The impact of immigration regulations and visa policies on the gendered nature of international migration

Visa requirements are a strong indicator of the objectives and priorities of a country’s immigration policy. This chapter explores the gendered dimensions of work, student, and family reunification visas. The requirements commonly in place for different residence categories tend to appear neutral in gender terms. However, there is a consensus in the literature that they impact immigration flows and integration processes, which include the masculinisation and feminisation of immigration flows, as well as the reinforcement of gender roles due to the interaction between visa policies and labour segregation. To an extent, these effects go back to gender-gaps regarding access to the workforce and higher education, which persist in many sending countries in the Global South. We juxtapose these findings with recent migrant stock data, and explore how the geographic bias of studies on the gendered effects of visa policies on Northern receiving states limits theory development. We argue that future research should be wider in geographical and conceptual scope to include South-South migration, LGBTQ+ migrants, and tourist visas.