Using development assistance to deter migration has become integral to the U.S. approach to Central America, where conditions see hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants fleeing their home countries each year for the United States.
But the U.S. is not the first to consider this approach. The European Union has spent billions of euros attempting to address “the root causes of migration” in countries where high numbers of migrants to Europe come from. Efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of the spending in stemming the flow of migrants are ongoing.
Devex spoke with Camille Le Coz at the Migration Policy Institute and Sarah Blodgett Bermeo of Duke University to discuss what the U.S. can learn from Europe’s approach.