Keywords

In the growing literature on external voting, intra-European migration does not play the most prominent role. Some noteworthy European sending countries receive significant attention (e.g., Romania), but European Union (EU) states are most often than not analyzed as host countries for incoming extra-European migration, whose political engagement is analyzed. And yet, the politics of intra-European migration require a better understanding, and election results among migrants can tell us something new about the dynamics of socialization, integration, and transnational engagement.

The questions we posed in the Introduction, that is—how do migrants use their external voting franchise? what parties and candidates do they vote for and do the results of external voting differ systematically from domestic results? are relevant in the context of the EU. What we are witnessing in Europe recently is the convergence of two phenomena—mass intra-European migration and democracy backsliding. Incidentally, the region which received most attention in terms of the rise of populist politics and the deterioration of liberal democratic standards—Central Eastern Europe (CEE)—is also a major “sender” of intra-European migrants.

We are also interested in the way external voting is enacted and interpreted by migrants, why so few migrants take part in country-of-origin elections, how migrants see this form of political engagement, and what does external voting tell us about migrant political participation? Analyzing intra-European migration gives us a unique opportunity to tackle these questions, because external voting is (nearly) universal within the EU, and barriers for political engagement are low, while countries of origin remain both spatially and mentally close, in contrast to intercontinental migration and global South-North mobility.

In the remainder of this chapter, we describe the context of external voting among CEE migrants residing in the European Union, European Free Trade Association countries, and the United Kingdom. We discuss the apparent yet under-researched convergence of mass migration and democracy backsliding and ask whether these two can be related. To bridge them, we hypothesize about the nature of political remittances—either democratic or illiberal. We then introduce the research design which allows us to analyze voting results and migrant perceptions of external voting, drawing on two newly built datasets.

East-West Migration in Europe: Political Context and Consequences

While Europe is always said to be in crisis, the recent rise in Eurosceptic attitudes and the increased prominence of populist and nationalist forces in parliaments and, in some cases, governments of EU member states have caused considerable concern. Both academic and non-academic observers have begun to speak of “democratic backsliding”—the deconsolidation of liberal democracy and an orientation toward illiberal and authoritarian hybrid regimes, accompanied by the erosion of civic liberties and values (Bermeo, 2016). Authoritarian values are visibly on the rise in Europe, especially among the younger generation (Foa & Mounk, 2016).

This trend is said to be particularly prominent in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where democratic consolidation has arguably never fully completed, making it more vulnerable to backsliding. In recent years, Viktor Orbán’s self-proclaimed illiberal Hungary has been joined by the indirect personal rule of Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, and the gradual introduction of illiberal “innovation” in the Czech Republic under president Miloš Zeman and oligarch-turned-prime-minister Andrej Babiš (Hanley & Vachudova, 2017). Other CEE countries are also struggling with the erosion of liberal democratic standards. What these political forces clearly share is an inherent hostility to the mechanisms and values of constitutionalism: “constraints on the will of the majority, checks and balances, protections for minorities, and even fundamental rights” (compare also Müller, 2016, p. 68; Blokker, 2018).

There are two common explanations for this backsliding. One emphasizes domestic dynamics, arguing that economic conditions, political culture, and other supply and demand factors have worked together to bring illiberal forces to power (Stanley, 2017). The other focuses on the simultaneous emergence of similar developments in different countries. The concept of “authoritarian diffusion” tries to capture this phenomenon (Buzogány, 2017), along with looser notions of a “Trump effect,” or invocation of some populist Zeitgeist haunting Europe.

Both domestic and transnational factors surely matter. What is striking, however, is the rather simplistic image of European politics and of the EU as a set of easily separable polities and national societies. Both above explanations largely ignore the multi-level nature of EU governance and the degree of contact and exchange between European citizens, including through perhaps the most significant “channel” of East-West exchange in the past two decades: migration.

From the perspective of the “new” EU members, the Eastern Enlargement of 2004–2007 should be viewed as the culmination of a long process with its roots in the Yalta division of Europe and the fall of Communism in 1989. This process was informed by the narrative of a “return to Europe” (Szulecki, 2015) and characterized by high levels of Euro-enthusiasm among CEE societies, as well as convergence toward more consolidated liberal democratic governance which was secured by membership conditionality (Vachudová, 2005). In that context, the mass wave of migrations that followed was portrayed in positive terms, not as a response to high unemployment and economic deprivation at home, but as an opportunity for improving life chances in the “West.” That “European dream” coming true was coupled with the dominant vision of intra-European migrations as “fluid” and largely temporary. You go, you see, you earn, and you come back. Everyone wins. Parts of the host populations shared these latter hopes, since the “European dream” of “Eastern” migrants was immediately reinterpreted as a possible nightmare of “Western” societies, personified by the Polish plumber arriving to take their jobs.

