A Reverse Migration Paradox? Policy Liberalisation and New South- South Migration to Latin America
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THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE A REVERSE MIGRATION PARADOX? POLICY LIBERALISATION AND NEW SOUTH- SOUTH MIGRATION TO LATIN AMERICA LUISA FELINE FREIER DE FERRARI A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, 30th MAY 2016 DECLARATION I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I indicate joint work, in which case the extent of the work carried out by me and any other person is clearly identified (see below). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. In accordance with the regulations, I have deposited an electronic copy of it in LSE Theses Online held by the British Library of Political and Economic Science and have granted permission for my thesis to be made available for public reference. Otherwise, this thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I also certify that this thesis was copy edited for conventions of language, spelling and grammar by Rosalind Hearder. Contact details are available upon request. Co-Authored Work and Prior Publications The first paper was co-authored with Diego Acosta Arcarazo and has been published in 2015 as: “Turning the immigration policy paradox up-side down? Populist liberalism and discursive gaps in South America,” International Migration Review, 49 (3). I certify that we independently had the same initial idea for the paper, which we first discussed at the Latin American Studies Association’s (LASA) International Congress in San Francisco in May 2012. Diego Acosta’s contribution to the paper focused on the legal analysis and the case of Brazil. He conducted six elite interviews. I contributed with the theoretical framing of the paper, the analysis of political discourses and my knowledge of the cases of Argentina and Ecuador based on 64 in-depth interviews. For its inclusion in this PhD, I made slight revisions to the published version of paper. The second paper was co-authored with Kyle Holloway. I certify that we independently had the idea of using Ecuador as a natural experiment to test the impact of visa freedom on immigration. I presented a first draft of such a paper at the 2012 International Political Science Association (IPSA) Congress in Madrid in July 2012. The International Migration Institute (IMI) published a later version of this paper as a working paper in 2014. Kyle Holloway had used Ecuador as a natural experiment in his Master’s thesis. He contributed to Paper Two with the statistical modelling. Apart from the theoretical framing, the qualitative section and the writing up, I also contributed some ideas to the statistical modelling, such as using Peru as the control case for an additional robustness check. Luisa F. Freier, 2012, “A Gateway to the Americas: Ecuador’s ‘Policy of Open Doors’ as a Natural Experiment”, Paper presented at the IPSA Congress, Madrid, 8-12 July. Luisa F. Freier, 2014, “The Importance of Access Policies in South-South Migration: Ecuador’s Policy of Open Doors as a Quasi Experiment”, IMI Working Paper Series, University of Oxford. 2 Holloway, Kyle, “Measuring the Impact of Unrestricted Entry on Urban Crime in Ecuador”, MSc thesis in Economics, University of British Columbia, August 3, 2012. Earlier versions of some sections of the conclusions have been published in: Ceriani, Pablo and Luisa F. Freier, 2015, “Lights and shadows in Latin American immigration legislation” in: Cantor, David, Luisa F. Freier and Jean-Pierre Gauci (eds.), A Liberal Tide: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Latin American Migration and Asylum Policy-making, Titles in the Studies of the Americas Series, UCL. Freier, Luisa F. and Diego Acosta Arcarazo, 2015, “Beyond smoke and mirrors? Discursive gaps in the liberalisation of South American immigration laws” in: Cantor, David J., Luisa F. Freier and Jean-Pierre Gauci (eds.), A Liberal Tide: Towards a Paradigm Shift in Latin American Migration and Asylum Policy-making, Titles in the Studies of the Americas Series, UCL. Freier, Luisa F., 2015, “A liberal paradigm shift? A Critical Appraisal of Recent Trends in Latin American asylum legislation” in: Jean-Pierre Gauci et al. (eds.), Exploring The Boundaries Of Refugee Law: Current Protection Challenges, Brill Publishers. I certify that the relevant sections republished in this thesis are my work. The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (CCIS) published an early version of the third paper as: Luisa F. Freier, 2013, “Open Doors doors for (al)most all: visa policies and ethnic selectivity in Ecuador”, The Center of Comparative Immigration Studies (CCIS), University of San Diego, Working Paper, no. 188. I declare that my thesis consists of 57, 272 words, excluding references and appendices. 3 To Lucia and Giulia. May they grow up in a world of fewer borders. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This PhD is the third “baby” born to me in the past three years, and it has been by far the most difficult birthing process. The thesis required the longest gestation period; she needed the most pain managing techniques (from red wine to outright denial) and inflicted on me the most serious doubts whether to “keep pushing” was even within the realm of the humanly possible. It is done. She’s out. I thank my supervisor Eiko Thielemann for his support and patience, for trusting me to go down my own path and for pushing me across the finish line. Thank you to David FitzGerald at UCSD for acting as my unofficial advisor at many points along the way. I thank my co-authors Diego Acosta and Kyle Holloway for the enriching experience of conducting joint research. Thank you to Jean-Pierre Gauci and David Cantor for their camaraderie in our conference and publication project, which, for the first time, made me feel part of a small but growing research community. I’m indebted to many people who have read and commented on my work over the years, among them: Jacob Birken, Philippe Bourbeau, Alexandra Delano, Ignazio De Ferrari, José Fischel de Andrade, Ana Margheritis, Ayesha Siddiqi, Dustin Welch, and the members of the political science research seminar at the Universidad del Pacífico, Peru, as well as the anonymous reviewers of the IMI Working Paper series at the University of Oxford and the International Migration Review (IMR). Thank you also to Karina Sarmiento, Pablo Ceriani and Leonardo Carrión for being extremely approachable and making many empirical clarifications over the years, and to Stefan Bauchowitz for editing countless of my figures. When first entering H 421 I had no idea what a life-changing impact conducting a PhD at the LSE would have on me. I thank all who made these years not only an academically but personally enriching experience: for and foremost, my husband, Ignazio. Thank you also to our friend and “godfather” José Olivas for watching over us, and to all fellow H421ers and my PhD cohort for sharing a good amount of stimulating discussions, laughs and also an occasional tear. When remembering my PhD years, I will always think of the friendships found at Goodenough College. I thank Mia Hunt for being my inspiration for birthing babies, and PhDs with babies. Ayesha Siddiqi, Talia Guevara, Jacinta Blas Grados and Dayci Ortíz Rojas, I thank for their much-needed moral support from far and near, whether in the form of animating messages and calls, or blueberry pancakes. Thanks are also due to The National and their music for always being there, always, even in the most difficult and lonely moments. Thank you to my brother, Maximilian, for luring me out of Africa and to the LSE, and my parents, Juliane and Rolf for supporting this project from beginning to end. I thank my own little family for their patience: Ignazio for his unbreakable and steady support, and for never holding it against me that I demanded levels of empathy I did not (always) provide when he was finishing his thesis three years ago, little Lucia for waiting and waiting and comforting me towards the end, and baby Giulia for calmly spending the first weeks of her life with me in front of the screen. My heartfelt thanks to Rosalind Hearder, Ayesha and Jacob for helping me submit. I thank the German Academic Exchange Service and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom for financially supporting my PhD studies. 5 ABSTRACT In past decades, immigration policies in Latin America developed in stark contrast to other regions. Whereas most countries moved towards more restrictive policies, many Latin American countries liberalised their immigration policy frameworks and recently passed laws that expand individual rights in unprecedented ways. At the same time, migratory movements in Latin America are in flux, one of the most noteworthy recent developments being the increase in extra-continental immigration from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. This PhD explores a reverse migration paradox inherent in the reciprocal causal relationship between immigration policy liberalisation and new south-south migration. The first paper uses a mixed approach of legal analysis and process tracing to show this paradox in the cases of Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador. It analyses the tension between liberal discourses and policies that invoke the universality of migrants’ rights and free human mobility, on the one hand, and the rejection of recently increasing irregular south–south migration on the other. Using a difference-in-difference design, the second paper tests the impact of Ecuador’s policy of visa freedom of 2008 on previously restricted countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and shows that immigration from these regions more than doubled.