TY - JOUR

T1 - The Global Mobility Divide

T2 - How Visa Policies Have Evolved over Time

AU - Mau, Steffen

AU - Gülzau, Fabian

AU - Laube, Lena

AU - Zaun, Natascha

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Funding Information: This article originates from the research project ‘From Containers to Open States? Border Regime Change and the Mobility of Persons’ (2007–2014) that was funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) as part of the Collaborative Research Centre 597 ‘Transformations of the State’ at the University of Bremen, Germany. The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Publisher Copyright: © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

PY - 2015/7/3

Y1 - 2015/7/3

N2 - 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’.

AB - 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’.

KW - Database

KW - Mobility

KW - OECD

KW - Visa Policies

KW - Visa Waivers

KW - Politics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84929959953&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/1369183X.2015.1005007

DO - 10.1080/1369183X.2015.1005007

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:84929959953

VL - 41

SP - 1192

EP - 1213

JO - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

JF - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

SN - 1369-183X

IS - 8

ER -