Germany’s ‘whole-of-government’ approach to linking migration and development cooperation

Introduction

Since 2015, migration has become a central and contested issue within Germany’s development cooperation, reshaping priorities, instruments and inter-ministerial relations. This chapter examines how Germany has sought to link migration and development through a whole-of-government approach, focusing on the interaction between the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), the Federal Foreign Office (AA), and key implementing actors such as GIZ. In this chapter, a whole-of-government approach is understood as the coordinated involvement of multiple ministries and agencies with distinct mandates in the design and implementation of migrationrelated policies, without the creation of a single unified authority or strategy.

Rather than treating migration as a single policy field, the chapter traces how migration objectives have been integrated into German development cooperation across distinct but interlinked areas: migration partnerships, return and reintegration, and labour migration. It analyses how coordination has evolved in practice, where tensions persist between development-oriented and control-driven logics, and how German actors have adapted institutionally to sustained political pressure around migration. The German case illustrates both the potential and the limits of whole-of-government approaches in reconciling long-term development objectives with short-term migration management demands.