Local-to-local electoral connections for migrants: the association between voting rights in the place of origin and the propensity to vote in the place of residence

1 Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton, “Transnational: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration”; Vertovec, “Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism.”

2 Söderström et al., Critical Mobilities.

3 Faist, “Transnationalization in International Migration: Implications for the Study of Citizenship and Culture”; Collyer, “Transnational Political Participation of Algerians in France. Extra-Territorial Civil Society versus Transnational Governmentality.”

4 Vertovec, “Cheap Calls: The Social Glue of Migrant Transnationalism.”

5 Umpierrez de Reguero, Yener-Roderburg, and Cartagena, “Political Regimes and External Voting Rights: A Cross-National Comparison”; van Haute and Kernalegenn, “Political Parties Abroad as Actors of Transnational Politics”; Turcu and Urbatsch, “Diffusion of Diaspora Enfranchisement Norms: A Multinational Study”; Wellman et al. “Replication Data for 'The Extraterritorial Voting Rights and Restrictions Dataset (1950 - 2020)'”.

6 Lafleur, “Why Do States Enfranchise Citizens Abroad? Comparative Insights from Mexico, Italy and Belgium”; Bauböck, “Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational Political Participation: A Normative Evaluation of External Voting”; Brand, “Arab Uprisings and the Changing Frontiers of Transnational Citizenship: Voting from Abroad in Political Transitions”; Umpierrez de Reguero and Dandoy, “Should We Go Abroad? The Strategic Entry of Ecuadorian Political Parties in Overseas Electoral Districts.”

7 Ciornei and Østergaard-Nielsen, “Transnational Turnout. Determinants of Emigrant Voting in Home Country Elections”; Lafleur, Transnational Politics and the State: The External Voting Rights of Diasporas; Burgess, Courting Migrants: How States Make Diasporas and Diasporas Make States.

8 Burgess, “States or Parties? Emigrant Outreach and Transnational Engagement”; Ciornei and Østergaard-Nielsen, “Transnational Turnout. Determinants of Emigrant Voting in Home Country Elections.”

9 Chaudhary, “Voting Here and There: Political Integration and Transnational Political Engagement among Immigrants in Europe”; Morales and Morariu, “Is ‘Home’ a Distraction? The Role of Migrants’ Transnational Practices in Their Political Integration into Receiving-Country Politics”; Guarnizo, Chaudhary, and Sørensen, “Migrants’ Transnational Political Engagement in Spain and Italy.”

10 Finn, “Migrant Voting: Here, There, in Both Countries, or Nowhere”; Bauböck, “Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational Political Participation: A Normative Evaluation of External Voting”; Earnest, “The Enfranchisement of Resident Aliens: Variations and Explanations”; Arrighi and Bauböck, “A Multilevel Puzzle: Migrants’ Voting Rights in National and Local Elections.”

11 Arrighi and Piccoli, SWISSCIT: Index on Citizenship Law in Swiss Cantons.

12 Chaudhary, 2018; Morales & Morariu, 2011)

13 Arrighi and Lafleur, “Where and Why Can Expatriates Vote in Regional Elections? A Comparative Analysis of Regional Electoral Practices in Europe and North America”; Arrighi and Bauböck, “A Multilevel Puzzle: Migrants’ Voting Rights in National and Local Elections”; Blatter, Michel, and Schmid, “Enfranchisement Regimes beyond De-Territorialization and Post-Nationalism: Definitions, Implications, and Public Support for Different Electorates.”

14 Earnest, “The Enfranchisement of Resident Aliens: Variations and Explanations”; Wass et al., “Engaging Immigrants? Examining the Correlates of Electoral Participation among Voters with Migration Backgrounds”; Ruedin, “Participation in Local Elections: ‘Why Don’t Immigrants Vote More?’”; Bevelander and Pendakur, “Social Capital and Voting Participation of Immigrants and Minorities in Canada.”

15 Arrighi and Bauböck, “A Multilevel Puzzle: Migrants’ Voting Rights in National and Local Elections”; Lafleur, “Why Do States Enfranchise Citizens Abroad? Comparative Insights from Mexico, Italy and Belgium”; Umpierrez de Reguero, Yener-Roderburg, and Cartagena, “Political Regimes and External Voting Rights: A Cross-National Comparison”; van Haute and Kernalegenn, “Political Parties Abroad as Actors of Transnational Politics.”

