When and How Do Parliamentarians of Immigrant Origin Talk About Immigration?

This paper investigates to what extent parliamentarians of immigrant origin differ from those without an immigrant background in how much they talk about immigration and integration in national legislatures, how do they frame the issues, and whether they present similar or different positions in their questions than in the party programs. The paper examines the written parliamentary questions on immigration asked by individual MPs to members of national governments in the 8 European legislatures covered by the Pathways project (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom). Written parliamentary questions are a tool that parliamentarians have to keep governments accountable and an instrument they can use to direct policy-makers and voters’ attentions to the issues that they care about. As such, parliamentary questions provide an insight of their concerns especially because they are not subject to such strict a control by party leaders as other activities (speeches, roll call voting, etc.). Furthermore, every question contains two pieces of information, which are analyzed here. First they signal the topics that are of concern to MPs and whether immigration and migrant integration are among them in any meaningful way. Second, they provide evidence of the representation orientation adopted by individual representatives and of how they might differ from the party line. Hence, this provides provides comparative empirically-based evidence of immigrant MPs’ personal vote cultivation; concerns about national, local or immigrant/ethnic groups issues and the extent to which they behave as “obedient” party members who follow the party leaders or more independent representatives, representing different views in relation to the stances on immigration adopted by their own parties.