GOVERNANCE DEFICITS AND IRREGULAR MIGRATION PATHWAYS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INDIA AND SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA WITH EMPHASIS ON YOUTH VULNERABILITY AND POLICY RESPONSES

Authors : Rachael Osioyemi Olaiya, Shreeya Gupta, Arya Rani, Nithin Reddy

Abstract :

India and Nigeria are two of the world’s largest developing economies, both marked by young, fast-growing populations and fundamental youth unemployment, prompting governments to create entrepreneurship programmes. Despite these programmes, most businesses remain informal. Roughly 80% of Nigerian SMEs fail within five years, and nearly 90% of India’s youth workforce is informally employed. Output-focused evaluations fail to capture the implementation gap between formal policy and its on-the-ground effectiveness. This paper evaluates why youth entrepreneurship policies in India and Nigeria consistently fail to produce sustainable outcomes, and what both countries can learn from economies that have successfully closed this gap. Adopting a qualitative-comparative case study approach, the paper examines India and Nigeria as primary cases benchmarked against South Korea and Rwanda. Drawing on national MSME surveys, ILOSTAT, World Bank Enterprise Survey, GEM India, and government program evaluations, the paper applies Stam’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Framework as the analytical lens across all four countries. The analysis reveals that India and Nigeria’s ecosystems remain weak across formal institutions, finance, infrastructure, and intermediate organisations, reflecting a governance approach that controls outcomes rather than building conditions required by businesses to grow and formalise. South Korea’s unified SME Ministry, collateral-free policy funds, alongside Rwanda’s regulatory reforms, demonstrate that closing this gap requires deliberate ecosystem governance rather than direct financial interjection. The paper concludes that high failure rates reflect design flaws in ecosystems built for the formalized urban minority, not low entrepreneurial ambition, and calls for development policy to measure success by accessible infrastructure rather than loan disbursement volume.

Keywords:
Youth Entrepreneurship, Implementation Gap, Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Informality, Ecosystem Governance, India, Nigeria

Authors : Saba Suhail Khan , Ankita Hansda , Fathima Thamanna PP , Barnali Roy

Abstract

Internationalisation of higher education has become increasingly connected with international student mobility, migration and labour-market policy. This study examines how Germany and the Netherlands responded to these developments. Although both countries operate within a shared European higher education and migration environment, their policy responses have developed in different directions. A similar system design was used to compare these two cases. The analysis draws on a corpus of 37 legislative, parliamentary and policy documents and combines descriptive statistics, text-as-data analysis and critical discourse analysis based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework. Policy documents were examined across four broad policy orientations; attraction, management, retention and labour and fourteen related policy instruments. The comparison shows that Germany has developed a comparatively expansive approach to internationalisation. International students are increasingly viewed not only as participants in higher education but also as a potential source of skilled labour in response to demographic change and workforce shortages. The Netherlands has followed a more managed and selective approach. While the academic and economic value of internationalisation continues to be recognised, greater attention has been given to housing pressures, institutional capacity, language and access for domestic students. These differences suggest that the policy divide cannot be reduced to a simple distinction between open and restrictive systems. Instead, national responses reflect different combinations of labour-market needs, demographic pressures, institutional capacity and domestic social priorities. The study highlights the need for internationalisation policies that balance educational openness with sustainable institutional capacity, labour-market needs and broader social considerations.

Keywords:
Transnational Educational Migration, International Student Mobility, Internationalisation of Higher Education, Comparative Policy Analysis, Policy Divergence, Policy Discourse, Germany, The Netherlands.

Authors : Akshita Bhatt , Ishika Agrawal , Ishita Tripathi , Ishita Khandelwal , Joel Kimanthi

Abstract

Digitalisation is often presented as a way to make public-service delivery more efficient, but greater administrative efficiency does not necessarily mean lower costs for citizens. This paper examines how digital public services can contribute to socioeconomic exclusion through the redistribution of access and transaction costs. Using secondary evidence from India and Kenya, the paper examines how digital requirements interact with unequal resources, accessibility conditions and available support. Across the evidence, barriers involving connectivity, literacy, documentation, authentication and service design can create additional costs for citizens in the form of time, expenditure, effort, repeated attempts and reliance on others. These burdens are uneven and can affect whether access is independent, assisted, burdened or results in exclusion. The evidence differs across the two countries, but in both settings digitalisation can change where the work and costs involved in accessing a service are located. Assessing digital governance therefore requires looking at citizen-side burdens alongside administrative efficiency.

Keywords:
digital governance; digital exclusion; transaction costs; administrative burden; accessibility; socioeconomic inequality