Uneven Influence: Why Female Representation Affects Some Migration Policies but not Others

Abstract

In the wake of the 2015 migration crisis, immigration policy has become one of the most critical topics of academic scholarship and political debate. Despite this prolific response, very little research has investigated how the gender of policymakers affects immigration policy. This raises an interesting question: is there any difference in immigration policy among countries with high and low numbers of female legislators? To investigate this matter, I use panel fixed-effects regression to systematically compare the immigration policies of the original EU-15 from 2000 to 2010. As a single policy area, I find female representation has no significant impact on immigration policy. However, by breaking immigration policy into five separate sub-dimensions, I find female representation does have a significant impact on three dimensions—family reunification, asylum/refugee, and enforcement—but not on the other two—labor migration and co-ethnics. In this study, I explore several reasons why this inconsistent influence occurs.