The Effect of Visas on Migration Processes

Mathias Czaika and Hein de Haas

International Migration Review, 2017, vol. 51, issue 4, 893-926

Abstract: The effectiveness of migration policies has been widely contested. However, because of methodological and conceptual limitations, evidence has remained inconclusive. Moreover, prior studies focus on the effects of policies on inflows and fail to assess the simultaneous effect of policies on outflows. This is essential from a theoretical point of view as immigration restrictions may reduce both inflows and outflows and, hence, overall circulation. This renders the effect of immigration restrictions on net migration theoretically ambiguous. To fill this gap, and using unique migration and visa data from the Determinants of International Migration (DEMIG) project, this paper assesses the short†and long†term effects of travel visa policy regimes on bilateral immigration and emigration dynamics. The results suggest that travel visa policies significantly decrease inflows, but this effect is undermined by decreasing outflows of the same migrant groups. This confirms that migration restrictions decrease circulation and tend to encourage long†term settlement, and thereby sharply reduce the responsiveness of migration to economic fluctuations in destination and origin societies. We also identify asymmetric policy effects with migration flows declining only very gradually after a visa introduction but increasing almost immediately after visa removal.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/imre.12261

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:intmig:v:51:y:2017:i:4:p:893-926

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0197-9183

Access Statistics for this article

International Migration Review is currently edited by Ellen Percy Kraly

More articles in International Migration Review from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().