Central European countries are among the most important “senders” and have provided Western and Northern European EU/EEA members with an estimated 6 million migrants—a whole “continent moving West’ (Black et al., 2010). “Europe historically has been made, unmade, and remade through the movement of peoples,” notes Favell (2009, p. 167). And yet, 15 years since the Eastern Enlargement, we know surprisingly little about the impact this exodus had on intra-European relations.

Symptomatically, Thomas Risse’s landmark work on European identity does not even mention intra-EU diasporas, although it pays considerable attention to the impact of the enlargement on European identity (Risse, 2010). On the other hand, the topical textbook on Migration and Mobility in the European Union makes absolutely no reference to electoral politics and voting, external or in host countries (Geddes et al., 2020). Similarly, an edited volume on Migration in the New Europe, published in the year of the first Eastern Enlargement, discusses various impacts membership expansion may have, but the only area of politics it refers to is migration and labor policy (Górny & Ruspini, 2004).

Yes, the impact of migrants on the host countries has received attention, particularly in the context of the Brexit vote where CEE migrants were turned into a scapegoat. Favell’s astute conceptualization of the three types of migrations flows shaping Europe is an excellent example. He distinguishes between outward-in “ethnic” migration, small-scale but symbolically important elite “free mover” migration between member states, and the “politically ambiguous” East-West migration, which cannot be easily pinpointed even though this “new form of migration has in the last few years grown to become the most important visible proof of a changing Europe” (Favell, 2009, p. 182).

This is obviously significant for intra-European relations, but it also has an important impact on sending countries. What we are only beginning to realize is the scale and nature of the influence this massive migration wave had on sending societies. New EU member states have to deal with the fact that a large share of their populations suddenly resides abroad. In absolute terms, Romania, with ca. 3 million, and Poland, ca. 2 million emigrants, were the largest contributors, but perhaps instead of looking at absolute numbers of emigrants we should understand how large fractions of sending country populations they represent. Migration rates vary from 5% of the population of the Czech Republic to nearly a fifth of the populations of Latvia (17%) and Lithuania (19.9%) (Lesińska, 2016). Most of those who moved left someone behind: spouses, children, boyfriends and girlfriends, parents. Taken together, this makes post-2004 migration a generational experience for almost all CEE societies.

These large and populous post-accession diasporas are enfranchised to vote in country-of-origin elections, and in principle their vote can make a difference in national elections (Hutcheson & Arrighi, 2015; Lesińska, 2018). Who these migrants from CEE countries are matters in this context. While much attention has been paid to the impact of CEE migrants on labor markets, less emphasis has been put on understanding who these migrants are in terms of regional origin, educational and professional backgrounds, or indeed political convictions. Although “the Polish plumber” has become a common reference, and Polish and other CEE migrants across Western-European countries (such as Norway, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands) disproportionately work in the construction sector, and through various related staffing agencies, this does not necessarily reflect their educational and professional backgrounds prior to migration (Erdal & Lewicki, 2016; Meardi, 2016).

Apart from financial gains, an important element emphasized by the pro-European, liberal CEE elites was the foreseen socialization of migrants into European values and political practices. It was assumed that when exposed to life in mature democracies and welfare states, CEE migrants would—whether they settled or returned to their country of origin—integrate themselves into a “European way of life.”

Indeed, some research on diasporas confirms this belief, suggesting that through settling in a consolidated democracy, migrants from less consolidated transitional regimes might internalize values and adopt the practices of their hosts, and in turn “remit democracy home” (Pérez-Armendáriz & Crow, 2010). Much like exiles and Western charities before 1989, contemporary migrants were to send eastward gifts and parcels—also in the form of ideas of how “good governance” works.

Migration researchers have shown that the experience of emigration to a consolidated democracy increases migrants’ satisfaction with democracy (Careja & Emmenegger, 2012), even though some may have minimal contact with the host society, for example, because they do not know the language, and financial success may be a factor here (Mishler & Rose, 2001). Members of diasporas who were socialized into liberal values in Western societies might be interested in transferring them to their homelands as “social” or “political” remittances (Erdal et al., 2022; Krawatzek & Müller-Funk, 2020; Levitt, 1998; Levitt & Lamba-Nieves, 2011). In more normative terms, these experiences can then lead to democratic remittances as migrants return or share their experience with families and friends back home thus contributing to the democratization—or increasing the quality of democracy—in their countries of origin.

