keep in mind that the approaches to migration aid highlighted in this section are not mutually exclusive and can instead be parts of a holistic policy framework. Policymakers that wish to curtail immigration should deploy migration aid to promote employment, public safety, and service provision in order to prevent migrant surges, but so too must they realize that some surges will not be prevented. With this in mind, policymakers should also provide aid for border security capacity in preparation for inevitable upticks in migration. From there, aid to foster and facilitate return migration can be deployed as a means of recovery.

When developing projects, policymakers should adopt a dynamic approach that integrates design and implementation while incorporating feedback loops for continuous learning. This process begins by embedding local knowledge into the design phase, ensuring that projects address the key drivers of migration in a given context. During implementation, adaptive management allows for adjustments based on real-time data and emerging challenges. A feedback loop ensures that lessons learned from ongoing projects inform future design. This iterative approach increases the likelihood that migration aid evolves and improves, adapting to changing conditions for greater long-term impact.

It is also important that we continue developing our knowledge and understanding of migration aid. This section has provided a migration aid typology. The next step is to conduct empirical research to assess the effectiveness of distinct aid approaches. To do so, scholars will need to develop key tools at the macro and micro levels. At the macro level, the need is for precise data on migration aid flows across countries that specifically categorizes aid projects according to the typology. This data can be used in large-N studies to observe if, and to what extent, migration aid of each type affects international migration. At the micro level, focused monitoring and evaluation studies are necessary to assess the effectiveness of individual migration aid programs.

4.1 QoL, International Migration, and Aid Programs

Within the context of human development, QoL is a comprehensive concept that describes levels of individual and community well-being. Models that conceptualize QoL (e.g., Maslow, Reference Maslow1987; Sen, Reference Sen, Chenery and Srinivasan1988) suggest five key components: physical safety, economic security, access to public services, reciprocal social relationships, and fundamental civic rights. This section considers each dimension of QoL, its connection to international migration, and aid-based efforts to improve it.

4.2 Effectiveness of QoL Aid

Understanding the impact of QoL-aid on migration requires tracing a multistep pathway: Aid affects QoL and then changes in QoL influence migration decisions. We have already discussed the QoL factors that influence migration, as well as the aid targeted to address those factors. Next, we consider whether this aid is effective – both in terms of improving QoL and reducing international migration.

4.3 Key Themes and Policy Implications

Several key themes emerge from this analysis. First, QoL is multifaceted, encompassing economic security, physical safety, access to public services, social capital, and civic rights – each of which plays distinct roles in shaping well-being. Second, the effects of QoL factors on emigration are not uniform. Quality of Life factors have distinct influences on people’s decisions, and not all factors have a direct impact. Third, the impact of QoL-oriented aid on migration varies.

The most obvious implication for policymakers is that some sorts of aid are more likely to affect international migration than others, as a byproduct of their impacts on QoL. However, significant questions remain and more work must be done to enhance our understanding. The next step is to conduct a comprehensive empirical analysis. To facilitate that, researchers must develop clearer measures of the individual QoL dimensions – going beyond those that we currently have, which vary in terms of their quality and specificity. These can be used to model the individual relationships between aid, QoL metrics, and international migration for a fine-tuned interpretation of each facet of the QoL typology. These measures can also be combined into a holistic index, which can be leveraged to assess the relationship between aid, QoL in cumulative terms, and migration flows.

Qualitative research can provide complementary insights by uncovering how aid programs are experienced on the ground, how recipients perceive changes in opportunity and security, and how these perceptions translate into decisions about staying or leaving. Interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and project-level case studies can illuminate microlevel mechanisms, including shifts in trust, aspiration, or household strategy. Such evidence will deepen our understanding of how aid affects migration, while also helping to explain why similar aid interventions may yield divergent outcomes across places and populations.

5.1 Crisis Management

A crisis is a sudden, catastrophic event that causes significant disruption, damage, or destruction to communities, infrastructure, the environment, and human lives. Crisis management, which refers to the organization and coordination of resources, responsibilities, and procedures to effectively respond to and mitigate the impacts of such crises, can be divided into four stages: prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery (FitzGerald et al., Reference FitzGerald, Tarrant, Fredriksen and Aitken2016). These stages are detailed in the subsections that follow.

