This doctoral dissertation is composed of three research articles, and it examines the development, determinants and effects of migration and asylum policies. The first article
explains the development of asylum policies in Latin America and tests claims by scholarship
about the existence of a ‘liberal turn’ in asylum policies across the region. To address this
issue, I develop a new methodology – called the Asylum Policies in Latin America (APLA)
Database – to measure policy outputs on asylum across Latin America over time. Applying
this new methodology, I codify the asylum legislation of 19 Latin American countries, over
a 31-year period (1990-2020), using 65 indicators. By discussing trends and outliers, the
article confirms the existence of a ‘liberal turn’ in asylum policies across the region. In the second research article, my co-author and I explain the rationale behind the expansion of refugee protection across Latin America. More specifically we ask, what factors
drove Latin American countries to significantly expand refugee protection over the last two
decades? By using a mixed methods approach – which includes both a series of nested
regression models and process tracing together with evidence from in-depth interviews – we
show how government ideology and regional integration explain the liberalisation of asylum
policy across the region. We also find that this asylum policy liberalisation process was
mostly symbolic. Finally, the third research article examines the effects of visa restrictions in a context
of mass displacement and porous borders. In it, I estimate the effect of introducing visa
restrictions on migrants’ likelihood of travelling and the effects of such visa restrictions
on migrants’ well-being. I do so by studying the recent mass displacement of Venezuelan
nationals through a difference-in-differences research design. Findings suggest that the
introduction of visa restrictions increased irregular entry and irregular visa status for migrants
while also leading to changes in their priorities. Unexpectedly, I do not find evidence of
increased irregularity leading to more incidents of violence suffered by migrants. This article
contributes to the literature on the effectiveness of visa restrictions and its findings have
broad public policy implications.
Authors
- Published in
- United Kingdom