Yet, a passing look at the empirical evidence suggests that the idea of democratic remittances does not translate unproblematically to the context of contemporary Europe. The CEE diasporas living in Western and Northern Europe, once hailed as the vanguard of liberalism in terms of their political preferences as expressed in sending country elections (e.g., the 2007 Polish snap election where migrants were said to contribute to ousting Kaczyński’s Law and Justice), now appear much more heterogeneous. To stay with the same example, Poland’s 2015 election saw a surprising shift, where the diaspora supported right-wing populists and nationalists to a much greater extent than did voters at home. The same was true for Latvians in 2018 (Lulle, 2018). And while a number of disclaimers is due—the diaspora turnout is low, it varies geographically within and across receiving and sending countries; demographic factors play a role; and the vote is volatile; among other things—what we can surely say is that democratic remittances are as probable as are illiberal remittances, that is the process through which migrants and outward migration contribute to democratic backsliding and the growth of illiberal tendencies in origin countries (Szulecki, 2020).

Democratic remittances presuppose a clear hierarchy. A superior host country (or region), which appears and feels “better” than the home left behind. If there indeed is an illiberal sway among migrants, it can be due to the fact that the West’s superiority is no longer a political and cultural axiom at home, and that personal experiences can bring disenchantment as much as fascination or mere satisfaction. We say disenchantment rather than disillusionment to underline the quasi-messianic character of the geopolitical “return to Europe” narrative, which was put to test by the Eastern Enlargement. For Kees Van Kersbergen, quasi-messianism concerns the “visionary anticipation of a better world that is attainable” which accords politics “an enchanting quality” (van Kersbergen, 2010).

Recent ethnographic studies of EU diasporas suggest that there might be a causal mechanism in play, neither directly linked to demographics nor to conscious political agency. Drawing on first-hand accounts, some authors have identified shame, resentment, and disenchantment as key emotional drivers of the migration experience (see, e.g., Pawlak, 2018). It fuels broader disenchantment: with host countries, migration, and more broadly Europe and “the West.” This disenchantment is triggered in situations of a discrepancy between real and anticipated levels of welfare, prosperity, social status, but also subjective sense of belonging to the West. “In the thirty years of post-communism”—argues Jarosław Kuisz—“the citizens of Visegrad countries have never been closer or more like Western Europeans, in terms of their material status or the functioning of state institutions, than they are today. Yet there can be no doubt that something significant has changed in recent years. This is simply that in the Visegrad countries, the post-communist myth about the West has lost the power to convince” (Kuisz, 2019).

How are these processes expressed in migrant voting behavior? Are CEE migrants voting for different political forces than voters in their countries of origin? Are these differences systematic, and what does that tell us about migrant socialization, and the character of “political remittances” migrants can send? This book will be the first to systematically deal with external voting. Through this, we seek to map the political shifts in different migrant communities and which is the first step to exploring their links to home and host country developments and the apparent backsliding and growing political fragmentation of the “West” and the “East” in Europe. In the next section, we explain how this is done empirically.

The DIASPOlitic Project, Data Gathering, and Methods

This volume is the direct result of the research project “Understanding the Political Dynamics of Émigré Communities in an Era of European Democratic Backsliding” (DIASPOlitic), a collaboration between the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and the SWPS University in Warsaw. The project had two empirical packages, which gathered quantitative and qualitative data on external voting results and migrants’ perceptions of political engagement with countries of origin, through elections or otherwise. Below, we introduce these two work packages, which are the basis for the empirical chapters that follow.

Data Gathering and Method: Quantitative Analysis of External Voting Results

The “quantitative” work package led to the creation of a comparative dataset of external voting results (Kotnarowski et al., 2022). The data collected concerned the voting of migrants from Central and Eastern European countries, which became member states of the EU in 2004 and 2007, in Northern, Western, and Southern European countries (i.e., the “old” EU member states). Our analysis focused on how the communities of migrants—which we call diasporas—voted in elections organized in their countries of origin. For example, we looked at how Poles residing in Norway voted in Polish parliamentary and Polish presidential elections, and Bulgarians settled in France voted in Bulgarian parliamentary elections.

