Dimensions of emigration policy: An indexing exercise for polities across three regions

Specialized indices of immigration, immigrant integration policies, and citizenship policies are expanding the confines of our knowledge in the field of comparative migration policies. Emigration policies, however, have garnered less attention. We address this gap in the literature, by using a new data set to create an index that measures contemporary emigration regulations of 32 polities across three regions in the world (Asia, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean). Based on this exploratory exercise, we examine the assumptions about emigration controls and policies being a matter of the past or belonging to non-democratic regimes. We find that emigration policies go beyond the mere regulation of the right to exit. Different components across a continuum from restriction to encouragement of emigration suggest different rationales and purposes of states, even if the hardest forms of emigration control, such as exit bans are absent in the studied sample.