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The Global Evolution of Travel Visa Regimes

2018; Wiley; Volume: 44; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/padr.12166

1728-4457

Mathias Czaika, Hein de Haas, María Villares‐Varela,

Urban Transport and Accessibility

Population and Development ReviewVolume 44, Issue 3 p. 589-622 DATA AND PERSPECTIVESOpen Access The Global Evolution of Travel Visa Regimes Mathias Czaika, Mathias CzaikaSearch for more papers by this authorHein de Haas, Hein de HaasSearch for more papers by this authorMaría Villares-Varela, María Villares-VarelaSearch for more papers by this author Mathias Czaika, Mathias CzaikaSearch for more papers by this authorHein de Haas, Hein de HaasSearch for more papers by this authorMaría Villares-Varela, María Villares-VarelaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 23 August 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12166Citations: 22AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Introduction SCHOLARS HAVE ARGUED that mobility is one of the key processes of globalization (Urry 2002; Sassen 2000; Elliot and Urry 2010) and is connected to the increase in international travel. As travelers can witness at international airports, citizenship and identification papers have a great influence on the ease of travel. While people holding passports of the wealthy or befriended countries can often breeze through custom checks, often using fully automated systems such as “e-gates,” citizens of poor and politically fragile countries, particularly from South and South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa, generally require a travel visa to enter and have to queue up in long rows at the border. This seems to mirror a structural inequality in immigration and travel rights: travel visas are generally required for citizens of countries in the “Global South” who are often perceived by government officials and policy makers in the “Global North” as an immigration risk in terms of their potential to seek asylum seekers or to overstay their visas, or perceived as a security risk in terms of their potential to threaten public life as criminals or terrorists. However, the perception of a North-South mobility divide may reflect a Western or Eurocentric perspective and a bias created by the fact that Westerners mainly travel through Western airports where they may face only minor travel constraints. Realities seem to be more complex than this dichotomous representation. For instance, European citizens or North Americans travelling to sub-Saharan Africa and countries including Russia, China, and India often need visas to do so and may find themselves queuing at borders too. While citizens of regional blocs such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union (EU), the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the South African Development Community (SADC) enjoy free intra-regional travel, travelers from Europe and other third countries may well need an entry visa. This suggests that real-world travel visa regimes may not fit within simplistic North-South schemes and that visa regimes may partly reflect more complex geopolitical relations and multi-layered hierarchies at the regional level. For instance, Morocco grants visa-free travel to citizens of particular, befriended states in Africa, such as Senegal and Mali, as well as to EU member states and the United States, but denies it to many fellow African and Arab citizens. Often, travel visa regimes are a negotiation chip in broader geopolitical games. For instance, the prospective lifting of EU visas for Turkish citizens was an important element of the March 2016 deal struck between the EU and Turkey in the context of the refugee crisis, as discussed further below. This challenges the idea that we live in times of an increasing global mobility divide (e.g., Mau et al. 2015). In their analysis of visa waiver policies of over 150 countries for 1969 and 2010, those researchers found that while, at a global level, visa-free mobility has increased, the inequality in visa waivers has also increased. They argue that, while citizens of wealthy countries, often members of the industrial-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have gained mobility rights, those rights for other regions have stagnated or even diminished—in particular for citizens from African countries. They referred to this global bifurcation in mobility rights as the global mobility divide. While their analysis shows the considerable potential of visa data as a means by which to study people's mobility rights and as a proxy of migration policies, there are also a number of limitations to their approach. First, while the notion of a global mobility divide seems a useful concept to describe the global pattern, this may conceal underlying complexities and patterns of “multi-polarity,” for instance through the emergence of regional free-mobility blocs such as ECOWAS or the EU. Second, a one-sided focus on North-South visa requirements is also likely to obscure considerable differences across countries within these two imaginary blocs, both in terms of the ability of their own citizens to travel freely to other countries (outbound restrictiveness) as well as the ability of foreign citizens to enter their territory (inbound restrictiveness). Third, if we wish to gain a comprehensive picture of mobility rights, we should look not only at entry requirements but also at exit requirements in the form of the limitations several governments have historically imposed on the international mobility of their own citizens. Fourth, to understand the nature and evolution of international visa regimes, we need to study how visa requirements are embedded in broader international relations and power asymmetries by assessing the bilateral (and inter-regional) reciprocity of visa regimes. Fifth, to identify intertemporal shifts