In Step 1, we checked the data availability for all CEE member states. It turned out that the Hungarian electoral system does not allow for the study of external voting, as émigré votes are added up to the constituency in their last registered place of residence in Hungary. Similarly, Estonian and Slovak regulations do not allow for an analysis by country of residence, although we have gathered data on the émigré vote summed together. Finally, Slovenian data was available, and we gathered it for the most recent election at the time, but due to very low numbers of votes cast and few host countries where external voting was organized, we did not include it in Step 2.

The countries of origin included in the main analysis were Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Romania. On the other hand, the analyzed countries of residence where diasporas cast their votes were Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden (EU members, plus Great Britain which left the EU when the project was ongoing), as well as two countries belonging to the European Economic Area (Norway and Iceland), and Switzerland.

The period of the analyzed data included the most recent elections before the accession of a given country of origin to the EU and every subsequent election until the first half of 2021, so the first unit of analysis was the last election before 2004 for Czechia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland, and the last election before 2007 for Bulgaria and Romania. The summary of analyzed parliamentary election results by country of origin and host country is presented in Table 1 of the project’s descriptive report available online (Kotnarowski et al., 2022).Footnote 1 For parliamentary elections, we collected data on 573 diaspora external voting events for diasporas from 7 countries of origin voting in 17 host countries between 2000 and 2021.

In addition, we collected data on the voting results in the country of origin—for example, how all Poles voted in the 2001 parliamentary elections, and how all Bulgarians voted in the 2005 elections. Altogether, we collected data on voting results in 35 elections: 6 elections in Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland; 5 in the Czech Republic and Romania; and 1 election in Slovenia.

As far as possible due to data availability, we collected the following data for each diaspora, in each host country, and each election: number of registered voters, number of votes cast, number of valid votes, number of votes cast for particular political parties, support for specific parties among those who cast a valid vote. We took into account those parties which gained at least 3% of the electoral support on a national scale. We collected comparable data for election results in the country of origin, that is, how Poles voted in Poland, Bulgarians in Bulgaria, etc.

In our study, we also collected data on diaspora voting in presidential elections. Not all countries of origin organize general presidential elections, and therefore the amount of data is much smaller for this type of voting. For the presidential election, we collected data on voting results in 302 events (see Table 2 in Kotnarowski et al., 2022). This includes diasporas from 6 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Slovenia) that voted in 17 host countries. The data cover 19 presidential elections (5 in Poland, 4 in Lithuania and Romania, 3 in Bulgaria, 2 in the Czech Republic, and 1 in Slovenia). We also collected data on voting results in the country of origin for each election. The scope of data collected for presidential elections was similar to that for parliamentary elections. We were interested in the number of registered voters, the number of votes cast, the number of valid votes, and the number of votes cast for individual candidates together with a percentage of support out of valid votes. For those countries where there were two rounds of voting in presidential elections, we collected election results for both rounds.

In both parliamentary and presidential elections, there were situations where in a given election a certain diaspora was able to vote in several locations within the host country. For example, the Polish diaspora in Norway in the 2015 parliamentary elections was able to vote in five polling stations: two in Oslo, and one each in Bergen, Stavanger, and Trondheim. In these situations, we aggregated data from all the election commissions in a given host country. It means that the information we included in the prepared dataset was the total number of voters in the host country, and the total support for each party/presidential candidate in the host country, in the given election.

Based on the dataset we built, many types of analyses can be conducted. In Chap. 3, we describe the specific method used for the analysis of external voters’ divergence (“disparity”) from country-of-origin results, as well as the ideological deviation between diasporas and sending countries.

Data Gathering and Method: Qualitative Study of Migrant Voting

The “qualitative” work package in turn built a dataset of 80 semi-structured interviews with Polish and Romanian migrants living in Norway and Spain (Bertelli et al., 2021). We selected these four groups because they are very diverse in terms of demographics and specific motivations for migrating, and the perceived importance of external voting in the two sending countries is high, as they both have a legacy of émigré political involvement (Burean & Popp, 2015; Lesińska, 2019). Both Poles and Romanians are among the five largest migrant groups in at least ten Western European countries, although they show regional variation, with Romanians’ greater presence in Southern European states, and the Poles’ stronger representation in Northern Europe. Spain and Norway display a symmetrical pattern, with Romanians as the largest migrant group (over 1 million) and Poles in seventh place (over 100,000) in Spain, and a reverse situation in Norway, where the Polish diaspora of ca. 120,000 is the largest and the ca. 15,000 Romanians are seventh. While Norway is not an EU member state, the fact that it is part of the EEA and the Schengen Zone in practice means that there is no difference in terms of enfranchisement for EU migrants, and the country was the destination of the largest influx of post-accession CEE migration in the Nordic region. Pairing Spain and Norway was also motivated by the variation in electoral results (see Chap. 3).

