Origin-state restrictions on legal exit play a crucial role in shaping international mobility but remain largely undermeasured in migration governance research, which has focused primarily on destination-country immigration control. This paper introduces the Emigration Ban Indicator (EBI), the first time-varying, disaggregated measure of documented prohibitions on legal exit, covering 25 Asian and African countries from 1960 to 2023. The EBI records the presence and population coverage of six ban types—occupation bans, military conscription, women-specific, men-specific, general, and other—while its bilateral version captures destination-specific restrictions. Our analysis shows that, contrary to widespread belief, emigration bans have not become less common; rather, broad population-wide bans have given way to more targeted restrictions, especially on specific occupations. Patterns vary sharply by region: occupation bans, particularly those on domestic workers, concentrate in South and Southeast Asia, while military conscription bans dominate North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Different ban types are embedded in distinct political, gendered, labor market, and geopolitical contexts, and emigration bans should not be equated with immobility or the achievement of stated policy objectives. The EBI provides a new empirical basis for studying origin-state exit control and speaks to debates on migration governance, mobility inequality, and the right to leave.
To what extent does the perception of democratic backsliding motivate international migration? Drawing on global survey data, we first show that citizens dissatisfied with the state of democracy in their country are significantly more likely to express a desire to migrate. Leveraging variation in survey fielding dates relative to elections, we show that deconsolidating elections can act as catalysts, activating migration intentions particularly among those citizens most concerned with democratic freedoms and institutions. These findings suggest that elections can encourage the selective exit of democratically committed citizens, potentially contributing to a self-reinforcing cycle of democratic erosion in countries of origin.
In this article, we develop the concept of fragile transnationalism to conceptualize the re-infrastructuring of migrant transnationalism under conditions of post-neoliberal globalization. Since the 2008 Great Recession, the world has witnessed the demise of neoliberal globalization, amid an ongoing political, socioeconomic, and environmental polycrisis, and the consequent emergence of a post-neoliberal world order. We argue that the attendant fragmentation of global political order, the resurgence of authoritarian nationalism worldwide, and the societal implications of climate change and emergencies have reconfigured the basic conditions for migrant transnationalism. Our analysis points to a far-reaching reassertion of the nation-state in migration governance. In response, we retheorize migration infrastructure as a conceptual lens for analyzing migrant transnationalism. We reveal how an assemblage of weak infrastructures, particularly the fragility within and between its constituent components, has reshaped the logic, practice, and experiences of transnational migration and lives.