in visa regimes and foreign policy priorities, we require longitudinal bilateral panel data on travel visa restrictions over long periods, which have not been available so far. To build upon the work by Mau et al. (2015), and further advance insights into the evolution and nature of global migration regimes, this paper aims to fill those gaps by exploring the purposes, patterns, and trends of bilateral visa policies from 1973 to 2013, with a particular focus on the evolution of patterns of visa restrictiveness, and bilateral and intra-regional reciprocity. The analyses draw on the innovative global DEMIG VISA database, a new panel database that tracks annual bilateral travel visa requirements for 214 of 237 countries and territories over the 1973–2013 period. DEMIG VISA captures both entry visa and exit permit requirements according to the data reported in the Travel Information Manuals published monthly by the International Air Transport Association (IATA 1973–2013).1 The DEMIG VISA database provides a unique way to measure the evolution of migration policy. While travel visas are a suitable proxy to measure the evolution of migration policies (Salter 2006; Neumayer 2006; Finotelli and Sciortino 2013; Czaika and Trauner 2018), travel visa data can also be a useful vantage point to study patterns of regional integration (Gülzau et al. 2016) and international power relations more broadly. By constructing indices of cross-regional inbound and outbound entry as well as exit restrictiveness, we investigate: (1) the extent to which different world regions and regional unions have opened or closed vis-à-vis other regions; (2) the ways in which the formation of regional unions or the disintegration of countries or unions of countries (e.g., the USSR) has affected international visa regimes, and (3) the degree of bilateral reciprocity or policy asymmetry of visa regimes, which reflects the extent to which the introduction (or lifting) of a bilateral visa requirement by one country is mirrored by a retaliating introduction (or gratifying lifting) of visa requirements. This allows us to analyze the extent to which we can speak of a growing global mobility divide, or whether this typology adequately reflects real-world patterns. Travel visas as a population and migration control instrument Travel visas, alongside passports, have been key instruments of population movement control by modern states (Salter 2006; Finotelli and Sciortino 2013; Czaika and Trauner 2018). Modern state formation coincided with an increasing desire to monitor and control population mobility, both within and across borders. Until the twentieth century, states were generally more preoccupied with preventing exit rather than controlling immigration (Torpey 1998). From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, emerging mercantilist states in northern Europe saw the population as a valuable economic resource and as potential recruits for the military. At the same time, state-building ideals favored conformity, which pushed states to pursue ethnic and cultural homogeneity. This was implemented partly through the creation of new national foundation myths and unitary languages propagated through the education system as well as the circulation and mixing of military personnel, police, and other state employees such as teachers, and sometimes through the marginalization, murder, or expulsion of people who were physically or culturally different (Zolberg 1978; Anderson 1983). Torpey (1998) argued that, as centralized national governments consolidated in the nineteenth century, they acquired the right to control the movement of their citizens. This control was reinforced by their ability to grant permission to leave based on the issuance of identity documents, including passports. It is the increased administrative capacity of modern states to maintain written records of populations in order to exert surveillance (Foucault 1975) that has given states the power to grant their citizens permission to leave based on passport issuance and, thus, to control movement. However, the spread of modern capitalism, accelerating population growth, widespread urban poverty, as well as industrialization and advances in military technology—which reduced the importance of population size for economic and military power—decreased the importance of population size and brought more positive attitudes towards emigration. This sparked the so-called exit revolution (Zolberg 2007) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in which states increasingly switched from emigration to immigration control. In this context, travel visas have become an essential instrument for migration control. Although visa regimes primarily regulate the entry of tourists and other temporary visitors, in practice they also function as instruments of migration control. In recent decades, travel visa regulations have often been used to prevent the entry of potential asylum seekers and visa overstayers, the latter generally seen as a more important source of unauthorized stay than unauthorized entry (Schoorl et al. 2000). To complement travel visas, destination countries introduced carrier sanctions in the 1980s and 1990s to prevent people without a visa from boarding airplanes in the first place. So, combined with carrier sanctions, travel visas have become an important extraterritorial policy instrument to prevent people from entering and asking for asylum (Neumayer 2006). The travel visa should, therefore, be seen as a key component of the migration policy toolbox. For states, visa restrictions are considered an efficient, upfront way of preventing undesirable migrants from entering the national territory. This seems particularly effective for geographically-distant origin countries that are reachable only by air, since this allows focusing immigration controls on a few ports of entry, instead of surveillance of