16 Bauböck, “Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational Political Participation: A Normative Evaluation of External Voting”; Arrighi and Bauböck, “A Multilevel Puzzle: Migrants’ Voting Rights in National and Local Elections.”

17 Ahmadov and Sasse, “A Voice Despite Exit”; van Bochove, “Truly Transnational: The Political Practices of Middle-Class Migrants.”

18 Dumont, “Representing Voiceless Migrants: Moroccan Political Transnationalism and Moroccan Migrants’ Organizations in France.”

19 Boccagni, Lafleur, and Levitt, “Transnational Politics as Cultural Circulation: Toward a Conceptual Understanding of Migrant Political Participation on the Move.”

20 Burgess, Courting Migrants: How States Make Diasporas and Diasporas Make States; Østergaard-Nielsen and Ciornei, “Political Parties and the Transnational Mobilisation of the Emigrant Vote”; Ciornei and Østergaard-Nielsen, “Transnational Turnout. Determinants of Emigrant Voting in Home Country Elections”; Szulecki et al., “To Vote or Not to Vote? Migrant Electoral (Dis)Engagement in an Enlarged Europe”; Escobar, Arana, and Mccann, “Expatriate Voting and Migrants ’ Place of Residence: Explaining Transnational Participation in Colombian Elections.”

21 Turcu and Urbatsch, “Aversion to Far-Left Parties among Europeans Voting Abroad”; Fliess, “Campaigning Across Continents: How Latin American Parties Link up with Migrant Associations in Spain”; Rashkova, “The Party Abroad: A New Modus Operandi for Political Parties.”

22 Ferwerda, Finseraas, and Bergh, “Voting Rights and Immigrant Incorporation: Evidence from Norway”; Spies, Mayer, and Goerres, “What Are We Missing? Explaining Immigrant-Origin Voter Turnout with Standard and Immigrant-Specific Theories.”

23 “Is ‘Home’ a Distraction? The Role of Migrants’ Transnational Practices in Their Political Integration into Receiving-Country Politics.”

24 “Voting Here and There: Political Integration and Transnational Political Engagement among Immigrants in Europe.”

25 Finn, “Migrant Voting: Here, There, in Both Countries, or Nowhere.”

26 Maas, Multilevel Citizenship; Bauböck, “Morphing the Demos into the Right Shape. Normative Principles for Enfranchising Resident Aliens and Expatriate Citizens.”

27 Arrighi and Bauböck, “A Multilevel Puzzle: Migrants’ Voting Rights in National and Local Elections.”

28 Franklin, Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945. Cambridge; Plutzer, “Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood”; Street, “The Political Effects of Immigrant Naturalization.”

29 “Voting Here and There: Political Integration and Transnational Political Engagement among Immigrants in Europe.”

30 Burgess, Courting Migrants: How States Make Diasporas and Diasporas Make States; Turcu and Urbatsch, “Diffusion of Diaspora Enfranchisement Norms: A Multinational Study”; van Haute and Kernalegenn, “Political Parties Abroad as Actors of Transnational Politics.”

31 Østergaard-Nielsen and Ciornei, “Political Parties and the Transnational Mobilisation of the Emigrant Vote”; Abramson, “Making a Homeland, Constructing a Diaspora: The Case of Taglit-Birthright Israel”; Pedroza and Palop-García, “Diaspora Policies in Comparison: An Application of the Emigrant Policies Index (EMIX) for the Latin American and Caribbean Region.”

32 Burgess, “States or Parties? Emigrant Outreach and Transnational Engagement.”

33 Bauböck, “Morphing the Demos into the Right Shape. Normative Principles for Enfranchising Resident Aliens and Expatriate Citizens”; Arrighi and Bauböck, “A Multilevel Puzzle: Migrants’ Voting Rights in National and Local Elections”; Arrighi and Lafleur, “Where and Why Can Expatriates Vote in Regional Elections? A Comparative Analysis of Regional Electoral Practices in Europe and North America.”

