Open doors (for almost all): visa policies and ethnic selectivity in Ecuador

Luisa Feline Freier – London School of Economics:

Open doors (for almost all): visa policies and ethnic selectivity in Ecuador
Luisa Feline Freier, l.f.freier@lse.ac.uk
Department of Government, LSE
Abstract
There is broad consensus that immigration policies moved from prevalent negative ethnic
selectivity towards widespread ethnic neutrality after World War II. This assessment is
biased because it neglects visa policy-making. Travel visas are important immigration
management tools, and overt selection by national origin persists in this policy f
ield. The paper analyses the extreme case of recent Ecuadorian visa policy-making, from the
annulment of all visa requirements in 2008 to the partial reintroduction of visas for ten
African and Asian countries in 2010.The Ecuadorian government justifies the restrictive response to the increase in south south flows as security policy.Qualitative research reveals that alleged security concerns are closely intertwined with ethnic prejudice of both domestic and international political actors.

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Within the context of recent Latin American immigration policy making , Ecuador presents an extreme case. As in other countries in the region, Ecuadorian intellectuals in past decades
have claimed that society had rid itself of former ethnic discrimination. Scholarly evidence, however, rather suggests that racial and ethnic discrimination against indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorians that has been an essential characteristic of Ecuadorian society since early colonial times, still is ubiquitous in public life and the media, and enshrined in Ecuadorian social psychology today (de la Torre 1996; Cervone 1999; Rahier 1999; Beck et al. 2011). A recent study published by the World Economic Forum, indeed finds very high levels of xenophobia in Ecuadorian society (WEF 2011). 10 Despite the prevalent ethnic prejudice and xenophobia, President Rafael Correa subjected the country’s migration policy to a ‘liberal shock treatment’ by implementing universal visa freedom in June 2008, which was partially reversed for a selected group of African and Asian nationals in December 2008 and September 2010. Certainly, the shift of Ecuadorian democracy towards wha Levitsky(2013) calls“ competitive authoritarianism” increased Correa’s discretion in the area of immigration and visa policy – making. READ FULL STUDY IN PDF