This paper investigates the technologies of disciplining the migration of third-country nationals through neoliberal market veridiction in many European Union member states. By investigating the Schengen visa regulations and the regulations relating to resident permits and family reunification rights in various European countries, the paper sheds light on how conceptualisations of human fitness measured as class and financial worth, i.e.as human capital, are used as methods of granting or denying entry for third-country nationals. Moreover, the paper then compares these rationalities to earlier, eugenic ways of problematizing immigration in the United States from 1860s onwards. This historical comparison shows how social Darwinist notions of human worth continue to function as an integral part of rationalities and technologies of disciplining immigrant’s rights. The paper claims that immigration policy functions inside a neoliberal framework of biopolitics in which human worth is calculated as ‘quality’ through market veridiction and not as ‘equality’ and shows how migrants’ rights are made to function as something to be earned rather than something equally available to all.
