Researching mobility barriers: the European visa database

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