Diaspora mobilisation and homeland politics

Abstract

Increased international migration has challenged the boundaries of the traditional understanding of political inclusion, thus raising concerns on if, how and why states globally incorporate non-resident citizens into their demos. This has stirred the scholarly interest in processes of emigrant enfranchisement and political engagement from abroad, with explanations being put forward from both the supply and the demand side. On the one hand, scholars examined the motivations and (dis)incentives of a wide constellation of actors (e.g., states, diaspora institutions, political parties and NGOs) to reach out to nationals abroad by creating institutional venues to ensure their political engagement in the homeland or by guaranteeing the practical implementation and exercise of external voting rights. On the other hand, existing literature also looked at emigrants’ agency, with a particular focus on their ‛demands’ for political inclusion, their increasingly diverse modes of extra-territorial mobilization and the consequences of overseas participation for homeland politics. Yet, there is still a visible fragmentation and insufficient scholarly dialogue between migration and participation studies on the topic. Few contributions have systematically analyzed so far, the interaction between overseas voters’ attitudes/preferences and processes of claims-making or political activism in origin countries. Likewise, the nexus between homeland authorities, party-based organizations abroad, diaspora civic associations and overseas citizens’ patterns of political engagement remains to be comprehensively explored. By bringing together the scholarship on migration and political participation studies, this panel aims to fill this gap. Drawing on an evidence-based and inter-disciplinary perspective with a global scope, we examine the multi-dimensionality of the interplay between emigrant trajectories and homeland politics, while disassembling the different forms of political (in)action from abroad and providing fresh insights on the explanatory mechanisms behind it.

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