From Labour Exit to Capital Inflow: A Migration–Enterprise Distortion Framework for The Gambia

Irregular migration from low-income economies has traditionally been analysed through humanitarian, labour market, security, or demographic perspectives. While these approaches have generated valuable insights, they tend to marginalise the role of domestic enterprise systems and understate the economic restructuring effects of sustained labour exit. This paper advances an enterprise-centred reconceptualization of irregular migration by examining how prolonged outflows of economically active populations interact with weakly productive capital inflows to distort domestic enterprise formation, continuity, and growth. Using The Gambia as an illustrative case, the study develops a desk-based analytical model—the Migration–Enterprise Distortion Framework (MEDF)—to explain why persistently high migration intensity coexists with fragile enterprise ecosystems despite substantial remittance inflows. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature from migration studies, development economics, and international business, the paper demonstrates that the central constraint is not migration itself, but the absence of institutional mechanisms capable of converting migratory labour, financial transfers, skills, and transnational networks into scalable and sustainable enterprise activity. The study contributes theoretically by bridging two bodies of scholarship that are often treated separately: migration analysis and enterprise development. It further contributes practically by identifying policy, governance, and managerial mechanisms relevant to small, migration-dependent economies seeking to transform migration from a survival strategy into a productive development lever. By repositioning irregular migration as a systemic enterprise challenge rather than a singular social problem, the paper offers a transferable analytical lens applicable beyond the Gambian context.