5.2 Crisis Management Aid

Low-income countries tend to have weak government capacity and few resources for crisis management (Jones et al., Reference Jones, Oven, Manyena and Aryal2014), making foreign aid a key source of revenue and expertise. Aid can contribute to crisis management at each of its stages, although giving tends to be highest in the response stage when the public’s attention is at its highest point. Weaver and Krishnan (Reference Weaver and Krishnan2016) report that $106.7 billion in foreign aid was dedicated to crisis relief in the period from 1991 to 2010, with around 66 percent going to emergency response, 22 percent to recovery, and 12 percent to preparedness.Footnote ³²

5.3 Crisis Aid and Migration

We next consider how aid at each stage of crisis management affects migration flows from disaster-affected countries. We synthesize these effects in Table 3 and discuss them in the subsections that follow.

Table 3The crisis aid–migration nexus

Table 3 Long description

The table presents three columns: Crisis Management Stage, Aid Programs and Projects, and International Migration Impact. It outlines how different types of aid interventions at each stage of crisis management influence migration, with effects marked as negative (reducing migration) or positive (increasing migration). Prevention stage aid focuses on strengthening physical, institutional, and social infrastructure to prevent crises. Migration impacts include the creation of jobs and administrative tasks (negative effect on migration), the creation of a sense of safety (negative), and a levee effect (positive), meaning that improved protection may encourage settlement in risk-prone areas, potentially increasing migration later. Preparedness stage aid supports early warning systems, public education, and coordination among key stakeholders. This creates jobs and administrative tasks (negative effect on migration), but also signals that a crisis may be imminent (positive), which can encourage people to migrate preemptively. Response stage aid funds facilities to shelter refugees, provide medical treatment, and evacuate individuals from danger zones. Migration impacts include job creation and administrative tasks (negative), and the development of infrastructure to manage refugee flows (negative). However, aid leakage, in which aid resources are diverted, can give some individuals the means to migrate (positive). Additionally, response efforts may open opportunities abroad (positive), increasing migration. Recovery stage aid is used to rebuild physical, institutional, and social infrastructure to restore normal conditions. This creates jobs and administrative tasks (negative), and develops infrastructure that supports return and reintegration of affected populations (negative), both of which reduce incentives to migrate. Overall, the table shows that aid can both reduce and increase international migration depending on the stage of crisis management and the specific mechanisms involved.

5.4 Key Themes and Policy Implications

Two key themes emerge from our analysis, each with important policy implications. First, while large-scale crises attract significant aid inflows at the response and recovery stages, our analysis showcases the need for a multiphase crisis management approach in which more aid is provided in the prevention and preparation stages. Unfortunately, this is often hard to accomplish given human complacency, the short-term incentive structures of politicians, and political instability and institutional weakness in many developing countries (Birkland & Warnement, Reference Birkland, Warnement, Kapucu and Liou2014). Nevertheless, focusing aid projects on risk reduction and prevention activities in this more comprehensive manner is likely to reduce the negative impacts of catastrophic events as well as the international migrant flows that accompany them. Crucially, aid at these stages should be carefully applied to prevent the levee effect or a signal of impending disaster.

Second, aid projects for crisis management must be designed to adequately align with local conditions, including local norms and values. If projects are not designed appropriately, then they are unlikely to have the intended effects, as we saw in post-tsunami Indonesia. In some cases, they may even exacerbate crisis vulnerability, as illustrated with the levee effect concept.

5.5 Future Research

Going forward, researchers should conduct three sets of empirical analyses to further assess the ways that crisis management mediates the aid–migration nexus. First, scholars should disaggregate foreign aid to distinguish crisis-specific aid from other aid that is routinely leveraged in crisis settings. Do these distinct aid types have similar impacts on the migration decisions of disaster victims and disaster-affected communities? In addition, researchers can disaggregate crisis aid itself according to the four stages of crisis management to clarify how each relates to the international movement of people.

Next, researchers should analyze distinct types of crises and disasters. They can begin by differentiating anthropogenic from natural disasters, and then consider different sorts of crises in each category. Does aid provided in the context of civil wars lead to migration through the same pathways as aid for earthquakes? Do earthquake and hurricane aid follow the same patterns? Teasing these dynamics out should be a priority going forward.

Finally, migration can be disaggregated. For example, urban populations may respond to crises and crisis aid differently than rural populations. By the same token, people close to a foreign border may be more likely to migrate internationally than those at a greater distance. Higher-income individuals may also be more likely to migrate than those with lower incomes, since they have the resources to do so. Researchers should consider various other differentiations as well, including gender, race, and sexual orientation.

6.1 The Geopolitical Interests of States

International relations theory tells us that states prioritize their power and security. This often involves controlling key resources, securing vital territories or trade routes, and shaping international alliances and political systems to protect and promote their strategic priorities (see Flint, Reference Flint2021). States project their geopolitical power by means of hard and soft power tools. Hard power refers to the use of coercion and force through military and economic strength. States may project hard power by maintaining global and regional military presences, imposing economic sanctions, and controlling key resources like oil and gas (Lemke, Reference Lemke and Flemes2010). Soft power is the ability to attract and co-opt through culture, diplomacy, and political influence. It relies on shaping global norms and values through cultural exports and diplomatic efforts rather than direct force (Nye, Jr., Reference Nye1990).

6.2 Geopolitical Aid

States often deploy economic tools in service of their geopolitical objectives and goals (Blackwill & Harris, Reference Blackwill and Harris2016), including foreign aid (Gamso, Reference Gamso, Aggarwal and Ming2025). Geopolitical aid is provided with the specific aim of advancing the donor country’s strategic interests and expanding its influence. While we are not aware of any official statistics or empirical analyses that have quantified the Element and proportion of geopolitically focused aid, there is a sizeable empirical literature connecting foreign aid to donors’ hard and soft power projections (Heidland et al., Reference Heidland, Michael, Schularick and Thiele2025).

Hard power aid seeks to bolster the coercive capabilities of a recipient country to boost its defense and deterrence outcomes in alignment with the donor’s security interests. One major component of hard power aid is the transfer of technology and weapons to create security dependence while strengthening the recipient’s military. These transfers often include fighter jets, missile defense systems, and surveillance technology, alongside the technical knowledge required to operate and maintain these assets. For instance, Western countries have provided Ukraine with billions of dollars in military aid since Russia’s 2022 invasion.Footnote ³³ While this aid supports Ukraine’s defense, it also advances the geopolitical interests of donor states that wish to keep Ukraine under their control while containing Russia.

A second component of hard power aid is capacity building, which focuses on developing the recipient country’s military infrastructure and institutional capabilities. This includes training military personnel, enhancing intelligence systems, and improving operational strategies. To this end, donor countries often send military advisors to the recipient nation or conduct joint exercises with its military. For example, the US has sent hundreds of military advisors to Taiwan in the 2020s to provide training and to support structural reforms (Feng, Reference Feng2023). This aid strengthens Taiwan’s defensive capabilities, but so too does it serve US geopolitical interests by impeding China’s ability to carry out a military campaign that would expand its presence in the Pacific.Footnote ³⁴

Soft power aid focuses on building long-term influence through cultural, educational, and political channels. Soft power aid can support public or private diplomacy. Public diplomacy programs, which seek to improve public perception of the donor country, often take the form of scholarships, cultural exchange opportunities, or language training. For instance, China’s Confucius Institutes at universities around the world enhance its soft power by promoting Chinese language and culture (Li, Reference Li2025). More generally, donors regularly provide aid in hopes of building public support (Blair et al., Reference Blair, Marty and Roessler2022), spreading their social and political norms (Scott & Carter, Reference Scott and Carter2019; Zhang & Huang, Reference Zhang and Huang2023), and even advancing certain religious beliefs (Cooper, Reference Cooper2015).

Private diplomacy aid similarly seeks to improve perceptions of the donor nation, but it is aimed at elites, as opposed to the public. Such aid may take the form of scholarships, training programs, or exchanges for members of the recipient state’s government, military, or business leaders. It could also include direct support for policymakers, powerful families, or political factions, or for institutions or sectors that are aligned with elite interests. These programs foster personal relationships between donor and recipient country elites, potentially aligning recipients’ interests with donors’ geopolitical goals.

6.3 Pathways from Geopolitical Aid to Migration

In this section, we propose the impacts that each type of geopolitical aid has on international migration. This is summarized in Table 4 and detailed in the pages that follow. Crucially, while the independent variable of interest remains foreign aid, its effects on migration often operate indirectly through political and perceptual channels. Geopolitical aid can shape migration both by creating linkages that facilitate movement (through institutional alignment, elite networks, or cultural familiarity) and by provoking reactions that constrain it (through public or elite backlash). These intervening mechanisms, which are rooted in public attitudes, elite calculations, and domestic political responses, mediate the aid–migration relationship, rather than constituting distinct causal forces.

Table 4The geostrategic aid–migration nexus

Table 4 Long description

The table has three columns: Aid Purpose, Aid Projects, and Migration Impact. It distinguishes between hard power and soft power forms of aid and outlines how specific projects influence migration. Two types of hard power projects are listed. First, technology and weapons transfer is associated with increased migration through network formation (positive) and institutional proximity (positive), but may also generate resentment (negative), which can reduce migration. Second, capacity building similarly promotes network formation (positive) and institutional proximity (positive), both of which facilitate migration. Two types of soft power projects are also listed. First, public diplomacy fosters network formation (positive) and cultural proximity (positive), both of which increase migration, but may also produce resentment (negative), which can reduce migration. Second, private diplomacy encourages network formation (positive), institutional and cultural proximity (positive), and recruitment (positive), all of which increase migration. Overall, the table shows that both hard and soft power aid can promote migration by strengthening networks and various forms of proximity, while in some cases generating resentment that may reduce migration.

We begin with hard power aid that transfers technology and weapons or helps to build the recipient’s military capacity. This aid can foster relationships between individuals from donor and recipient countries, as military leaders and personnel collaborate professionally and socialize with one another. These networks could, in turn, facilitate migration between nations (Bagchi, Reference Bagchi2001; Munshi, Reference Munshi2020). Additionally, these sorts of aid projects can reduce institutional distance between countries, as militaries and military adjacent industries align their structures and practices with one another. Heightened institutional proximity should encourage employment-based movement between nations (Belot & Hatton, Reference Belot and Hatton2012), particularly as the skills and experiences of individuals in recipient countries more closely match those demanded by the military bureaucracies of donor nations. In this way, military and security assistance can be seen as integrative mechanisms: forms of aid that bind states together through shared practices, norms, and personnel flows, lowering the social and institutional costs of migration.

Soft power aid can also promote migration. Aid for public diplomacy supports the formation of relationships, as aid workers meet and develop bonds with local people (see Eyben, Reference Eyben2006). These networks can ease the process of migration, as individuals have friends and associates that they can reach out to or rely on as they move from the recipient to the donor country – or vice versa (Boyd, Reference Boyd1989). Likewise, familiarity and warm sentiments toward the donor’s culture and language can encourage and ease bilateral migration (Lanati & Venturini, Reference Lanati and Venturini2021). Private diplomacy can have similar effects, forming networks and fostering closer cultural understandings between elites in donor and recipient nations (see Kassenova, Reference Kassenova2022). Private diplomacy may also lead to labor migration, as it forges institutional proximity (Neumayer, Reference Neumayer2008) while also facilitating talent recruitment at the elite level (see Czaika, Reference Czaika2018). Together, these forms of aid create personal, institutional, and cultural bridges that normalize movement between donor and recipient nations.

However, geopolitical aid can also trigger disintegrative feedback effects that dampen migration by fostering alienation or backlash. On the donor side, resentment may arise when large segments of the population perceive strategic aid to be a misuse of taxpayer money (Prather, Reference Prather2024). While all foreign aid is open to such critiques, assistance deployed for the purposes of building military alliances or funding cultural exchanges for diplomatic gains can be particularly contentious, as citizens question the value of investing significant resources in foreign militaries or in overseas cultural projects against the backdrop of domestic needs (Liu & Shao, Reference Liu and Shao2022). This corresponds to a form of mass-level backlash, where citizens, perceiving overreach abroad, turn inward (see Ketzer, Reference Ketzer2013). This sentiment can become more pronounced if the media or political figures emphasize the disparity between local hardships and the government’s international ambitions. Domestic discontent with international relations often generates a preference for isolationism (Bonifai et al., Reference Bonifai, Rudra, Bulding and Moya2022), including restrictive immigration policies (Kim, Reference Kim2024). A reduction in the number of migrants welcomed or accepted to the donor country is likely to follow, as policymakers align with a disgruntled and isolationist public (Ko & Choi, Reference Ko and Choi2022). This represents a mass backlash channel, in which public opinion pressures elites to enact foreign policy retrenchment, including migration restriction (see Hainmueller & Hopkins, Reference Hainmueller and Hopkins2014).

For example, after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US deployed billions of dollars in strategic aid to stabilize the country and shape its trajectory. This included military aid aimed at ensuring security and influencing political outcomes, as well as substantial reconstruction funds to rebuild infrastructure, support civil society, and promote democratic institutions.Footnote ³⁵ Over time, the prolonged military engagement and its significant financial and human costs sparked backlash within the US (Jacobson, Reference Jacobson2010; Karol & Miguel, Reference Karol and Miguel2007). Critics argued that the immense resources devoted to Iraq should be redirected toward domestic priorities, especially following the 2008 financial crisis (e.g., Stiglitz & Bilmes, Reference Stiglitz and Bilmes2008). Domestic backlash coincided with and contributed to heightened security concerns and xenophobia toward Middle Eastern immigrants in the US, complicating immigration policies (Love, Reference Love2017) and leading to stricter visa requirements and enhanced security screenings for individuals from Iraq and neighboring countries (Epatko, Reference Epatko2011). These factors combined to produce a more scrutinized and cautious approach to the inflow of migrants from the region (Wasem, Reference Wasem2020). This sequence illustrates both mass- and elite-level backlash: popular discontent constrained policymakers, while strategic fatigue prompted foreign policy retrenchment and tighter migration control.

