'High value' migration and complicity in underdevelopment and corruption in the global south : receiving from the attic.

Abstract

Through a focus on the ‘High Value Migrants’ programme of the United Kingdom, this article directs attention to how commercial migration laws and policies of developed countries could impact negatively on the global south. Drawing mainly on insights from criminology and development studies, it investigates how the commercial migration laws and policies, specifically the aspects that deal with encouraging or attracting ‘high-value’ foreign entrepreneurs and investors hold out the state as potentially complicit in corruption and underdevelopment in the global south. There is an important need to address the implicated migration laws and policies as a critical and integral part of the international efforts to combat corruption and promote peace and development in the global south. Reform of the implicated laws and policies is in the long term interest of all stakeholders.