Visas and Walls. Nazli Avdan
(Lavenex 2001). Terrorist events on the state’s own soil directly allow securitization of short-term mobility. Targeted attacks muster public backing of harder policies by creating widespread fears of being victimized. In addition, they agitate the public into demanding tighter policies. In effect, the public push allows governments to put aside the objective efficacy of policies. Additionally, terrorist events tend to cluster together spatially and temporally (Braithwaite and Li 2007; Gelpi and Avdan 2015). Put simply, unlike lightning, terrorist events do strike the same locale twice. Hence, it is logical to expect states that have suffered violence at the hands of origin-country citizens to selectively curb human mobility from these states.
Hypothesis 3: Economic Interdependence
Economically interdependent states will be less likely to pursue restrictive visa policies with respect to their economic partners’ citizens.
At the heart of the theoretical framework is the argument that economic ties make for more liberal policies. They do so through direct and indirect effects; that is, by affecting migration policies and by conditioning the impact of terrorism. Insofar as stiffer visa policies degrade economic exchange, we’d expect opportunity costs to matter in states’ decision making. That is, anticipating revenue from economic exchange to shrink, states will be less willing to implement stringent policies. Reduced travel is a detriment to economic exchange to the extent that trade and foreign direct investment rest on face-to-face contact. The same characteristics of visa controls that augment security can inhibit travel. Visa restrictions raise the costs of travel as a result of the wait time, paperwork, fees, and uncertainty involved in the application process. Not surprisingly, visa requirements may discourage prospective travelers. In addition, tougher visa policies significantly dampen tourism. Neumayer (2010) demonstrates that, on average, visa controls decrease travel between pairs of states by 52–63 percent.
We may contend that tourism-dependent destination countries are more likely than other states to hesitate to impose restrictions.3 However, this misses the strong positive correlation between travel and commerce. As O’Bryne notes, “Freedom of travel is freedom to trade” (2001, 409). Visa requirements function akin to non-tariff barriers to trade because while goods and capital can circulate, the producers of goods and owners of capital cannot. We can further unpack the wisdom behind these words if we consider that even in the electronic age, the physical presence of investors encourages the establishment and preservation of business interlinkages. Neumayer (2011) reports the reductive impact of visa restrictions on the flow of goods and capital. He argues that primarily by hampering personal contact across borders, visa restrictions significantly lower bilateral trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). He finds that visa restrictions result in a drop of 21–32 percent in bilateral trade and a moderately higher drop of 33–38 percent in bilateral FDI.
Neumayer’s (2011) findings point to the direct negative correlation between restrictive visa policies and economic transactions. Stricter visa policies can erode the dyad’s economic relationship through an alternative mechanism: to the degree that draconian policies are viewed by the commercial partner as an antagonistic signal, we might expect a backlash. After all, restrictions on mobility are antithetical to liberal tenets and collide with shared norms between trade partners (Flynn 2003). Consequently, restrictions might anger economic partners. To illustrate, in response to the Euro pean Union’s controversial proposal to impose visa restrictions on the citizens of the United States and Canada, critics were quick to voice concern over the breakdown of transatlantic relations (Kanter 2016). Additionally, the commercial partner may retaliate by enacting tougher legislation, further stifling economic revenue. Neumayer’s (2010) empirical analysis validates this intuition, showing that reciprocal visa restrictions reduce capital flows between states by 6–12 percent more than unilateral visa requirements.
Reprisals can also manifest as weaker economic ties, either because investors become reticent to continue doing business in the partner state or because the state revokes economic privileges. Key domestic actors in the origin state may also feel slighted by stiff policies. By inhibiting face-to-face communication and contact, restrictive policies will undercut mutual affinity. Turkey’s response to severe visa requirements by Schengen states is a case in point (Kirișçi 2007).4 Pro-trade lobbies and business in Turkey have time and again castigated the European Union for tough visa legislation that contravenes the spirit (and, to some extent, the legal framework) of the European Customs Union. These concerns prompt commercial lobbies at home to champion liberal visa policies toward economic partners. In sum, states will consider the opportunity costs of reduction in trade and capital investment when devising visa policies. Policymakers will also be attuned to vested interests favoring liberal policies.
Hypothesis 4: Conditioning Effect
Economic ties will decrease the impact of transnational terrorism on visa policies.
Economic interlinkages also impose indirect effects by modulating the impact of security imperatives. Material incentives carry more weight than security imperatives in trading states’ grand strategy (Rosecrance 1986; Rudolph 2003). Societal actors that stand to lose from tighter policies may boost the salience of material concerns in the state’s calculus. For example, trade lobbies and multinational corporations have admonished the U.S. government for tough policies that stymie and slow down trade (Yu 2010). Trade groups in particular raise the concern that visa restrictions risk rechanneling business to economic competitors of the United States, such as Brazil, China, and India. Even when the visa is granted, it might have a cooling-down effect and divert foreign business abroad, thus weakening a country’s competitive edge over its economic rivals. Domestic coalitions with internationalist preferences may forge cross-national bonds, facilitating economic interdependence and prosperity (Solingen 1998). These ties in turn significantly shape foreign policy attitudes, both among political elites and at the public level (Fordham and Kleinberg 2009). Economic exchange inculcates mutual trust, which in turn should temper fears associated with economic partners’ citizens. Hence, we expect economic interests to downplay the impact of transnational terrorism: the positive impact of transnational terrorism on policy stringency declines with the strength of economic ties.
Measuring the Concepts
The hypotheses pertain to visa policies in general. This chapter focuses on visa restrictions; the subsequent chapter proceeds to visa rejection rates and documentation requirements. The dependent variable (DV) employed in the analyses that follow is coded 1 if the destination state has a visa requirement in place for the citizens of the origin state and 0 otherwise. The data cover 189 member states of the United Nations and 18 nonmember political territories.5 This yields information on bilateral visa restrictions for 36,300 directed dyads. Directed-dyad design allows each state to appear once as destination (recipient) and once as origin (sending) state. That is, the data differentiate between a visa in force by state A against state B and vice versa. The directed-dyad design is appropriate for this study because visa reciprocity is not guaranteed. To illustrate, 32 percent of states do not reciprocate visa waivers; reciprocity is more common among Western democracies and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member states. Put another way, 68 percent of states do reciprocate policies, but this figure also includes reciprocating by imposing visa restrictions (close to 25 percent).
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