This paper synthesizes insights from new global data on the effectiveness of migration policies. It investigates the complex links between migration policies and migration trends to disentangle policy effects from structural migration determinants. The analysis challenges two central assumptions underpinning the popular idea that migration restrictions have failed to curb migration. First, post‐WWII global migration levels have not accelerated, but remained relatively stable while most shifts in migration patterns have been directional. Second, post‐WWII migration policies have generally liberalized despite political rhetoric suggesting the contrary. While migration policies are generally effective, “substitution effects” can limit their effectiveness, or even make them counterproductive, by geographically diverting migration, interrupting circulation, encouraging unauthorized migration, or prompting “now or never” migration surges. These effects expose fundamental policy dilemmas and highlight the importance of understanding the economic, social, and political trends that shape migration in sometimes counterintuitive, but powerful, ways that largely lie beyond the reach of migration policies.

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This paper demonstrates that, since 1945, migration policies have overall become less restrictive. Challenging common assumptions, this long-term trend is robust across most of the 45 countries included in the DEMIG POLICY database. While the period after 1989 is characterized by a slowing down of the rapid post-WWII liberalization of migration policies, liberal policy changes have continued to outnumber restrictive policy changes until today. Yet policy developments differ across policy types and migrant categories: Entry and integration policies have become less restrictive, while border control and exit policies have become more restrictive. Also, while policies towards irregular migrants and family migrants have been tightened in recent years, less restrictive changes have dominated policies targeting high- and low-skilled workers, students, and refugees. The essence of modern migration policies is thus not their growing restriction, but their focus on migrant selection.

This paper outlines the methodology of DEMIG POLICY, a new database tracking around 6,000 migration policy changes in 45 countries between 1945 and 2014. The article conceptualizes the notion of migration policy change and presents the coding system used to operationalize policy content, changes in policy restrictiveness, as well as the magnitude of policy changes. The paper also discusses the potential of DEMIG POLICY to improve our understanding of the nature, evolution, and effectiveness of migration policies. Besides significantly extending the geographical and historical coverage of existing migration policy databases, DEMIG POLICY also tracks emigration policies in order to overcome the common 'receiving country bias' in migration research. By offering key insights into the main features of the largest migration policy database completed to date, this paper hopes to provide useful guidelines to improve future efforts to measure migration policies. Such improvement is crucial given the heated debates on migration policy effectiveness on one hand and the still limited empirical evidence on this issue on the other.

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Travel visa requirements are generally recognised as the result of a trade-off between preventing irregular migration, ensuring security and allowing potential economic benefits to countries. The role of history has been overlooked. This article focuses on the Caribbean, a region heavily influenced by colonialism, which experienced important changes in political status and migration policies over the twentieth century. Using bilateral travel visa requirement data, we examine the importance of two travel visa determinants: post-colonial ties and the migration regimes established by the former colonial state after independence. We show that post-colonial ties explain patterns of travel visa requirements for France, the Netherlands and the US, but less for Britain and British-sphere Caribbean countries, revealing the less uniform and changing role of post-colonial ties. Travel visa requirements largely reinforce migration regimes types, so that Caribbean citizens from countries with a closed migration regime also experienced reduced travel opportunities. This reveals a perception that when the former colonial state limits migration opportunities, it might lead to travel, and potential overstaying, in other destinations. These findings provide new evidence of the relevance of colonial history and migration policies with the former colonial state in shaping travel opportunities of citizens of former colonies. ARTICLE HISTORY