Lena Laube

The Global Mobility Divide: How Visa Policies Have Evolved over Time

While visa policies are the major instrument for regulating and controlling the global flow of people, little is known about how they have changed over time. Accordingly, scholars have expressed the need for large-N data-sets which cover more than one point in time. This article takes up this challenge and presents for the first time a global overview of the changes in visa waiver policies based on a newly created database containing the visa waiver policies of over 150 countries for 1969 and 2010. We find that, on average, visa-free mobility has increased over the past 40 years. However, not everybody has benefited from these developments. In fact, visa waivers are increasingly unequally divided: while citizens of OECD countries and rich countries have gained mobility rights, mobility rights for other regions have stagnated or even diminished, in particular for citizens from African countries. Overall, we find a clear bifurcation in mobility rights, leading to a ‘global mobility divide’.

Democratic centre, autocratic isolates: the changing field of international visa policies

ABSTRACT In the international field of visa policies, states observe how other states act in terms of global mobility control or the facilitation of wanted cross-border mobility. But towards whom do they orient themselves? And what drives nation states to cooperate with others and grant their citizens visa-free travel or not? To tackle these questions, we conceptualise visa waiver agreements as positive relations between two states. A new data collection ‘Visa Network Data’ (1969/2010) provides information on all visa waiver agreements worldwide. By means of social network analysis (blockmodelling), we analyse the global structure of the network of nations in this policy field as well as its change over time. In the centre of the network we find evidence for the existence of a global model at which many others orient themselves. However, a second distinct position in the network shows a high degree of stability: Autocratic states that do not want to be involved in the exchange of these bilateral relations.

A “border for the people"? Narratives on changing eastern borders in Finland and Austria

Abstract The fall of the Iron Curtain and the border regime of the European Union have changed perceptions of borders. This study compares border narratives on two Eastern borders in Austria and Finland in order to find out how such narratives picture the changing functions of the borders. The qualitative data gathered from interviews with border policy actors in both countries reveals that the shared narrative of the Iron Curtain is in the process of being substituted by a narrative which suggests a “border for the people”, a border managed according to the border‐crossers demands. However, this emphasis on mobility depends on the section of the border the interviewee focuses on. Land borders are connected with the classical security and control functions of borders to stop unwanted border crossings. Yet, the border crossing points are meant to enable and encourage wanted flows. The same border can have very different functions, depending on where the observer is focusing. Analytically, those differing foci have to be distinguished in order to better interpret border narratives.1

Extra-territorial Migration Control from a Principal–Agent Perspective: Actors, Mechanisms and Delegation Costs

When the Arab Spring changed the political and societal landscape of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, many young migrants took the chance to leave their countries. They headed north to the island of Lampedusa, to Greece, Italy and other places along Europe’s shores (see Friese, 2014). Although welcoming the political change at that time, European governments began to fear the impact these upheavals in the Arab world would have on the states of the European Union. Thus, it became obvious that, up to that time and thanks to the cooperation between the South European EU member states and the North African Mediterranean countries, border control tasks had been successfully delegated. Because of increased border crossings to the Schengen area, France first closed its borders to Italy for a couple of weeks in 2011, and even Denmark and Austria took the chance and reinforced their border controls towards the respective Southern countries of Germany and Italy.

Liberal cosmopolitan norms and the border: Local actors’ critique of the governance of global processes

Liberal cosmopolitanism provides a set of norms that calls for the openness of borders. Freedom of movement, equality in opportunity and hospitality define a liberal framework for a state’s ruling over the access of foreigners to the territory. However, in states’ execution of border and immigration control these normative ideals seem not to apply. Accounts of border and immigration policy and discourse document a bias towards exclusion, restriction and securitization. It looks as if this normative political theory has no bearing on the real world. This is the starting point for an exploration into the public discourse on liberal cosmopolitan norms and the border. The study finds that most collective actors consider the application of the norms to be utopian. Still, they heavily draw on these norms as a means to critique domestic policies that attempt to regulate global mobility. These are considered to be morally wrong or insufficient for providing equality in opportunities, solidarity, or protection. Actors’ interpretation of key norms such as equality, hospitality and social justice varies significantly which calls for empirical as well theoretical work on the often Janus-faced implications of putting cosmopolitan norms into practice.

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