Policy coherence for migration and development

Policy coherence for development (PCD) has become a major theme on the global development agenda, notably in connection with the post-2015 development agenda. A new special issue of the European Journal of Development Research takes issue with coherence in a variety of development policy fields. Senior researcher Ninna Nyberg Sørensen's contribution is an article on the contradictions between between making migration work for development and using development policy to avoid unwanted migration.

The article reflects on these contradictions in the light of Danish policy debate and practice and brings forward the following two arguments:

• First, that although policy coherence in the migration-development field perhaps always was unrealistic, a certain degree of incoherence might - at least until recently - have safeguarded development budgets from being used for migration control purposes.
• Second, that reluctance to incorporate migration concerns in 'classic' development activities throughout the 2000s represents a missed opportunity.