A similar dynamic has followed Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In the aftermath of the invasion, the US and EU began sending large amounts of military aid to Ukraine,Footnote ³⁶ while simultaneously opening their borders to Ukrainian refugees (Faiola et al., Reference Faiola, Noack and Adam2022; Jordan et al., Reference Jordan, Kanno-Youngs and Shear2022). Yet over time public backlash emerged against the policy of supporting Ukraine (Telhami, Reference Telhami2023), with some politicians and media personalities arguing that their respective countries should stay out of the conflict (Dutkiewicz & Stecula, Reference Dutkiewicz and Stecula2022; Pengelly & Borger, Reference Pengelly and Borger2023) and others going so far as to blame Russia’s invasion on Western support for Ukraine (Blake, Reference Blake2022). These sentiments have been accompanied by a pushback against the policies welcoming Ukrainian refugees in Europe (Koc, Reference Koc2024) and immigrants and refugees more generally in the US (Santhanam, Reference Santhanam2024). Here too, the cycle of strategic engagement and domestic fatigue created disintegrative effects, weakening support for both aid and migration.

Foreign aid can also foster negative attitudes in recipient countries toward donors (Blair et al., Reference Blair, Marty and Roessler2022). This can reflect the distributional impacts of aid, as those who are adversely impacted by aid inflows turn against the donor (Tokdemir, Reference Tokdemir2017). It can also reflect feelings that aid is being used to subvert or control the recipient’s politics, economy, or society (Carnegie & Dolan, Reference Carnegie and Dolan2021). This sentiment was evident in Pakistan, where US counterterrorism and stabilization aid was often seen by locals as a way for the US to exert undue influence (Haqqani, Reference Haqqani2013). Such resentments could offset whatever migration-stimulating effects aid produces, while generating hostility toward migrants from the donor country. Indeed, anti-American sentiment has been pervasive in Pakistan, likely stemming at least in part from anger against perceived US interference in the country’s politics and society (Pew Research Center, 2012). These dynamics capture how aid can activate disintegrative mechanisms abroad, eroding trust and inflaming nationalism in ways that diminish migration.

In addition, hard power aid can stimulate emigration when it is provided to authoritarian leaders that use it to consolidate power – driving political, religious, and ethnic minorities out. For example, US provision of military and counterterrorism aid in Central Asia after 9/11 was used by the region’s authoritarian leaders to target their domestic political opponents (Cooley & Heathershaw, Reference Cooley and Heathershaw2017), leading opposition figures and ethnic minorities to seek exit. Similarly, military aid provided to the Mubarak regime in Egypt was used in a manner that pushed out the regime’s opponents (Brownlee Reference Brownlee2012).

In sum, geopolitical aid operates through both integrative and disintegrative mechanisms. Integrative channels, such as elite linkages, institutional alignment, and cultural familiarity, tend to increase bilateral migration, while disintegrative channels rooted in mass or elite backlash can suppress it. The balance between these forces likely depends on domestic political conditions, perceptions of fairness or overreach, and the broader geopolitical context.

6.4 Future Research and Policy Implications

Our analysis has weaved together several strands of literature to connect the dots between geopolitical aid and international migration. Future research should test these relationships empirically. If connections are found to exist, then researchers should scrutinize the underlying mechanisms that we have offered to assess their validity. Scholars that specialize in qualitative research are especially well-suited to this latter effort.

For policymakers, the challenge will be balancing strategic objectives with migration management when deploying geopolitical aid. Our analysis suggests that aid provided for this purpose will primarily have a migration-enabling effect, meaning that policymakers need to carefully consider when and how to use aid in contexts where increased migration might generate domestic backlash or strain immigration systems. In cases where governments are seeking to decrease immigration rates, alternative geoeconomic tools such as trade agreements or investment partnerships might achieve similar strategic outcomes without stimulating international movement.

7.1 Diasporas and Foreign Aid

Diasporas contribute to their host societies by providing diverse skills, filling critical labor market gaps, and fostering cultural richness. In many advanced economies, they play key roles in technology, healthcare, academia, and entrepreneurship, driving innovation and economic growth (see Saxenian, Reference Saxenian2006). Moreover, the unique perspectives they offer enrich the social fabric of host nations, enhancing vibrancy and global appeal (Horst & Olsen, Reference Horst and Olsen2021).

