Is a high concentration of immigrant-origin minorities enough for them to gain political representation? Is the size of the immigrant minority groups relevant only when certain structures and dynamics of party competition are present? And are certain migrant groups more likely to benefit from these opportunities? This paper analyses how these three factors residential concentration, ethnicity, and party competition interact to help to account for the different levels of representation of immigrant-origin minorities at the local level, and it illustrates the theoretical underpinnings with an examination of the 2011 local elections in all the municipalities above 5000 inhabitants in the region of Madrid.
The paper will look at the levels of political representation achieved by different immigrant-origin residents of different national backgrounds and examines in particular how immigrant residential concentration interacts with party competition to lead to better or worse outcomes of descriptive political representation of these groups. The region of Madrid is an good case study to test these theoretical propositions regarding migrants’ political representation since, on the one hand, we find a rapid increase of multiple immigrant-origin groups with different patterns of residential concentration; and, on the other, we find enough variation in party systems at the local level to be able to test party competition effects on levels of political representation.
