Electoral Preferences Across a Transnational Space: Interviews with Dual Citizens of the Netherlands and Turkey

Questions on external voting arise as sending and receiving countries compete with each other on the political loyalties of dual citizens in an era of transnationalism. A newly emerging literature on the subject matter questions what motivations of sending countries in facilitating such democratic participation abroad. Yet, not much has been said on how dual citizens approach electoral participation across a transnational space. Do immigrant minorities align with authoritarian regimes challenging liberal democratic values of the West? Does political socialization in a liberal democratic system bring yield to a democratic remittance? Can we speak of two different sets of political attitudes and behaviors across two different political systems? What are the causal mechanisms behind varying preferences? We focus on Turkish Dutch population in our aim to gain a thorough understanding of the subject. This study is one of the few studies investigating complex and layered nature of political participation in a transnational world. A qualitative approach is followed to gain in-depth insights of the ideas and evaluations of our research group. We collected data through semi-structured interviews (N=24) between 2017 and 2018. A qualitative content analysis on the transcripts of these interviews were conducted thereafter.