Complementary, Mutually Exclusive, or Unrelated? On the Value of Studying the Connections between the Emigrant and Immigrant Franchise

Scholars mostly study the enfranchisement of immigrants and emigrants as separate phenomena. However, this separation is counter-intuitive; first, because emigrants as well as immigrants denaturalize the assumed congruence between territory and membership, and second, because policy makers often engage with both. I therefore develop a framework investigating whether the two suffrages are interrelated in the policy process, what the nature of this link is, and why this connection differs between countries. First, the immigrant and emigrant franchise could be mutually exclusive—meaning that one precludes the other. Second, the two suffrages could be complementary—meaning that they are seen as jointly enhancing democratic legitimacy. Third, they could indeed—as the academic literature seems to imply—be separate policy issues, meaning that there is no relation. I apply this framework to the enfranchisement processes in four ‘most different’ cases by outcome, looking at actors, discourses, and policies. In three cases, the suffrages were clearly connected (Austria, Ecuador, and Ireland); in the fourth case, Nicaragua, enfranchisement had never become topical and no link could emerge. I argue that any understanding of whether, when, how, and why one group is enfranchised, not enfranchised, or disenfranchised needs to look beyond the immediate political context and situate the quest for the suffrage in the complex, continuous, and creative process of redefining the demos. As the cases studied here show, this implies that the decision to enfranchise emigrants impacts future attempts to enfranchise immigrants—and vice versa.