Extending the incumbency presence abroad

West European Politics, 2019

The relationship between political parties and voters is usually analysed in a national framework. However, the majority of states worldwide allow their emigrant citizens to vote from afar. This paper analyses how parties confront the challenge of mobilising voters across borders. We present an analytical framework for comparing the scope of party transnational mobilisation strategies across different electoral systems. Drawing on a contextualised qualitative analysis, the paper analyses transnational electoral mobilisation of the emigrant vote in recent elections in Spain, France, Italy and Romania. The analysis shows that a cost-benefit analysis of electoral incentives explains the scope of transnational campaign efforts of many of the political parties, Yet, we also suggest locating the analysis of party strategies in the particular context of the transnational electoral field, including the high dispersion, uncertainty and volatility of the emigrant vote and the overlap between the electoral arenas among emigrants and at home.

What explains varying levels of emigrant transnational engagement in home-country politics? The well-known difficulties in obtaining migrant profile data and restriction to a few destination countries have resulted in a lack of systematic empirical investigation of this question. We expand nascent efforts to fill this gap by offering a new theoretical framework and novel research design that stress the potential importance of destination characteristics. We argue that the experience and environment in emigration are critical factors for emigrants' engagement with two major types of homeland-related political activities: electoral and community. Using Ukraine as a case of an average migrant-producer developing country and using count models on original survey data on Ukrainian extraterritorial voters in a diverse set of 15 countries, we show that assimilation, emigrant networks, and destination characteristics are consistently strong predictors of transnational political engagement among the emigrants who show at least a minimal concern for homeland politics.

Comparative Political Studies, 2015

What explains varying levels of emigrant transnational engagement in home-country politics? The well-known difficulties in obtaining migrant profile data and restriction to a few destination countries have resulted in a lack of systematic empirical investigation of this question. We expand nascent efforts to fill this gap by offering a new theoretical framework and novel research design that stress the potential importance of destination characteristics. We argue that the experience and environment in emigration are critical factors for emigrants’ engagement with two major types of homeland-related political activities: electoral and community. Using Ukraine as a case of an average migrant-producer developing country and employing count models on original survey data on Ukrainian extraterritorial voters in a diverse set of 15 countries, we show that assimilation, emigrant networks, and destination characteristics are consistently strong predictors of transnational political engagement among the emigrants who show at least a minimal concern for homeland politics.

Migration Letters, 2020

The scholarship on political transnationalism aims to understand how and why emigrants keep relevant political ties with their state of origin as well as cultivate new ones with their country of residence. Through the multiple formal shapes that such political ties can adopt, much has been written on the electoral channel, neglecting other important formal mechanisms of political participation from abroad. In this short paper we contribute to the study of one such mechanism: consultative bodies of emigrant affairs. Looking at an entire world region -Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)- we compare the creation of such consultative bodies to the adoption of electoral rights and account for the main characteristics of consultative bodies, creating a typology of them along on two dimensions: independence from governmental authorities and degree of entitlement in the policy-making process. This work aims to set the ground for and encourage further comparative large-N and in-depth case ...

New York University Law Review, 2006

In this piece, Ruth Rubio-Marín discusses how emigrant citizenship (understood as emigrants' efforts to remain included in their national communities and the efforts by emigration states to encourage this) relates to the prevailing notion of the nationstate. She argues that emigrant citizenship challenges some of the traditional elements of the nation-state construct, such as the mutually exclusive and territorially bounded notion of political belonging, while, on the whole, reasserting the relevance of national membership. The piece then turns to the normative force of the concept of emigrant citizenship, focusing on two of the claims that are more commonly articulated by expatriates: absentee voting and a right to retain their nationality of origin even if they naturalize in the country of residence. Rubio-Marín argues that emigrants have a right to retain their nationality of origin, and with it, a sense of national identity, their ties with the country of origin, and the option to return, even if they naturalize abroad. Yet she finds that they do not have a similar right to absentee voting. Instead, absentee voting should only be seen as an option that, under certain circumstances, sending countries may legitimately embrace. This holds true, she claims, regardless of expatriates' contributions to the national economies through remittances or other forms of capital inflow.

Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2018

Globalisation, European integration and increased migration have made life more mobile. Consequently, electorates have become increasingly dispersed geographically. Utilising survey data compiled from Finnish citizens residing abroad (n = 1,067), we study transnational political participation of emigrant voters. First, we examine how national identification relates with turnout in parliamentary elections and which factors influence emigrants’ voting decision. Second, we analyse how transnational political engagement of Finnish emigrants could be described. The key findings suggest that identification with the sending country has little or no influence on the likelihood of voting in homeland parliamentary elections. Instead, distance to the closest polling station, interest in politics, time lived abroad, age and educational level significantly influence an emigrant’s probability of voting. We suggest that ‘zero-sum relationship’ best describes transnational political engagement among Finnish emigrants: increased engagement in one country leads to decreased involvement in the other. This finding contributes significantly to knowledge of transnational political participation, a topic that has been rarely surveyed from emigrants’ perspectives. KEYWORDS: Emigrant voting, cross-border political participation, Finland, transnational political engagement

The main goal of the present position paper is to create an interpretative framework for the role of origin countries and societies in influencing the political participation of immigrants. Considering that we are opening a new line of research within the literature on political participation of immigrants and integration, we first consider the more classic methodological approaches in this field: this is to understand better any gaps. Second we consider other fields in the literature, namely diaspora policies and transnational politics. This is to allow a deeper identification of the influence of the countries and societies of origin. Then, we map state and non-state actors implicated in the countries of origin, their strategies, and how they overcome difficulties in their actions. On the one hand, we consider state actors’ strategies and interactions with emigrants, both in conventional and unconventional forms of political participation: as well as the issue of external voting, a...

A growing number of countries have granted their emigrant citizens the right to vote in homeland elections from afar. Yet, there is little understanding of the extent to which emigration issues are visible in the subsequent legislative processes of policy making and representation. Based on an original dataset of parliamentary activities in Spain, Italy, France and Romania, this paper analyses why political parties pay attention to emigrants. To that end we propose a conceptual framework which draws on both theories of issue salience and substantive representation. Bridging these two frameworks allows us bring in both parties (salience) and constituencies (representation) in the analysis of the linkage between electorates and parliaments at a transnational level. We test a series of hypothesis and find that parties are more likely to focus on emigration issues the stronger their electoral incentives and in the context of electoral systems allowing the emigrants to elect special emigrant representatives.

INTERACT Research Report 2013/17, 2013

The main goal of the present position paper is to set an interpretative framework for the study of the role of origin countries and societies in influencing the political participation of immigrants. Considering that we are opening a new research line within the existing literature on political participation of immigrants and integration, we first consider the more classic methodological approaches in this field to understand the existing gaps. Secondly we consider other literature’s fields, namely diaspora policies and transnational politics, allowing for a deeper identification of the influence of the countries and societies of origin. Then, we map state and non-state actors implicated in the countries of origin, their strategies, and how they overcome the difficulties in their action. On the one hand, we consider specifically state actors’ strategies and interactions with emigrants, both in conventional and unconventional forms of political participation, as well as the issue of external voting, as a paradigmatic example of conventional political participation towards origin countries. On the other hand, we look at non-state actors and their strategies to influence migrant political participation, towards the destination and origin countries. In parallel, we introduce some relevant case studies underlining and exemplifying the role and the impact of origin countries’ actors on political participation of migrants, both in their host and home countries. Afterwards, we propose a framework to interpret those relations between the different actors in origin countries and migrants in the field of political participation. Finally, we identify the gaps in the scientific knowledge that deserve to be covered in the next steps of Interact project, we point out the key factors influencing migrants’ political participation that deserve deeper research, and we underline the specific questions to answer to fill the gap in the knowledge of those interactions.

Studies in Comparative International Development, 2014