Simultaneously, they maintain strong ties with their countries of origin, channeling various forms of investment and knowledge back home (Kleist, Reference Kleist2008; Wickramasekara, Reference Wickramasekara and Triandafyllidou2022). Remittances and the transference of skills through return migration have received particular attention (e.g., Galstyan & Ambrosini, Reference Galstyan and Ambrosini2023; Khan & Merritt, Reference Khan and Merritt2020; Poirine & Dropsy, Reference Poirine and Dropsy2019), but diaspora communities can also support home country development through their influence over foreign aid (Brinkerhoff, Reference Brinkerhoff, Picard, Groelsema and Buss2008).

There are at least two ways in which diaspora communities affect aid. The first is by providing private aid directly. Many members of the diaspora engage in philanthropic efforts, funding education, healthcare, and disaster recovery initiatives in their home countries. For example, Afsal and Reshmi (Reference Afsal and Reshmi2023) explore philanthropic giving from members of India’s diaspora community in the Persian Gulf region.Footnote ³⁷

Beyond direct financial contributions, diasporas often advocate for their home countries within the political systems of their host nations (Bermeo & Leblang, Reference Bermeo and Leblang2015), lobbying for increased ODA, military assistance, or other support. For example, as noted in Section 1, the Somali diaspora in Norway has been credited with Norway’s establishment of a donor trust fund to Somalia (Tellander & Horst, Reference Tellander and Horst2019). Likewise, lobbying efforts by the Armenian diaspora in the US have led Armenia to receive more aid and Azerbaijan to receive less (Zarifian, Reference Zarifian2014).

While the examples here showcase diasporas that have bolstered giving to their home countries, this may not be reflective of a wider trend. Aid stemming from the efforts of diaspora communities could have a substitution effect, whereby donors decrease other support to the diaspora’s home country because they perceive that needs are already being met through diaspora-induced aid. It is also important to note that not all diaspora communities attempt to lobby or are successful in the efforts that they do undertake (Prasad & Savatic, Reference Prasad and Savaic2023) – not least of all because not all migrants can vote in host countries.

7.2 Positive and Negative Feedback Loops

Diaspora communities, by advocating for or directly contributing to aid efforts, can affect the flow of resources from their countries of residence to their countries of origin. This aid may be used to bolster human development, disaster management, and the geopolitical objectives of donors. As we have discussed in prior sections, aid directed toward these areas can impact international migration. Thus, migration affects aid flows and these aid flows then influence further migration, forming an ongoing cycle. This feedback loop highlights the interconnectedness of migration and foreign aid, where each has the potential to shape and reinforce the other over time.Footnote ³⁸

Feedback loops can be positive or negative and this one is no different. A positive feedback loop drives a system further in the same direction, as occurs when migration leads to increases in foreign aid and that aid then encourages further migration. For example, diaspora-driven development aid improves educational outcomes, builds roads and bridges, and raises household income that can meaningfully increase residents’ capacities for international mobility, as they become more informed, gain access to new locations of opportunity, and obtain the material means to travel. Network dynamics will lead many of those that do emigrate to settle in the donor countries where their diaspora communities are located. The consequent expansion of the diaspora further reinforces the cycle.

Alternatively, the feedback loop could be negative, such that international migration is stabilized or reduced as a result of diaspora aid. For example, aid that promotes political development by dampening corruption and enhancing political representativeness should discourage migrant outflows as people feel more satisfied where they are. Likewise, diaspora aid in the aftermath of a major crisis could fund reconstruction that allows people to return to their homes. Such negative feedback loops create a self-correcting effect on international migration (Jolivet, Reference IJolivet2015).

In some cases, diaspora aid may initially increase migration, in keeping with a positive feedback loop, before stabilizing it over time in the fashion of a negative feedback loop. For example, public diplomacy aid provided to improve relations between the diaspora group’s home and host countries could lead to increases in bilateral migration as recipients become more acculturated to the donor’s language and culture, constituting a positive feedback loop. Yet a backlash could ensue over time, as recipients sour on what they believe are efforts to infringe on national sovereignty and identity. As backlash sets in, migration between donor and recipient countries may decline, amounting to a negative feedback loop. Such double feedback loops can vary across time and space, which helps to explain the rise and fall of migration patterns for particular groups (De Haas, Reference De Haas2010).

7.3 Key Themes, Policy Implications, and Future Research

Through direct financial contributions and by lobbying for ODA and other forms of support, diasporas can significantly affect the foreign aid landscape. At the same time, international migration can generate countervailing political pressures within donor countries, as rising immigration sometimes fuels populist or isolationist movements that call for reductions in aid. The result is that migration can influence aid in two competing ways: through expansive feedback that increases aid via diaspora mobilization and through restrictive feedback that decreases aid via backlash politics. Which feedback dominates will depend on contextual factors, such as partisan alignment, media framing of migration, and broader public attitudes toward globalization.

By coordinating with diaspora communities, policymakers can shape these feedback loops to align with broader social and economic objectives. For instance, host country governments can collaborate with diaspora groups to send aid that encourages migration when labor shortages or demographic challenges are present. Conversely, in contexts where slowing immigration is preferable – such as during migration surges that strain resources – policymakers can work with diaspora communities to direct aid toward initiatives that are likely to slow migration from recipient countries.

Future research should explore the migration–aid–migration cycle further to determine when and how feedback loops occur. In doing so, scholars should conduct longitudinal studies to better understand their dynamic nature – that is, how they may shift from positive (negative) to negative (positive) over time. Future research should also examine how diaspora-driven and backlash-driven feedback loops intersect with donor country dynamics, identifying the political and economic conditions under which each mechanism prevails.

8.1 Framework Boundaries and Extensions

This Element has introduced and detailed a conceptual framework for understanding the complex and multifaceted relationship between foreign aid and international migration. It proposes one direct pathway (migration aid) and three indirect pathways (QoL, crisis management, and global politics) by which aid impacts migration, as well as a feedback loop pathway by which migration affects aid. We believe that this analysis offers a holistic assessment of the aid–migration nexus and that the pathways are comprehensively exhaustive.

That having been said, there are at least two important issues that fall outside the scope of our analysis. First, the number of cross-border migrants that are (or could be) compelled to move or deterred from doing so by foreign aid is small as a share of the total global movement of people. They are primarily moving from low- and middle-income countries in response to push or pull factors that could be stimulated by aid. While this may be a large group of people in numerical terms, it is just a sliver of the many individuals that move between and within countries. Second, our focus on foreign aid means that the multitude of other factors that contribute to the international movement of people is largely outside the scope of this Element. Even if we limit the discussion to cross-border economic transfers, the roles of trade, foreign investment, and remittances are not considered.

We believe that the framework could be applied to the internal movement of people within countries, as funds from foreign aid donors and national governments probably affect urbanization rates, movement across subnational borders, and other facets of within-country migration. While the model might need to be tweaked in some regards, its foundational principles and core pathways are generally applicable (see Cattaneo et al., Reference Cattaneo, Christiaensen, Rutkowski and Cullen2022). Likewise, the same sort of exercise that we have undertaken could be carried out to systematically assess the trade–migration or remittances–migration nexuses.

A larger challenge is the changing policy landscape. The liberal international order that underpinned the expansions of aid and migration has been eroding. In many Western donor countries, nationalist governments have curtailed development budgets and tightened migration controls, exemplified most starkly by the suspension of USAID in 2025. At the same time, emerging and nontraditional donors such as China, India, Brazil, and several Gulf states have expanded their development engagement. These new actors operate according to different logics of conditionality and political alignment, reflecting how the goals, norms, and institutional architectures of aid are evolving in a postliberal era of global politics. We hope that the analysis provided in this Element will help policymakers in this new aid era to avoid some of the mistakes that characterized the previous one.

8.2 Key Themes and Policy Implications

Several key themes and policy implications emerge from our analysis, corresponding both to individual components of the framework and to the framework as a whole. Component-specific takeaways have been highlighted in the preceding sections, so we focus here on three overarching themes that stand out.

First, while policymakers have tended to focus on the potential for aid to reduce international migration through its impacts on QoL, our analysis reveals several additional pathways. Moreover, within each pathway, there are multiple potential relationships between aid and migration, with some positive and others negative. This speaks to the complex nature of the aid–migration nexus, but it also offers a host of avenues by which policymakers can leverage aid to manage migration flows.

Second, aid for migration management may be deployed proactively to prevent migration surges or reactively when surges are already underway. Proactive strategies seek to improve livelihoods, stability, and resilience in aid-recipient countries, supporting development outcomes while alleviating push factors that would otherwise encourage migrant outflows. In contrast, reactive strategies seek to constrain the movement of people or to mitigate the impacts of crises already underway. Such efforts, while at times politically expedient, do little to address the root causes of migration.

