Heike Brabandt

Liberal Cosmopolitanism and Cross-Border Mobility: The Case of Visa Policies

The normative framework of liberal cosmopolitanism provides guiding principles for the organisation of a global order and the treatment of foreigners. It proposes a set of human rights, among them the right to free movement. However, state sovereignty and territorial control remain important in reality. In this article, we are interested in the way liberal states organise and exercise control over mobility. Do they increasingly adhere to principles such as transparency, impartiality and equal treatment? Are there some means to appeal against negative decisions regarding access? We analyse the visa policies of three well-established democracies—the USA, Austria and Finland—with regard to short-term travel. In doing so, we find some discrepancy between cosmopolitan principles and real political practices. There is a growing rift between those who enjoy extended mobility rights and those who do not. The latter are increasingly designated as “high-risk” travellers, categorised as members of a collective rather than individuals. Even though these policies are often relatively transparent, they serve to deny equal treatment. More than ever, the world is deeply divided into those who can move freely and cross borders easily and those who are immobilised.

Visumpolitik und die Regulierung globaler Mobilität / Visa Policy and the Regulation of Global Mobility

Zusammenfassung Der Artikel untersucht die historische Entwicklung von Visumbefreiungspolitiken in drei ausgewählten OECD-Ländern, den USA, Österreich und Finnland, für den Zeitraum seit dem Ende des zweiten Weltkrieges. Ausgangspunkt ist die Frage, ob im Zuge von Globalisierungsprozessen Mobilitätserleichterungen zugenommen haben oder ob im Gegenteil Grenzen nicht viel selektiver wurden. Dieser Frage gehen wir am Beispiel kurzfristiger Personenmobilität und sich verändernder Visumbefreiungspolitiken nach. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Untersuchungsländer immer strengere Auswahlkriterien für die Befreiung von der Visumpflicht anwenden, sich also die Selektivität mit der Zeit erhöht. Zudem wird gezeigt, dass politische und ökonomische Faktoren ausschlaggebend dafür sind, welche Länder von einer Visumbefreiung profitieren und dass erweiterte Mobilitätsrechte vor allem an Bürger reicher Demokratien vergeben werden. Zugleich dokumentiert der Artikel zum einen die zunehmende Übereinstimmung der Regelungen zur Visumbefreiung innerhalb der OECD-Welt (Konvergenz) und zum anderen die Asymmetrie der Visumbefreiungen im Verhältnis von OECD-Ländern zu Nicht-OECD-Ländern. Globalisierung ist daher weder als Öffnung noch als Schließung zu interpretieren, sondern als Gleichzeitigkeit von Mobilität und Immobilität, welche vor allem über Regeln des selektiven Zugangs durchgesetzt wird. Summary This article deals with the historical development of visa waiver policies in three selected OECD countries, the USA, Austria, and Finland, since 1960. Its point of departure is the question whether, in the context of globalization, mobility has become easier, or whether, in contrast, borders have become more selective. This issue is taken up by looking at short term mobility and the development of policies with the aim of waiving visa requirements. Our findings indicate that political and economic factors have become increasingly important when it comes to choosing who is allowed and who is denied access without a visa. Citizens from “rich democracies” are granted enhanced mobility rights while citizens from the “Global South” have to undergo lengthy visa application processes. The article also documents the fact that visa waiver policies are increasingly converging in the OECD world and that we find an asymmetry of visa waiver policies in relations to non-OECD countries. Globalization, evidently, is not just a matter of mobility. Rather, it produces mobility and immobility at the same time. This is established though rules of selective access and control as manifested in visa waiver policies.

