Three questions with Anna Knoll on Germany’s approach to the migration-development nexus

Three questions to Anna Knoll, Head of the Migration and Mobility Team at the European Centre for Development Policy Management and author of the German chapter in the anthology “Linking Migration and Development: European Experiences and Policy Lessons for Sweden". According to her what seems to have mattered in the German case is the combination of clear institutional responsibilities and sustained coordination across ministries and implementing actors.

Question 1: Your research analyses Germany’s “whole-of-government” approach to linking migration and development cooperation. From an operational standpoint, what institutional mechanisms and inter-ministerial relations have proven most effective at managing the implementation of migration-related policies, without the creation of a single unified authority or strategy?

Germany's experience suggests that a whole-of-government approach is less about creating perfect coherence than about managing differences between actors with distinct mandates, priorities and time horizons. Development, interior, foreign policy and labour-market actors often approach migration from different perspectives, and these differences do not disappear through coordination.

 What seems to have mattered in the German case is the combination of clear institutional responsibilities and sustained coordination across ministries and implementing actors. Rather than creating a single migration-development authority or strategy, Germany relied on existing institutions and gradually integrated migration objectives into their work. The broad migration portfolio of BMZ* also played an important role, as it provided flexibility to engage with migration issues through different entry points and to embed migration-related objectives within wider partnership frameworks. The result is not a fully coherent system, but a governance arrangement that has been able to accommodate and negotiate competing objectives over time.

Question 2: The anthology notes a challenge of balancing long-term structural development targets with migration management priorities which can be measured with an immediate effect. What can we learn from Germany’s approach in aligning national and geopolitical priorities, so these dual objectives can successfully reinforce one another?

Germany's experience suggests that migration and development objectives are most likely to reinforce each other when migration is embedded within broader partnership frameworks rather than treated as a stand-alone policy objective. In practice, this has meant linking migration cooperation to skills development, employment, reintegration support and institutional cooperation, creating opportunities to address both development and migration-related goals through the same partnerships.

What appears to have mattered in the German case is not the absence of tensions, but the ability to manage them. Different actors often pursue different priorities, and tensions can emerge between long-term development goals, short-term migration-management pressures, labour market needs and broader foreign policy considerations. Rather than seeking to eliminate these differences, Germany's approach has been to bring them together within broader partnership frameworks and to look for areas where objectives can be aligned or mutually reinforcing.

At the same time, assessing whether these synergies materialise in practice remains challenging. While project-level results, such as mobility pathways created, reintegration support delivered or institutional capacities strengthened, can often be demonstrated, broader effects on migration dynamics and long-term development outcomes are much harder to assess. This is also why it is important that development objectives remain meaningful in their own right. If they become subordinate to short-term migration-management goals, there is a risk of weakening trust, policy coherence and the credibility of cooperation with partner countries.

Question 3: Germany has tracked labour migration as development instrument, a so called the “triple win” narrative. What is the major lesson learned on how targeted labour and/or educational schemes contribute directly to cooperation on return and readmission?

In the German case, targeted labour mobility and educational schemes have contributed to a broader and more balanced partnership offer to third countries. By combining skills development, training, institutional cooperation and regular mobility pathways, they have broadened migration cooperation beyond return and readmission.

Their contribution is therefore best understood as indirect. Rather than serving as a direct instrument for securing return and readmission cooperation, these schemes help build longer-term relationships and broaden the framework within which sensitive migration issues, including return and readmission, can be addressed.

*BMZ is the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.