The world could be your oyster, but it depends on your passport

Ceren Dolma

Hi there! Ceren here, from Datawrapper’s Customer Success & Support team. As I go through my second visa application of this year, I find myself thinking a lot about passports and the power they hold when it comes to freedom of movement. So in this Weekly Chart, I look into the privilege that is visa-free travel and its global distribution.

Visa requirements typically depend on two factors: the passport you hold and the destination you intend to travel to. If you hold a more powerful passport, you might be granted the freedom to roam around the globe; if you don’t, you are likely already familiar with the painstaking world of e-visas, visas on arrival, and formal visa applications.

Formal visa application processes are often time-consuming, expensive, and complicated. Based on my recent experiences, they typically go like this:

• Fill in an online application form (if you can manage to figure out the type of form required for your travel purposes and navigate your way through the bureaucratic jargon).
• Gather relevant documentation, typically including proof of travel and accommodation arrangements, which need to be paid in advance (for a visa you might not get).
• Make an appointment to give biometrics such as fingerprints. Depending on where you live, that might mean traveling a lengthy distance to an application center (which I recently found out you still need to do even if you just gave your fingerprints three months ago).
• Pay an application fee (once again, for a visa you might not be granted).
• Leave your passport at the visa application center and then either travel back to the center to pick it up or pay for it to be shipped back to you (and you won’t find out if the visa was granted until you physically get your hands back on your passport).

As much as I could go on complaining about the process, and how dehumanizing it can be at times, what I really want to do here is explore the global patterns in who needs to go through this experience and who does not:

The inequality is stark, to say the least. Citizens of countries in North America or Europe's Schengen Area, as well as other wealthy nations like the United Arab Emirates, Japan, and Singapore, hold some of the most powerful passports in the world, granting them near-universal freedom to travel with minimal legal barriers. On the other hand, citizens of countries in Africa, Southwest Asia, and South Asia face disproportionately stringent visa requirements.

An individual person experiences the world very differently depending on their passport. For instance, a Syrian passport holder can travel to only 7 destinations without any sort of visa procedures, specifically to Iran, Malaysia, Dominica, the Federated States of Micronesia, Haiti, and Seychelles. An Emirati passport holder, meanwhile, can travel to 124.

The two maps above show how welcoming or closed off the world may look based on nothing but the sheer luck of the citizenship a person is born into.

A map can only go so far towards displaying the injustices related to freedom of movement. Holding a passport in itself can be a privilege compared to statelessness. But even when visa applications are duly available, the decision-making process is opaque and the fairness of the results is dubious. My hope is that these maps can still be a starting point to bring attention to these issues. The next step would be to delve into the underlying causes behind the patterns of freedom of movement, or lack thereof — but perhaps that's for another Weekly Chart!

That is it from me, thank you for reading! Next week's Weekly Chart will come from our developer Linus.

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Ceren Dolma

(she/her, @ceren_do) is a part of the support and customer success team. She is a cartographer by trade and has found her way into data vis by way of making maps to tell stories. Outside of work, she likes to read, teach yoga, go bouldering, and she is most recently learning tricks with hula hoops. Ceren lives in Belfast.

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