Global Identity Politics of Visa Regimes and Everyday Status Games

Border control remains the site where the state’s performative domination over territory and bodies of individuals is most physically felt. Free travel is a privilege for citizens of few countries, while others face complex bureaucratic obstacles. Visa regimes are seen as new “technologies of control” (Bigo & Guild, 2004), which are now firmly embedded within the EU’s bureaucracy. We argue that visa regimes are not only bureaucratic practices but productive of global hierarchies and embedded in status games. While fruitful, the extant status research focuses on how states’ status concerns prompt foreign particular policies and neglects how states’ status feeds back upon their citizens. This paper explores the interface between the global identity politics of visa regimes and their micro-enactment upon citizens. The aim is to analyze how states’ status in international hierarchies influences the everyday lives of citizens. Using the EU’s “neighbourhood policy” as a case, we investigate the linkages between the global and the local: 1) How do states contest and escape EU’s ominous visa “blacklist”? 2) How do these migration hierarchies inform and constitute individual everyday experiences? Data gathered from interviews with diplomats, travellers and discourse analysis of EU documents animate our analysis.