Defining the Boundaries of Political Representation and Citizenship Rights: An Analysis of Spanish Parties’ Positions on Emigration

In a context of accelerated human mobility, emigration has become a salient topic of political debate. Widespread policies of enfranchisement of overseas citizens have provided an extra stimulus for homeland parties to become attentive to the diaspora and reach out to the extra-territorial electorate. Yet, there is mixed evidence on how parties represent emigrants’ interests in domestic policymaking: while some pro-actively propose and support legislation to extend emigrants’ rights in different policy areas, others only marginally engage with diasporic communities and their entitlements. We contribute to this literature by conceptually bridging theories of issue salience, diaspora representation and party politics to argue that increased party competition strongly moderates the effect of parties’ ideological commitments and strategic electoral calculations on their motivations to support emigrants’ rights. Empirically, we test this argument for the Spanish case, which provides an interesting mix between a long emigration history, increasingly diverse emigration profiles, shifting dynamics in the party system and important legislative reforms affecting the electoral potential of non-resident citizens. Methodologically, we propose an original analysis of the salience of emigrants’ socio-economic, political, cultural and educational rights in the electoral manifestos of all mainstream Spanish parties since the late 1980s, complemented by semi-structured interviews with leaders of party branches abroad.