long land and sea borders. What makes visas even more attractive is that they can generally be imposed through directives, decrees, or other administrative measures, and generally do not require cumbersome legal changes and, hence, parliamentary and judiciary procedures. They can, therefore, be implemented rather quickly, and discretely, by imposing restrictions on selected nationalities (Czaika and de Haas 2016). In addition to crucial instruments used by states to control and monitor the entry of foreign visitors and migrants and the exit of nationals, travel visas also have an important symbolic function. After all, visas are a powerful expression of modern states’ sovereignty in monopolizing the “legitimate means of movement” (Torpey 1998). This usually pertains to the sovereignty states have in limiting the movement of their own citizens (either internally or abroad) or in controlling the immigration of foreign citizens. Travel visas are visible expressions of this power, as can be witnessed by travelers at airports and other border crossing points. Besides being an effective instrument for regulating entry and managing population mobility generally, the highly visible prioritization of own-citizens and citizens of befriended nations and the concomitant discrimination vis-à-vis travelers in need of a visa (who usually have to queue for longer and are subject to more stringent checks) lend to border controls an important performative, symbolic dimension. These checks are one of the most visible means of migration control, through which states exert their sovereignty and reassure citizens that borders are indeed under control. US President Trump's 2017 ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries illustrates the ways in which travel visa regulations can be used as a convenient means by which to back up migration rhetoric and regulations. This is particularly the case when compared with other legislative instruments such as migration acts, since travel visa regulations often fall under executive powers which do not require legal changes, thus allowing governments to make changes while avoiding lengthy parliamentary debates. Moreover, their effects transcend implications for migration control but also shape the direction of foreign policy and international relations more broadly (Foreign Policy 2017). Policy reactions from those countries targeted by the recent US ban reflect how the introduction of visa requirements (in this case for US citizens entering these countries) are potentially used as retaliatory measures to challenge power asymmetries (Independent 2017; Al Jazeera 2017). Such practices to regulate mobility and the underpinning intricate power relations are at the core of this paper. Visa regimes are thus a key expression of the ways in which states monopolize the legitimate means of movement (see Torpey 1998). Because of their relation to the crossing of state borders, this also implies that visa policies cannot be seen in isolation from international relations. As Finotelli and Sciortino (2013: 97) point out for the EU visa system, “the prevention of irregular migration is only one state interest out of many […] it must also be acknowledged that, in the creation of the EU visa regime, geopolitical considerations have often played a liberalizing role.” After all, the imposition of immigration controls implies an infringement of the liberties enjoyed by citizens of other states. In the first place, this helps us to explain why exit restrictions are increasingly seen as untenable in a context of increasing emphasis on human rights, which first and foremost apply to a country's own citizens. For states that perceive themselves to be democratic, or like to portray themselves as such, infringing the mobility rights of their own people, either through controlling internal mobility—such as in the Chinese hukou system (Liu 2005), or through exit visas, such as was for instance common in Communist and Fascist states—has become increasingly unacceptable. This kind of restriction is seen more and more as not compatible with observation of fundamental human rights—as stated in article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations 1948). Yet, the granting of greater mobility rights to citizens has coincided with continued legitimation of subjecting foreign citizens to entry visa requirements at the will of the state. Travel visa regulations are legitimated by the virtue of modern citizenship: we can see visa regimes as systems of institutionalized discrimination based on nationality, which can be justified from the logic of protecting the exclusive residency and political rights of citizens. Travel visas as a foreign policy instrument As discussed above, visa regimes should also be seen as an inherent part of foreign policy, as the curtailing or lifting of entry restrictions for citizens of particular countries is also a political statement and can therefore only be understood by taking into consideration the broader context of bilateral or multilateral relations. In this context, we distinguish bilateral and multilateral travel visa dynamics or interactions. The first is visa retaliation, in which the introduction of a visa by country X for citizens of country Y leads to punitive, antagonistic retaliation by the reciprocal introduction of visa requirements for citizens by country Y for citizens of country X. The unilateral imposition of visa regimes can be seen as a diplomatic affront, particularly when this happens outside of the context of broader diplomatic deals. For instance, when the Netherlands introduced a visa for Moroccan citizens in 1984, the Moroccan government took offense and introduced visa requirements for Dutch citizens wishing to travel to Morocco (DEMIG VISA 2015). However, the extent to which such visa retaliation happens also seems to depend on the geopolitical clout of the target country. For