Within the countries of residence, we focused on two cities and their metropolitan regions—Barcelona and Oslo. Both are large centers of immigration and both are “global cities” which see a varied influx of migrants of all ages, classes, and professions. These residence settings vary in many ways; however, our study was not designed to explicitly compare two migrant nationalities or cities of settlement but is exploratory and instead seeks to maintain important variance in the reported voting behavior among interviewed migrants.

Each of the subgroups comprised 20 respondents. The interviews were conducted between January and April 2020: In the first part of the interview process, interviews were conducted face-to-face in both cities, while the second part of the interview process (from March 2020 onward) was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. To complete the scheduled interviews in a safe way, these were conducted online by means of Skype video conversations. The interviews with Polish migrants were conducted in Polish, those with migrants from Romania in Romanian. Both the in-person and the online interviews were recorded, transcribed in full, and translated into English.

The interview guide was a theme guide, co-developed by the authors and the research team at a workshop in January 2020. The theme guide was developed purposefully to address the project’s research questions, exploring the political engagement of migrants from Central and Eastern Europe especially in their countries of origin. The theme guide also took into account the two migrant groups (Poles and Romanians) and the two-settlement context in focus (Barcelona, Spain, and Oslo, Norway).

The theme guide consisted of nine sections: (1) Migration story; (2) Future and past—lifespan reflections; (3) Poland/Romania engaging their diasporas politically (voting and beyond); (4) Specifically, in relation to the most recent election (October 2019 Polish parliamentary elections or November 2019 Romanian presidential elections); (5) Perceptions of other migrants’ voting behavior (Poles/Romanians in Norway/Spain); (6) Perceptions of differences and similarities between Poland/Romania and Norway/Spain; (7) Migration as change; (8) Final comments; (9) Background information (structured basic demographic questions asked to all participants at the end of their interview, to aid comparison and monitor the sample composition in a systematic manner).

While a certain degree of freedom was given to the interviewers in relation to the order of the questions asked, all of the themes agreed in the guide were covered in all interviews. Under section (6) Perceptions of differences and similarities between Poland/Romania and Norway/Spain, we used a table outlining a range of 12 different social, political, and economic themes. In some instances, this table was used in the interview setting, physically on paper, while in other instances the interviewers introduced the themes orally only (this also had to be adapted to the reality of Skype interviews). It was up to each participant to select as many or as few themes to discuss as they wanted to.

The interview transcripts were coded following a codebook developed once all the transcripts had been compiled. The codebook comprised eight main categories broadly mirroring the interview guide (migration history; personal reflections on the self; general comparisons and similarities between countries; political and socio-economic aspects of the countries of residence and origin; perception of diaspora mobilization; personal political opinions; technicalities of voting; and “other,” which includes anecdotes, quotes, vignettes). Each of these categories consisted of a number of sub-categories which interview transcripts were coded to. In total, the code book included 72 codes (or themes).

The interviews were coded to all relevant themes, following a cross-thematic coding strategy, where each section of the interview was coded to all the relevant codes. Thus, reading all coded text on one of the 72 individual nodes, for example, “future elections” or “travel to vote” or “reflections on migration” or “queues,” allows an overview of the frequency of simultaneous presence of other codes, as well as seeing which interviewees’ statements were present (e.g., migrants from Poland in Oslo). In relation to the table of themes for comparison, this coding strategy allowed us to see how prominent each theme is across the four sub-groups, and whether some themes are more salient among Poles or Romanians, or more salient among migrant residents in Oslo or Barcelona. After coding the full interview material, the authors reviewed the coded material, both exploring patterns between groups and between cities, and other key trends emerging, for example, on voting behavior or reflections about migration, for similarity, difference, contradictions, and overall patterns. While the sample of interviewees was not sufficient to claim that the findings are representative—that is, they do not allow us to compare frequencies of certain views occurring—they are very useful in mapping migrant self-perceptions and justifications for different (non)political postures.

This rigorous procedure allowed us to organize vast qualitative material in a way which helped to identify topics, ideas, and frames and to trace them across interviews. The analysis presented in Chap. 4 draws on this material and uses either indirect summaries of interview material or explicit, anonymized quotes as evidence.