Ever-increasing international migration has challenged the democratic dimension of political inclusion, especially with incorporating non-resident populations into national electoral practices. This has stimulated scholars to examine more closely the processes of emigrant enfranchisement, transnational voting behaviour and non-electoral participation by non-residents. Yet, a lack of comprehensive dialogue exists between migration studies and the literature on political participation. By combining these theoretical avenues, this special issue fills the gap in connecting the trajectories of non-resident citizens, co-ethnics and/or second-generation migrants with (perceived) homeland politics. We focus on specific European country cases both from a cross-regional perspective and by using a case study strategy in homeland and residence country contexts to respond to a set of previously unanswered research questions.

Portuguese emigration has a long global history and, in recent decades, has increased substantially and diversified its range of destinations. Recent emigration, predominantly to the European Union and Lusophone countries in Africa, complemented the traditional 19th to twentieth centuries’ waves of emigration to the Americas. The Portuguese Diaspora is multigenerational and globally distributed, although diverse. How are those generations of migrants organized within the local spaces of the Diaspora? Based on an innovative survey of more than 500 Portuguese Diaspora organisations, this paper shows how migrant engagement policies and practices are evolving and dealing with the new types of Diaspora relations, organisations and institutions. The main output of this research is an exploratory typology of the contemporary apparatuses of these Portuguese Diaspora systems and their nodes. This typology characterises the modern political engagement of non-resident citizens through their participation in associations and other social networks. With this pioneering paper, we intend to open a discussion regarding the means and forms available to mobilise current and past emigrant groups within a meaningful Diaspora policy.

Focusing on the3million—a major organisation that was formed after the 2016 Brexit Referendum to represent EU citizens in the UK, this article explores the role of online communication in supporting civic actors’ lobbying and mobilisation strategies at local, national and international levels. Apart from multi-scalar dimensions of these civic organisations’ work and of the way EU citizens themselves engage, we identify different strategies of impact. These are inter-linked and performed in a nonlinear fashion and include: emotionalising; politicising; channelling; contesting. These findings elaborate on the way multinational diaspora formation and mobilisation in the 21st century should be conceptualised, and their importance for stakeholder empowerment. We argue that contextual factors—both in terms of the socio-political capital of the people engaged in mobilisation and the features and dynamics of opportunity structures in a particular country and historical moment—are important in understanding why civic actors emerge, how they mobilise and the way their status and focus of their work transforms over time. The article significantly contributes to research studying the use of digital communications and especially e-newsletters and e-mails by non-state actors for mobilising and lobbying purposes.

This study examines political media consumption among non-resident citizens, and whether following politics in traditional and social media in their country of residence and origin has a mobilizing effect on voting in origin-country elections. The topic of our study is inspired by the trend towards increased enfranchisement of external citizens, improved methods for participation from abroad, and the transformation of the media landscape with enhanced possibilities for external voters to follow politics in their country of origin. Based on a survey directed towards a stratified random sample of Finnish external citizens in 15 countries, we find that politically oriented media consumption in the country of origin substantially increases the likelihood of participating in origin-country elections and that this effect holds for traditional media channels as well as for social media. A corresponding mobilizing effect is, however, not found for following politics in the country of residence. This demonstrates the value of relevant information for political participation.

Over the past decades, diasporas’ engagement in homeland elections has become a highly salient issue, especially given the widespread implementation of enfranchisement policies for citizens living abroad. Spain stands out in the European context with its long emigration history, its sizeable population abroad, and the enactment of the so-called ‛voto rogado’ (‛begged vote’) system that hindered external voting by requiring non-resident citizens to submit a separate voter registration application to become eligible for casting the ballot in Spanish elections. Yet, little is known so far about the voting patterns of Spaniards abroad. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the electoral (non)alignment between resident and non-resident voters in the Spanish general elections held over the past three decades. We argue that a comprehensive assessment of electoral (non)alignment must consider two different analytical layers of turnout and party choice. The article shows that changing electoral rules on extraterritorial voting, the increasingly diverse profile of Spaniards abroad, and Spanish parties’ strategies towards the diaspora interact to account for differences in overseas Spaniards’ turnout rates and party choices when compared to resident voters.

