Migrants’ Mobilisation and Homeland Politics: Towards A New Typology.

Countries worldwide have gradually granted citizenship rights to non-resident nationals and a growing number of emigrants and their descendants is more visible around the globe each year. Political participation, consultation and representation have extended into the transnational realm to establish, control or foster state-diaspora nexus. Bearing this dynamic context in mind, several scholars have examined migrants’ strategies to influence homeland politics via electoral mobilization and through non-electoral modes of political engagement (e.g., protests, demonstrations, boycotts, petitions, artistic expressions). Others have analysed the role of transnational networks across different host countries regarding political mobilization from abroad and political parties’ transnational role as a new arena of citizenship. Non-resident nationals comprise a new niche of voters while also present many opportunities and challenges for sending countries’ electoral and party systems, diplomatic offices and migrant civil organizations. Ranging from political parties’ responsiveness to diaspora demands, to connections between migrant civil organizations and external voting, as well as to assessing public opinion on diaspora engagement in homeland politics, this paper propose a new typology connecting the relation between migrants’ mobilisation and homeland politics. We bring together two theoretical frameworks –political transnationalism as well as political participation and civic engagement– identifying various angles of migrants’ political participation and representation at both individual and collective forms, either at an individual- or an aggregate-level.