Examining the ‘developmentalisation’ of humanitarian response: the politics of migration and development in Tunisia

Since 2011, political liberalisation in Tunisia has created opportunities for reform in the country’s mobility policy regime. It has also become a small but important player in the international ‘humanitarian–development nexus’, which seeks to ‘better protect and assist refugees and support host countries and communities’. However, this article finds that institutional change in the country’s approach to managing mixed migratory flows has not materialised. This is linked to political incentives, including the regional security environment and the influence of Western foreign policy partners, primarily European states and the European Union. This institutional and political context, I argue, has limited efforts to offer better protections and improve the long-run development outlooks of people on the move. Programming in the humanitarian–development nexus construes the lives and livelihoods of refugees and migrants as a product of technical interventions and individual actions, without an adequate consideration of the political and institutional realignments that are necessary to create a meaningful and sustainable impact on those targeted as beneficiaries.