The linkage of development cooperation with migration policies has been promoted widely by international organizations from 2000 onwards. This paper analyses the factors that have prompted and impeded a reorientation of the dominant migration policy-frame within the EU towards the realization of a migration– development nexus. It is argued that external events such as the international debate on the migration–development nexus and the external shocks provoked by the events in Ceuta and Melilla prompted the EU to rethink its traditionally rather narrow approach, focusing on the repression of migration flows. However, the persistence of the estab- lished policy-frame and the existing institutional setting limit the scope for balanced policy coordination, introducing development mainly as an instrument of migration policy rather than the other way round. Challenging the literature that argues that there is a necessary trade-off between a development and a security-orientated migration policy, it is shown that this dichotomous juxtaposition hides the many ways in which different orientations can be combined, depending on the institutional context within which they are framed.