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Voting home or abroad? Comparing migrants' electoral participation in countries of origin and of residence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Sergiu Gherghina Open the ORCID record for Sergiu Gherghina [Opens in a new window]  and
Huan-Kai Tseng
Sergiu Gherghina*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
Huan-Kai Tseng
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
*
* Corresponding author. Email: sergiulor@yahoo.com
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Abstract

The political participation of immigrants has received increased scholarly attention over recent decades. However, comparisons between the electoral behavior of immigrants in their countries of origin and of residence are still limited. This article addresses this gap in the literature and seeks to identify the determinants of Romanian immigrants' electoral participation in the local elections of four West European countries (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) as compared to their turnout in their home country's legislative elections. Looking through the lenses of exposure theory, we hypothesize that contact with institutions, people, and values from the countries of residence are likely to have different effects in the two types of elections. We test the explanatory power of four main variables - time spent in the host country, social networks, degree of involvement in the local community, and the type of relationship with citizens of their host countries - to which we add a series of individual-level controls such as age, education, gender, and media exposure. To assess our claim, we employ binary logistic regression to analyze original web survey data collected in the summer of 2013. The result supports the empirical implications of exposure theory.

Keywords

immigrantsvotingcountry of origincountry of residenceexposureresilience
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 456 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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