The Role of Social Networks in Immigrant-Origin Minorities’ Political Recruitment: Evidence from the Finnish Municipal Elections.

Due to past and ongoing flows of international migration, proportion of immigrant-origin population is quickly increasing in many Western democracies. Nevertheless, immigrants and their descendants are often underrepresented in the political institutions of these countries, which undermines the communication of their needs and preferences to the policymakers. Previous studies indicate several factors that lead to underrepresentation of people of immigrant origin in national parliaments and local councils, one of the reasons being the lack of individual resources that provide the wherewithal to political participation. These studies, however, have not adequately addressed the role of personal social networks as mediators of crucial resources in political recruitment. While the social networks of the native population may have developed uninterruptedly over a lifetime and generations, immigrants have broken their social relations when migrating. In this paper, I argue that social networks that facilitate societal integration are particularly important to political recruitment of immigrants, who may suffer from a lack of access to social resources due to their migration background. A well-connected individual can utilize the symbolic value of a large social network in order to become visible in the eyes of the political parties as a potential candidate. Furthermore, the manifold resources embedded in the individual’s social networks facilitate effective campaigning in elections, especially in preferential voting systems with high level of intra-party competition. The data consist of a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews among the candidates of immigrant origin in the Finnish municipal elections of 2017.