instance, citizens from France continued to enjoy visa-free travel to Morocco despite the fact that France also introduced visas for Moroccans, in 1986 (DEMIG VISA 2015). The existence of close diplomatic, political, and economic ties with France arguably explains why Morocco was not in the position to impose travel visas for French citizens: this could have negative repercussions for Moroccan businesses and elite interests. While diplomatic relations between Morocco and the Netherlands have always been less stable, and at times antagonistic, (Kahmann 2014), the Netherlands is also of relatively minor economic and political importance to the Moroccan state. The Moroccan state could afford to impose travel restrictions for Dutch citizens.2 This suggests that analyzing the evolution of reciprocal visa regimes can provide a unique window for studying power asymmetries between countries. Based on the Moroccan example, we could hypothesize that more powerful states (in terms of population, wealth and military power) have a higher ability to unilaterally impose visa conditions while securing visa-free travel for their own citizens. This has also been the case for many Latin American countries, which did not reciprocally impose visa requirements on Spanish citizens when visas were introduced for their citizens in 1991 amid Spain becoming part of the Schengen area. The recent openness of the Schengen area to countries including Colombia and Peru (which became visa-exempt in 2015 and 2016, respectively) seems to reflect Spanish and European strategic economic interests in the region in the aftermath of the southern Eurozone economic crisis, which was accompanied by an increase in emigration of Spanish citizens to Latin American countries. This renewed openness was welcomed by Peruvian president Ollanta Humala, arguing that “In 1492 the first European mission arrived in America and we did not request a visa. Since that time, we have always welcomed them with open doors” (El País 2016). In sum, international visa regimes seem to mirror not only global geopolitical inequalities but also foreign relations and international alliances, either in the form of regional blocs or the existence of post-colonial, historical, cultural, and linguistic ties. Such inequalities and asymmetries should not necessarily be conceptualized as a global “North-South” divide. The example of the Morocco-France-Netherlands triad already illustrates that realities may be more complex. This shows the need to study visa regimes at the regional and sub-regional levels. “Southern” countries cannot be conceptualized as victims of unilaterally-imposed visa requirements by “Northern” countries. This is also shown by the examples of many African countries, which, after independence, imposed visa regimes for citizens of former colonial powers and other foreigners. For instance, after independence in 1962, the left-wing factions in the post-revolutionary, socialist Algerian government tried—but ultimately failed—to impose an emigration ban to France because they saw emigration as a continuation of the colonial exploitation of labor and as detrimental to the long-term interest of workers. Although pragmatist factions—who saw temporary emigration as a way to relieve unemployment, generate remittances, and develop workers’ skills abroad—eventually gained the upper hand, the government only accepted this point of view grudgingly (Miller 1979). This attitude must further be seen in the context of the anti-French sentiment which followed the extremely violent Algerian war of independence (1954 to 1962). After the Cuban revolution in 1959, the Communist government enforced strict travel visa regulations for travelers as well as exit visas for Cubans which were not lifted until 2013 (Betancourt 2014). After Suriname became independent in 1975, the Dutch government introduced a visa requirement for Surinamese citizens in 1980, which was followed—and mirrored—by a reciprocal retaliatory introduction of Surinamese entry requirements for Dutch citizens in 1982. Such measures are often associated to more general anti-imperialist and protectionist policies, which were particularly strong in communist, socialist and “non-aligned” former colonies. In addition, visa requirements should be seen as a practical measure aimed at controlling mobility and, hence, limiting the unwanted intrusion of foreign, colonial or capitalist influences, as well as a symbolic measure that asserted the newly-won independence and sovereignty of a new state. A government whose citizens are targeted by the removal or introduction of a visa requirement can react in four different ways, resulting in eight different types of bilateral visa removal or introduction dynamics (see Table 1). Besides visa retaliation as in the Surinamese–Dutch case, the second type of bilateral visa interaction is visa rapprochement. In this case, which is the opposite of visa retaliation, governments mutually lift visa requirements for each other's citizens, often, but not necessarily, as part of diplomatic agreements. For instance, Indonesia lifted travel visa requirements for Suriname (along with 74 other countries) in September 2015 and Suriname lifted entry requirements for Indonesia (along with 12 other countries) in March 2016.3 This “mutual gratification” was strongly related to the wish to stimulate tourism, trade and investment on both sides, but cannot be seen in isolation from broader policies of economic liberalization. In 2016, the government of Saudi Arabia indicated it would be open to visa removal for foreign citizens where their governments also lifted visas for Saudi citizens. This happened as part of a discussion of the negative economic effects of high visa restrictions in a broader context of falling oil revenues and the Saudi government's aim of diversifying and stimulating economic growth and foreign investment (Samaa 2016). These