Migration management aid has increased exponentially since 2016, often funding repression in the process. Drawing on global datasets and in-depth country case studies of Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan, Kelsey P. Norman and Nicholas R. Micinski present a theoretical framework for this form of foreign assistance. This study traces the historical roots and evolution of migration management aid, explaining its politics, its impact on governance, and its long-lasting, deleterious effects on migrants, refugees, and citizens alike. While wealthy countries tout migration management aid as a way of increasing development and stopping emigration from the Global South, Aiding Autocrats exposes how this type of assistance funds authoritarianism by perpetuating colonial systems of extraction and repression and allowing local elites to leverage aid for their own purposes. Aiding Autocrats is an essential contribution to scholarship on migration management, foreign aid, development, and democratization as well as Middle Eastern, African, and European politics.

Authors

Kelsey Norman is Fellow for the Middle East and Director of the Women’s Rights, Human Rights, and Refugees program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. She is the author of Reluctant Reception: Refugees, Migration, and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa (2020).

Nick Micinski is Assistant Professor in the School of International Service at American University. He is the author of two other books: Delegating Responsibility: International Cooperation on Migration in the European Union (2022) and UN Global Compacts: Governing Migrants and Refugees (2021).

Schedule

4:30- 4:40 pm   Welcome & introduction

4:40-5:30 pm   Book Talk: Kelsey Norman and Nicholas Micinski

5:30-6:30 pm   Q&A

Date and time

November 12th, 2026
4:30pm 6:30pm

Place

Graduate Center CUNY
Ralph Bunche Institute, Suite 5203
365 Fifth Avenue