Guilty, until Proven Innocent: The Fossilization of Discriminatory Practices in Visa Law and Policy as portrayed in Anna Segher’s Transit and Juan de Recacoechea’s American Visa

Abstract

Visas play a crucial role in facilitating international travel and immigration in contemporary times, particularly in enabling global mobility for citizens from the Global South. However, visa law and policy, from the time of their inception, have contributed to systemic human rights violations and loss of applicants’ dignity. Although the right to freedom of movement and human dignity are celebrated in multiple international covenants, material practices of visa law and policy impinge on these very rights and dignities; from the 1930s when visas were primarily used to limit the mobility of Jews, to contemporary times when the objects of visa law are primarily citizens from the Global South. This paper highlights the problem of the fossilization of such discriminatory practices embedded in visa law and policy by putting in conversation policy and legal research with close readings of two literary texts from Germany and Bolivia; Transit by Anna Seghers (1944) and American Visa by Juan de Recacoechea (1994). Although experiences of discrimination, violation, disrespect, and denial of rights are consistently and repeatedly experienced by visa applicants across time and space, as evident from the literary and non-literary examples discussed in this paper, only limited research exists on how visa law and policy impinge on human rights and dignity. This paper presents a critique of discriminatory practices that have become bureaucratized and normalized through visa law from the 1930s onwards. It identifies and problematizes ethical violations rising out of the practice of visa law and policy as they apply to citizens from the Global South. This work engages the evocative, empathetic, and representational capacity of literary texts to highlight existing issues related to the material practices of visa law and policy, which are categorized under four main types of violations: 1. pre-submission indignities 2. consular interactions and intimidations 3. indignities rising from the arbitrary collection of personal data and 4. the bureaucracy of documentation.