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In recent years, the European Union (EU) and other donors have increasingly instrumentalised their development cooperation to meet their own domestic migration policy goals, under the assumption that different development interventions—such as building climate resilience – may result in less outward migration from the recipient country. However, it is not yet understood how increased climate resilience would influence individual migration aspirations and capabilities. We conducted 32 in-depth interviews (IDI) and eight focus group discussions (FGD) with beneficiaries of the EU RESET Plus climate-resilience building project in southern Ethiopia. Half of the respondents are adult direct beneficiaries, and the other half are indirect beneficiaries (youths 17–24 years old). By applying a modified aspirations-capabilities framework, we extended the migration-development nexus to climate change and climate-resilience building. We found that climate change worsened perceived conditions and prospects for the future, while the development intervention mostly reinforced already emerging migration aspirations. By improving agricultural output in the context of climate variability, the RESET Plus project contributed to supporting people who wanted to stay to actually be able to do so but also encouraging those wanting to leave by slightly increasing migration capabilities.

ABSTRACTThis article introduces a new analytical framework - EU Normative Performance- to examine the European Union’s (EU) policy towards autocratic regimes in its wider Eastern neighbourhood. Drawing on critical theory and the writings of Jürgen Habermas, EU Normative Performance does not define measures of a (cost-) efficient conduct of foreign policy, but develops benchmarks of an ideal-type emancipatory policy constrained by normative principles (Normative Performance as output) and derived from undistorted argumentative reasoning (Normative Performance as a process). The case study assesses the EU’s response to the Andijon massacre in Uzbekistan in May 2005.

The article analyses the regional approach in the Eastern Partnership (EaP). It is argued that the EaP is a political region-building project, which has entailed the construction of the EaP region as a political and economic periphery based on a process of assimilating the EaP countries to EU norms and standards. The assimilation project has, however, failed to yield significant success. The article explores the potential (and perhaps by now the missed opportunity) to adopt a more emancipatoryapproach to the region, including the strengthening of political and economic cooperation and infrastructure links between the EaP countries to reduce their dependence on Russia. But the outlook is bleak: after a decade of the EU's and Russia's region-building projects competing (with neither power being particularly successful in the attempt to assimilate ‘its region’), the region and its states are likely to be fragmented into a multiplicity of territories which are set to develop into de facto dependencies of either Russia or the EU/ the West.

The article analyses the regional approach in the Eastern Partnership (EaP). It is argued that the EaP is a political region-building project, which has entailed the construction of the EaP region as a political and economic periphery based on a process of assimilating the EaP countries to EU norms and standards. The assimilation project has, however, failed to yield significant success. The article explores the potential (and perhaps by now the missed opportunity) to adopt a more emancipatoryapproach to the region, including the strengthening of political and economic cooperation and infrastructure links between the EaP countries to reduce their dependence on Russia. But the outlook is bleak: after a decade of the EU’s and Russia’s region-building projects competing (with neither power being particularly successful in the attempt to assimilate ‘its region’), the region and its states are likely to be fragmented into a multiplicity of territories which are set to develop into de facto dependencies of either Russia or the EU/the West.