The Politics of Management

Abstract

This chapter examines the management of visa policy implementation. State-bound agendas and diplomatic concerns inform the management of the visa application process, which is not merely the realm of technicalities. History affects the ways in which consulate premises materialize Belgian, French, and Italian sovereignty in Morocco. The cross-national differences in the visa application process can be understood only if one considers that process to be ‘street-level diplomacy.’ The chapter illuminates the national organizational conditions in which EU visa policy is implemented. It brings insights that nuance the claims about the externalization of migration control via EU visa policy mainly because the Ministry of the Interior in the home countries is active in various visa processes. Taking account of the humans and non-humans involved in visa-examining processes is a first necessary step toward the comparative analysis of day-to-day implementation practice. The different uses of non-humans (Schengen and national technological toolboxes) are particularly effective at showing the different understandings of decision-making as a more or less objectivized process. There exist also different understandings of the aims ascribed to the same Schengen technological tool (the Schengen Information System, the Visa Information System, the emails sent within the frame of local Schengen cooperation).