Genderforschung in den Internationalen Beziehungen

Nach einer Einfuhrung in das Konzept Gender widmet sich dieser Beitrag den Epistemologien feministischer Forschung, um dann die positivistische Epistemologie des in den 1980er-Jahren vorherrschenden (Neo)realismus aus einer Genderperspektive zu analysieren. Fur die Genderforschung bahnbrechend wurde der in der ersten Halfte der 1990er-Jahre erschienene feministische Klassiker von Cynthia Enloe: Bananas, Beaches & Bases. Daraufhin begann die Genderforschung sich auszudifferenzieren. Es wird gezeigt, dass sie sich heute auf alle Sachbereiche internationaler Politik, also Sicherheit, Wohlfahrt und Herrschaft erstreckt. In der Schlussbetrachtung wird die Entwicklung von Genderforschung kurz zusammengefasst und herausgearbeitet, dass sie von der Dekonstruktion zur Rekonstruktion vorangeschritten ist. Schlieslich wird auf aktuelle Fragen und Probleme verwiesen.

Regulating Territorial Access in a Globalized World. Visa-Waiver Policies in the USA and Austria

Abstract The immense increase in tourist travel over the past thirty years has made states re-arrange their border and control policies. While there is evidence for a more restrictive approach to control, states have also increasingly used visa-waiver policies and lifted the visa requirement for those considered “trustworthy.” In this article, we analyze visa regulations, in particular visa waiver programs, for short-term mobility, focusing on the USA and Austria. We demonstrate that citizens from wealthy democracies have always been more likely to benefit from visa-free travel than others. However, this effect has been reinforced under processes of globalization, leading to increased selectivity, and thus to a polarization of mobility opportunities. Additionally, we find an increasing convergence of both visa regimes since the 1990s.

New Control and Selectivity Arrangements

The “golden age” system of states was built around a close nexus of authority, territory and border control. Control was mainly in the hands of sovereign states and exercised at points of entry to the territory. Western states’ interest in closure and control took precedence over their interest in openness and mobility. In the 19th century, territorial closure was complemented by social closure. Nation-states created membership spaces through the introduction and institutionalization of citizenship. Together, the regulation of both the geographic and the membership space fostered a congruence of social, political and economic spaces, stabilizing the domestic order. In practical terms, this system contributed to the institutionalization of strong boundaries separating the domestic from the foreign. Territorial borders limited the spatial scope of national societies and of states’ reach and jurisdiction. Though global hierarchies have always existed and asymmetrical inter-state relations have always been the rule rather than the exception, territorial closure and the exercise of territorial control profoundly contributed to a horizontal segmentation of the world population in distinguishable units of self-contained nation-states and, respectively, national societies.

Visa Policies and the Regulation of Territorial Access

In this first empirical chapter, we focus on visa policies, which we consider central to the facilitation or prevention of mobility. A visa is “a document affixed to passports or travel documents which prima facie permits the holder to arrive at the border of the issuing state and, subject to further checks, to pass that border for a period of time” (Guild 2001b: 31). Thus, the institution of the visa allows states to decide well in advance to whom they will grant access to their territory (Guild 2001b; Guiraudon 2002).1 Zolberg (2006: 443) terms this practice “remote control”. Potential travelers have to apply for a visa from their home country and, in so doing, approach the embassies and consulates of their destination countries. Applying by mail, if permissible, may take weeks or months; applying in person means traveling to the embassy or consulate and waiting in a line, possibly for hours. What is more, embassies and consulates can deny the application without giving any reason. In the face of the increase in tourist travel and limited administrative capacities to handle the increasing number of visa applications, however, many states have decided to lift the visa requirement for selected nationalities. As a result, extended mobility rights are offered to trustworthy and wanted groups of people so that those who still need to apply for a visa can be controlled more closely.

