Visas and mobility: The EU’s ‘great shutdown’ that won’t stop population flows

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article offers a critical analysis of the current literature on visa studies, particularly with regard to its methodological limitations and how they impact our understanding of worldwide migration patterns with the fortress Europe conception. The first half of the manuscript is a critical review of studies that study visas. Although, numerous studies initially relied on the insights of authors such as John Torpey and Marc B. Salter, who examined the rise of passports and visas to regulate global flows of people, later studies chose to use a dyadic methodology, which is a reflection of a reductionist understanding of global flows and networks. The second half uses the Demig Visa database to show that the EU, which has been hailed as creating an area for free movement of,‘people, goods and services’, proved to be an obstacle for many countries in Asia and Africa, including neighbouring Mediterranean countries, which had enjoyed visa-free travel until the EU ‘Europeanized’ its immigration policy with the Schengen agreement in the mid-1980s. In summary, the subsequent EU ‘Great Shutdown’ does not stop population flows, but rather attempts to direct the flows at will.