Passport privilege and “passportism” greatly affect travel equity, and who is granted visa-free travel presents stark realities.
Passport privilege, enjoyed by those deemed to have “powerful” passports, refers to the ease with which those persons can enter other countries with a visa on arrival or without a visa at all. Relatedly, passportism is discrimination based on a person’s citizenship. While some benefit from passport privilege, others suffer systems that uphold and bolster passportism.
The matter is further complicated when a country’s passport holders have vastly more visa-free global access than the country itself offers others. The United States, for example, offers visa-free travel to passport holders from 46 countries. Americans, however, can travel to 179 countries visa-free. That imbalance, along with travel bans and efforts to increase visitor screenings, closes off and deters many travelers from visiting the U.S., despite Americans’ widespread ability to travel abroad without friction.
From a financial standpoint, passportism and the costs associated with visa applications disadvantage certain nationals compared to those who face fewer global mobility restrictions. It is another intersection of the issue where travel inequity rears an ugly head.
In a quote that highlights the immense impact of the matter, Dr. Christian H. Kaelin, creator of the Henley Passport Index, and chairman at Henley & Partners, said, “Today, passport privilege plays a decisive role in shaping opportunity, security, and economic participation, with rising average access masking a reality in which mobility advantages are increasingly concentrated among the world’s most economically powerful and politically stable nations.”
Why Are Passport Privilege And Passportism Significant?
As Henley & Partners details in a press release about this year’s annual Passport Index, “While a record number of passports now cluster at the top of the ranking, those at the bottom remain increasingly isolated, underscoring a widening global mobility gap.”
The ability to travel freely to other countries is life-altering, and it greatly shapes the scope of what one’s life can look like. Moreover, the need to travel abroad is often urgent, spontaneous, or driven by grave circumstances.
However, those with severely restricted global mobility may not be able to navigate the world as they need to. One may be unable to escape dire conditions where they are because they can’t get a visa elsewhere. Elsewhere, someone may miss a major life event for a loved one because their visa wasn’t granted quickly enough, or at all. Countries in the Global South are largely characterized by lower-ranked passport power, leaving their citizens vulnerable to passportism. In some cases, a person could even miss the last moments and burial of a direct relative.
In a piece published earlier this year by Adventure.com, Indian journalist Akanksha Singh recalled not being able to fly urgently, at short notice, from India to Kenya for her late aunt’s funeral because her passport was awaiting a visa from an Irish embassy.
Her reflection after the deeply unfortunate experience strikingly documents the lengths to which nationals in the Global South may have to go to obtain visas. The stark disparity compared to travelers granted frictionless roaming thanks to their passport privilege underscores how invasive even the attempt to travel can be for disenfranchised persons.
“For passports from the Global South, visa requirements span employment letters, tax returns, pay stubs, officially certified bank statements (to show you have adequate funds to travel), booked accommodations and return flights, photocopies of all previous passports, biometrics… and visa application services/embassies can sometimes hold passports for up to one month at a time, maybe more,” poignantly wrote Singh. “Often, this is followed by an in-person interview — a humiliation ritual of sorts, where you answer questions you’ve already answered in your visa application as your self-worth plummets, even as a comparatively well-traveled person. Once you’re done, it’s a question of waiting (anxiously),” she added.