Varieties of Border Policies

In the previous chapters we explored how states’ concern to sort wanted from unwanted travelers is reflected in their visa policies, their international cooperation, and in their strategies to extend control far beyond their physical borders. We found hitherto unprecedented levels of internationalization, the spatial flexibilization of borders, the facilitation of mobility through visa waiver policies, and the restrictive handling of visa issuance resulting in increased selectivity. Our analysis remained, however, at the level of identifying general trends in the context of globalization. Even though we analyzed these trends with a focus on our case study countries the United States, Austria and Finland, we have not yet explored in depth the specific gestalt and organization of their national borders. We will do so here. In so doing, we concentrate on policies at the level of border management and explore whether and how their specific form has been shaped by their relations with their respective neighbors. We would expect that the shape of concrete borders varies along a continuum of “closed” and heavily enforced to “open” borders with low or no control. This variation depends on the relationship of a state with its respective neighboring countries. Here, two aspects of borders’ structuration take center stage: on the one hand, the more general question as to the level of “openness versus closure” and on the other hand, border management, that is, the actual organization of the border.

Globalization and the Challenge of Mobility

In the preceding chapter we showed that governmental control over border-crossings is constitutive of the modern state (Holsti 2004). For some authors, the control of movement even marks the beginning of the sovereign state as an international actor (Torpey 2000b; Salter 2003), enabling state authorities to assume full control over a territory and its population. However, while states have appropriated the right to determine who may enter and who may leave their territory, not everything that can be done at the border in terms of punitive action or mobility restriction is considered legitimate. This is particularly true of liberal states. Liberal states are organized around principles such as individual and collective freedom of choice. They are committed to individual liberties, a distinction between the public and the private, the rule of law, and individual rights, as well as to a specific economic system, the market economy. By their very nature, in particular through the rule of law and the role of individual liberties, liberal states are bound to principles which put constraints on the way they can enforce social closure and can limit, deter or ban mobility. In liberal states, individuals are endowed with rights vis-a-vis the state; states cannot act like despotic regimes that seek full control over their citizens’ mobility. Thus Malcom Andersen (2000: 24) writes: “There is undoubtedly a connection between border controls and the nature of political regimes”.

Internationalization of Border Policies

In the context of modern statehood, authority over border policies is fundamental to state sovereignty. However, the actual meaning and enforcement of state sovereignty depends on the lens through which we look at the contemporary state and its functions (Bartelson 1995; Genschel and Zangl 2007). From the perspective of liberal theory, the state attempts to accommodate the urge for freedom of movement of its citizens. The liberal values of freedom and autonomy of the individual are defining features of liberal democracies and of open-market economies; by and large these values support economic globalization and mass mobility. Opposing this push for ever more freedom is the call for continuing high levels of security and protection, seen as predominantly the responsibility of the state (Chapter 3). With regard to cross-border mobility, international cooperation on border policies is one way out of the impasse. Accordingly, we observe that the venues where border policies are negotiated are no longer located exclusively within national governmental arenas. In addition, interdependence between states with regard to border policies has increased; today, many policies can be identified that become effective only if states enforce them together. By “internationalized border policies” we mean those that are drafted cooperatively by groups of states and their respective administrative networks on the basis of bi- or multilateral treaties or by international organizations (Mau, Laube et al. 2008).1

The Spatial Flexibilization of Border Control

Classically, the border of the modern nation-state marked the locus of legitimate control of access to its territory. Since every border-crosser was checked there for valid travel documents, the border served as a physical barrier to all types of mobility (Torpey 1998; Zolberg 2006). Today, we can observe that human mobility is increasingly regulated well in advance, that is, before arrival at the border. More than ever, people are scrutinized by or on behalf of the destination country far away from that country’s territory. Well in advance of departure, many travelers have to apply for permission to enter via embassies and consulates. By the same token, advance controls by airline liaison officers and private transport companies target those without valid travel documents. Through the creation of “buffer zones”, countries of origin and transit countries also engage in mobility control (Wallace 1995). These means are intended to keep unwanted travelers from continuing or even starting their journey. If these control instruments fail to fulfill their purpose, people seeking to cross a border illegally are stopped right in front of the border. Step by step, border control agencies proceed to sort out those who are not welcome. Thus, border control is designed like a “filter system” with a layered, gradated series of access control mechanisms.1