Democratizing Sending Countries? Political Regime, International Migration, and Political Participation

There is growing literature about the consequences of international migration on the political commitment of families and individuals remaining in countries of origin. The main finding is that contact with relatives living abroad has a positive effect on political participation in the home country. However, previous studies have analysed only certain countries or just one region, therefore the external validity of the findings is limited and does not explain the (political) variety of sending migration countries. So, to what extent the political effects of international migration are conditioned by the political regimes of home countries? In this paper we pretend to demonstrate that the lower the level of democracy in the origin country, the higher the effect of contact with relatives living abroad on citizens’ political participation will be. We test this hypothesis using original data collected in countries with different political regimes in two regions of the world: Latin America (with information coming from “The Americas and the World” project in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru) and South and East Mediterranean (with information coming from the “SAHWA” project in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia).