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The Impact of Immigration Regulations and Visa Policies on the Gendered Nature of International Migration

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The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Migration

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Abstract

Visa requirements are a strong indicator of the objectives and priorities of a country’s immigration policy. This chapter explores the gendered dimensions of work, student, and family reunification visas. The requirements commonly in place for different residence categories tend to appear neutral in gender terms. However, there is a consensus in the literature that they impact immigration flows and integration processes, which include the masculinisation and feminisation of immigration flows, as well as the reinforcement of gender roles due to the interaction between visa policies and labour segregation. To an extent, these effects go back to gender-gaps regarding access to the workforce and higher education, which persist in many sending countries in the Global South. We juxtapose these findings with recent migrant stock data, and explore how the geographic bias of studies on the gendered effects of visa policies on Northern receiving states limits theory development. We argue that future research should be wider in geographical and conceptual scope to include South-South migration, LGBTQ+ migrants, and tourist visas.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The differentiation between countries in the Global North and South is misleading in that it does not fully correspond to historic and geographic realities, and poses the normative risk of naturalising a developmental divide between the two hemispheres. Nevertheless, this conceptual differentiation is heuristically useful and, thus, applied in this chapter.

  2. 2.

    Coman, Hamilton and Asociatia Accept v Inspectoratul General pentru Imigrări and Ministerul Afacerilor Interne (C-673/16) EU:C:2018:385.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad del Pacífico, Lima, Peru

    Luisa Feline Freier

  2. WZB, Berlin, Germany

    Nieves Fernández Rodríguez

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  1. Luisa Feline Freier
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  2. Nieves Fernández Rodríguez
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Correspondence to Luisa Feline Freier .

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  1. Center for Technological Society and Human Future, Universidad Mayor, Santiago, Chile

    Claudia Mora

  2. Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Nicola Piper

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Freier, L.F., Rodríguez, N.F. (2021). The Impact of Immigration Regulations and Visa Policies on the Gendered Nature of International Migration. In: Mora, C., Piper, N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63347-9_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63347-9_31

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