Third, policy design can enhance or weaken aid effectiveness, with implications for international migration. Aid projects that are designed and implemented in coordination with local stakeholders are far more likely to achieve meaningful results than those that are not. Learning and adjusting in light of earlier aid efforts is also crucial to improving aid policy design over time.

8.3 Avenues for Future Research

The framework developed in this Element provides a basis for theorizing how different types of aid operate through distinct causal pathways to shape migration outcomes. Advancing this framework will require studies that unpack the mechanisms within and across categories, specify the conditions under which different effects occur, and examine how feedback loops evolve over time. Greater theoretical precision will allow researchers to move beyond general claims that aid affects (or does not affect) migration toward a more systematic understanding of when, how, and for whom such effects arise.

Empirical research should begin by quantifying aid flows across the categories identified here: migration, QoL, crisis, and geostrategic. Understanding the proportions of aid allocated to each type and how these proportions vary across regions and over time will provide critical data for further analyses. The next step is to begin testing of the proposed relationships. At the macro level, large-scale analyses using tools such as Structural Equation Modeling or Complex Adaptive Systems can help model the framework as a whole, allowing researchers to examine the collective influence of various aid types on migration patterns. At the meso level, researchers could develop indices that classify aid projects into our broader categories, which can then be used to evaluate the impacts of specific aid types on migration trends.

At the micro and meso levels, qualitative methods can play equally important roles. Comparative case studies, fieldwork, and elite interviews can illuminate how aid projects are designed, perceived, and implemented in ways that shape migration incentives. For example, process tracing can uncover how a specific aid intervention in agriculture or education changes migration aspirations over time, while ethnographic work can reveal how recipient communities interpret and respond to donor priorities. Similarly, discourse and content analyses of donor communications, NGO reports, or media coverage can shed light on how aid and migration are framed in public and policy debates.

Empirical researchers may also wish to conduct region-specific studies – either to understand regions on their own terms or for comparative purposes. For example, aid may have different sorts of effects on emigration from the MENA region than from South and Central America, owing to distinct political, economic, and cultural conditions. Paired or nested case studies could help reveal the mechanisms underlying these regional differences, identifying how institutional capacity, political culture, or donor–recipient relations mediate the effects of aid on migration. Conditioning variables could also be studied in a large-N context by considering whether different aid types amplify or mitigate one another’s effects on migration, or how institutions in donor or recipient countries moderate relationships between aid and migration.

Additionally, future studies should consider how evolving aid architectures influence these dynamics. The growing roles of nontraditional donors, private foundations, and multilateral initiatives may not fundamentally change the mechanisms linking aid and migration, but they do alter the context in which those mechanisms operate. Qualitative research can be especially valuable in tracing how these new actors negotiate legitimacy, pursue partnerships, and shape perceptions of aid effectiveness in local contexts. Exploring how emerging configurations intersect with established pathways can help ensure that conceptual models of the aid–migration nexus remain relevant in a rapidly changing global system.

Beyond empirical inquiries, further refinements to the conceptual framework could be developed. These may include more detailed explanations for the mechanisms corresponding to each pathway or theorizing further about the factors that determine whether feedback loops are negative or positive. These efforts can offer still more conceptual clarity to the field, while unlocking additional empirical questions in the process.

8.4 Final Thoughts

In this Element, we have provided structure to a fragmented literature by creating a conceptual framework for understanding the intricate relationship between foreign aid and international migration. Our framework offers much-needed theoretical clarity and serves as a practical tool for both researchers and policymakers. For scholars, it provides a roadmap for conducting empirical analyses that can test, refine, and expand the relationships we have outlined. For policymakers, it offers a structured approach to designing aid interventions that are effective, yet sensitive to the complex and contextual dynamics of migration.

Our framework is a starting point, not a definitive conclusion. The aid–migration nexus is inherently dynamic, influenced by shifting geopolitical landscapes, the evolving climate crisis, and the changing aspirations of individuals and communities worldwide. The global aid architecture itself is also in flux: Traditional donors face fiscal pressures and domestic political constraints that have narrowed their commitments, even as new and nonstate actors are expanding their roles. These shifts make it all the more vital to understand the mechanisms linking aid and migration, as well as how those mechanisms adapt as the system evolves.

We urge researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders to take up this framework, challenge it, refine it, and expand upon it to design aid strategies that are adaptive, forward-thinking, and attuned to the realities of migration drivers. Together, we can create a more integrated understanding of the aid–migration nexus that informs better policy, fosters global stability, and improves the lives of millions.