Increasingly many citizens residing abroad maintain connections to their country of origin and follow its national elections. Considering that this group constitutes a growing share of the national electorate, it is essential to better understand factors that motivate electoral participation. In this study, we explore the role of economic, social and cultural ties in a unified analysis of turnout among Finnish citizens residing abroad. We rely on individual-level register data that cover the entire Finnish expatriate electorate (n = 96,290) and match their personal background characteristics (e.g. property ownership, length of stay abroad, language) with official turnout from the 2019 Finnish parliamentary elections on the bases of personal identification codes. In line with the theoretical expectations, the results provide strong empirical evidence that non-resident citizens who maintain connections to the country of origin are more likely to vote in homeland elections.

This article analyses and explains the rapid electoral success of an emergent populist radical right party in Romania—the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). AUR’s definition of ‘a transnational people’ relates to a multi-layered community—native Romanians within Romania, co-ethnic communities in neighbouring countries, and Romanians living and working abroad—that create, together, a Romanianness in need of representation, and preservation. By focusing on AUR’s definition of ‘the people’ and on (trans)national mobilization, we unwrap a new dimension of populism which refers to broader fields of connectedness across borders in which bottom-up and top-down dynamics co-exist, acting as rhetorical and operational openings for the party’s development and success in the homeland arena.

Contributing to the emerging debate on non-resident citizens’ electoral preferences, this article addresses how migratory contexts affect their propensity to vote for populists. Employing two original datasets with information of external voting results from Latin America and Southern Europe, this study suggests that while external voters are on average slightly less likely to vote for populists than domestic voters, this varies meaningfully from country to country. It depends on the type of populism, populists’ incumbency, and the ideological preferences in the country of residence.

Recent scholarship on diaspora engagement and transnational repression has investigated how authoritarian regimes seek to engage, govern and control their diasporas. Recognizing that diasporas are diverse and that homeland states thus devise different strategies in relation to different groups, this research has—to a large extent—focused on the varied positions held by regime supporters and dissidents. Inter-generational differences, however, have not been studied in this context. Drawing on established frameworks theorizing extraterritorial authoritarian practices, this article explores the ways in which second-generation diaspora—or diaspora youth—is either included as subjects, patriots and clients, or excluded as outlaws and traitors by authoritarian regimes. Drawing on the literature on transnationalism and second-generation migrants, and using examples from empirical cases, we argue that the skills, resources and multi-sited embeddedness of the second-generation diaspora can make them particularly interesting targets for transnational engagement—or repression. We draw attention to specific strategies for mobilizing the support of diaspora youth, but also note that some techniques to control or repress extraterritorial subjects are less efficacious in relation to this generation.

What do national votes mean for dual citizens who have the right to vote here and there? Does political socialization in a liberal democratic system lead to a democratic remittance or do immigrant minorities align with authoritarian regimes challenging the West's liberal democratic values? In this article, we analyse voting preferences by using a transnational lens that focuses on the convergence of two different political systems via immigrant-origin voters. We focus on the Turkish-Dutch population from conservative backgrounds in our aim to gain a thorough understanding of support towards Islamic parties here (in the Netherlands) and there (in Turkey). This is one of just a few studies that have investigated the complex and layered nature of political preferences in a transnational world. A qualitative approach is followed to acquire in-depth insights of the ideas and evaluations of our research group. We collected data through semi-structured interviews (N = 21) between 2017 and 2018. Our conclusions indicate the significance of ethnic and religious identity, opening the way for Erdoğan’s authoritarian populism in shaping political preferences across the transnational political environment. Such influence, however, is limited by other factors such as adherence to democratic values and norms on the one hand and rational political calculations on the other hand.