34 Already after the legislative elections of 1881, the republican mayor of Bastia, Auguste Stretti, sent an enraged report to the Chamber of Deputies detailing the practices of the navigation company Valéry, which had offered free transport to 185 “sailors who live in Marseille” so they could deliver their votes to the Bonapartist party in the municipal elections in Corsica Briquet, “Le Vote Au Village Des Corses de l’extérieur. Dispositifs de Contrôle et Expressions Des Sentiments (19e-20e Siècles),” 753.. Sixty years later, in 1941, the prefect of Corsica proclaimed his regret that, in a département with 300,000 inhabitants and more than 500,000 registered voters, candidates spend “considerable sums” on travel for supporters.

35 Paarlberg, “Hometown Associations and Parties as Vehicles for Mexican Electoral Campaigns in the US.”

36 Bargel, “Les « Originaires » En Politique.”

37 “Towards a Political Theory of Migrant Transnationalism,” 708.

38 Ruedin 2018

39 Arrighi and Piccoli, SWISSCIT: Index on Citizenship Law in Swiss Cantons.

40 Federal Statistical Office of Switzerland, Statistical Data on Switzerland 2017.

41 Cancela and Geys 2016

42 Morin-Chassé et al., “How to Survey About Electoral Turnout? The Efficacy of the Face-Saving Response Items in 19 Different Contexts.”

43 Schmid, Piccoli, and Arrighi, “Non-Universal Suffrage: Measuring Electoral Inclusion in Contemporary Democracies.”

44 In 2015, nationals abroad could vote in the elections in Chile, Cyprus, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Nicaragua, Suriname, and Uruguay. We note that in a few countries in our sample, nationals abroad could vote if they meet certain conditions: for example, German nationals abroad could vote in national legislative elections if they had lived in Germany for at least three months within the previous 25 years, counting only the years after their 14th birthday; Danish nationals could vote in national legislative elections if they intended to return to Denmark within two years; UK nationals could vote in national legislative elections if they had been registered, or resident in the case of minors, in a home constituency within the previous 15 years.

45 Including dual nationals would be substantively interesting, but we are greatly limited by the small number of observations. According to the information we have, only 12 respondents in the sample have declared dual nationality. We decided to exclude dual nationals from this study assuming that some of them may have never lived outside of Switzerland, impacting the strength and effects of transnational electoral connections.

46 van Buuren and Groothuis-Oudshoorn, “Mice: Multivariate Imputation by Chained Equations in R.”

47 We preregistered the analysis on Open Science Framework (OSF), where we also planned to control for income alongside education. It turned out that the correlation between these two variables in combination with missing observations and the number of observations at hand leads to poor convergence. We did not have a good basis for using a stronger prior on these variables and have opted for dropping the income variable. In addition, we decided to systematically control for turnout in the country of origin in the spirit of the pre-registered control variables– the substantive results remain unchanged in either case. We will make available full replication material on OSF upon publication.

48 Chaudhary, “Voting Here and There: Political Integration and Transnational Political Engagement among Immigrants in Europe”; Ruedin, “Participation in Local Elections: ‘Why Don’t Immigrants Vote More?’”; Smets and van Ham, “The Embarrassment of Riches? A Meta-Analysis of Individual-Level Research on Voter Turnout”; Leal, Lee, and McCann, “Transnational Absentee Voting in the 2006 Mexican Presidential Election: The Roots of Participation.”

49 We retrieved the data from http://www.elinguistics.net/Compare_Languages.aspx. Distances are to French (with higher numbers leading to greater distance), since Geneva is in the French speaking area. For most countries, we use the predominant language. For Belgium, we weigh according to the population size and consider French (no distance), Dutch, and German. For Canada, we consider French and English, again weighted according to population size – this time we only have estimates available. This part of the analysis was not pre-registered and was added as an exploration.

50 IDEA, Voter Turnout Database.

51 Bürkner, “Brms : An R Package for Bayesian Multilevel Models Using Stan.”

52 Sciarini and Goldberg, “Turnout Bias in Postelection Surveys: Political Involvement, Survey Participation, and Vote Overreporting.”

53 Chaudhary, “Voting Here and There: Political Integration and Transnational Political Engagement among Immigrants in Europe.”

54 Briquet, “Le Vote Au Village Des Corses de l’extérieur. Dispositifs de Contrôle et Expressions Des Sentiments (19e-20e Siècles)”; Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy.

55 The timing of local elections in Italy changes across municipalities.