examples illustrate that visa policy dynamics need to be understood in the context of general economic policies and geopolitical shifts. Table 1. Bilateral visa dynamics Country Y Visa removal Maintain visa-free Maintain visa-restriction Visa introduction Country X Visa removal Mutual gratification Bilateral opening Unilateral opening “Negative turnaround” Visa introduction “Positive turnaround” Unilateral closing Bilateral closing Mutual retaliation The introduction of or lifting of visa requirements by pairs or groups of countries can thus not be seen in isolation from one another as they tend to be closely related to broader diplomatic positioning and geopolitical games. The lifting or introduction of visas does not necessarily provoke a retaliating or conciliatory reaction; in which case the measure remains unilateral. It seems safe to argue that such “unilateral visa imposition” often reflects power asymmetries, although we cannot assume that these follow a simple global North-South divide, but rather reflect more complex, multi-layered regional relations. A unilateral visa opening may also be followed by a visa closing, and the other way around, although this seems less common. International visa dynamics often extend beyond the bilateral level. This is particularly important in the context of the formation of regional economic unions or “blocs.” While the EU's free migration zone and Schengen border check-free travel zone (largely, but not entirely, overlapping with the EU) are the best-known examples, there are currently at least 20 other regional economic unions and communities in the world (see section on Regional free mobility clusters), such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) free trade area, the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Mercado Común del Sur (MERCOSUR) and ECOWAS. Usually, but not exclusively or necessarily, such regional communities, unions, or agreements aim to liberalize trade, investment, travel, and migration among member states. Depending on the type of agreements and the degree to which these are enforced on the ground, this may coincide with a multilateral coordination of travel visa and other migration policies. For instance, an internal opening of travel and closure may go along with, or even require common external border policies. For example, when most EU countries started to remove their internal boundaries with the signature of the Schengen agreement in 1985 and its full implementation in 1995, they became increasingly concerned about controlling external borders. The suspension of internal border controls (internal opening) created an intrinsic need for common rules on travel visa requirements (external closure) and, hence, the creation of a common “Schengen visa.” This coincided with the coordinated introduction of travel visa requirements for a range of non-European, particularly African and Asian, nationalities. Although most Asian and African nationals already needed visas to travel to Europe before, the difference was now that Schengen countries needed to align themselves by collectively deciding on which citizens needed visas to prevent them travelling into the Schengen area through countries that did not require visas. In this way, “unwanted” foreigners would be prevented from entering the entire Schengen area via the one or two countries that would not require travel visas. This process compelled some member countries to reluctantly introduce visa requirements disrupting the long tradition of barrier-free travel. For instance, in 1990 and 1991, Italy and Spain introduced travel visas for citizens of countries including Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, and Turkey as part of a move to align regulations with “European community norms” (Focus-Migration 2012: 3; OECD 1992: 77). This move particularly upset close Moroccan-Spanish relations. While the Moroccan government saw this as a diplomatic affront, and left the Spanish government deeply embarrassed, given the strong post-colonial, historical, economic, and social ties between northern Moroccan and southern Spain (Zaragoza-Cristiani 2016), the perceived benefits of joining the Schengen zone were clearly seen as outweighing the economic and political damage of border closure with Morocco. The need to create common rules inevitably leads to a certain degree of internal horse-trading in which countries secured visa-free travel for citizens of countries of strategic importance. Strong Portuguese-Brazilian relations were, for instance, likely to play a role in explaining why Brazilians have continued to enjoy visa-free travel into the Schengen zone. In fact, given its population and size of its economy, Brazil is now a much more powerful country than Portugal. This further adds doubts to the idea that we can describe global visa dynamics in terms of a growing North-South divide. More generally, the whole notion of “South” and “North” has been heavily criticized not only because of its colonial overtones but also because of its failure to acknowledge the huge diversity and lack of political unity within these two imaginary blocs, to the point of becoming rather meaningless. Visa regimes are also an important negotiation chip in international relations. For instance, the fact that Turkish citizens need a visa to get into the EU, but EU citizens enjoy de facto visa-free entry into Turkey, creates some pressure on the EU to lift such a requirement, particularly given Turkey's official status as an accession state.4 In fact, the lifting of travel visa requirements for its citizens has been one of the central long-term goals of Turkish diplomacy, and one of the main quid pro quibus in exchange for full collaboration with the EU's border policies, and, particularly, the prevention of migrants crossing the EU's external borders illegally. It was, therefore, no surprise that the prime conditions of collabo