Visa denied Restrictive selectiveness within Schengen visa practices in West Africa

Today, West Africa is among the regions experiencing the highest barriers to international travel. This particularly holds for travel to the European Union: in recent years, Schengen visa procedures experienced a significant shift, reinforcing restrictiveness over legal mobility from West Africa. Yet, restrictiveness alone does not explain current dynamics. The visa process itself reveals how states differentiate between applicants and select ‘desirable’ mobility through discretionary procedures. Despite the central role of visas in this selection process, little is known about everyday consular and application practices. This dissertation examines the politics of access to Schengen visa in West Africa, with a focus on Senegal, through a three-layered approach: first, visa as a leverage tool in the EU’s external dimension, where cooperation in migration control is bargained against temporary labour migration projects; second, the reorganisation of consular services through outsourcing and digitalisation of application procedures; third, the risk-assessment and profiling practices of consulates that create categories of ‘suspicious’ applicants.
The study adopts a mixed-method design, combining interviews conducted with institutional authorities and civil society representatives in Senegal and with EU institutions, alongside the first analysis of disaggregated Schengen visa data covering the period 1999-2019. Findings reveal a system shaped by opacity, restrictive filtering practices, and the problematic role of digitalised and private application procedures. In fact, current consular profiling practices have considerably intensified selective outcomes. Eventually, this dissertation contributes to ongoing debates on Schengen visa policy as increasingly security-oriented and undermining equal access to legal pathways for West African citizens.