This article investigates the extent to which restrictive asylum and visa policies trigger an unintended behavioural response of potential and rejected asylum seekers. Based on our analysis of bilateral asylum and visa policies on migrant flows to 29 European states in the 2000s, we find evidence of a significant deflection into irregularity at work. Our estimates suggest that a 10% increase in asylum rejections raises the number of irregular migrants by on average 2% to 4%, and similarly, a 10% increase in short-stay visa rejections leads to a 4% to 7% increase in irregular border entries. We identify significant nuances in the impact of restrictive asylum and visa policies on the number of apprehensions ‘at the border’ versus ‘on territory’.

The application of European Union (EU)

This research note introduces a new European Visa Database of relevance to analysts interested in exploring and explaining causes and consequences of contemporary policy barriers to mobility. It outlines the existing research, positions the empirics in this context and sets out how the database was constructed. Selected statistics on the EU and the USA are also presented. The dataset measures three key dimensions of mobility regimes: visa requirements, consular coverage abroad and issuing practices. It contains data on the EU-Schengen states in the period 2005-2012 for all third countries abroad, and similar but less extensive information on the UK and the USA. Hitherto, this material has not been available in a format easily amenable for research. The database collects and presents the public government data in a systematised and readily viewable form, thereby reducing entry barriers for future studies of migration control. It also contains a Mobility Barriers Index providing restrictiveness scores taking all three dimensions into account. The database thus seeks to facilitate and encourage further quantitative inquiry into mobility barriers, and provides a tool for qualitative researchers to contextualise their findings in a wider case universe.

We advance a concept of political remittances that offers a distinct analytical perspective and enables a comparative assessment across time and space. By providing a new conceptualisation of political remittances, this article elaborates on the link between different kinds of remittances, delimiting the boundaries between political, social, economic, or cultural remittances. We understand political remittances as influencing political practices and narratives of belonging, thereby linking migrants' places of destination and origin. The state, in this conceptualisation, mediates political remittances. The article distinguishes between factors influencing the transmission of political remittances such as the characteristic of the messengers, the relative space between sending and receiving contexts and the composite nature of political remittances. Illustrating the contours of a future research agenda, we suggest ways to operationalise research into political remittances drawing on the articles in this special issue which closely analyse political practices, narratives of belonging and the role of the state. Covering migration processes since the early 1800s, the case studies exemplify that political remittances are not a new phenomenon as such but rather a relatively recent analytic perspective.

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