Policy framing and denizen enfranchisement in Portugal: why some migrant voters are more equal than others

^1. The Portuguese process of enfranchisement of denizens addressed five populations: (1) Portuguese resident abroad, (2) European citizens, (3) Lusophone-country nationals, (4) Brazilians in possession of special equality status and (5) other foreigners. Thanks to the 1971 Convention of Equality of Rights and Duties between Portuguese and Brazilians, Brazilians who reside legally for more than five years can exercise political rights at local, regional and legislative elections (not presidential) and may also be elected at the local level, so long as they are not forbidden to do that in Brazil (Law-Decree 126/72). To avoid situations of inequality, the exercise of these rights in Portugal means their suspension in Brazil. Active electoral capacity in local authorities is conferred after two years of legal residence; passive electoral capacity is conferred after four years. All other foreigners only have active and passive electoral capacity for the election of local authority elections, in conditions of reciprocity and so long as they live in national territory for more than three years, to vote, and more than five, to be voted. European citizens in conditions of reciprocity may vote and be elected as deputies for the European Parliament.

^2. In general, theories of transnational citizenship try to apprehend a wide range of empirical trends such as the conformation of communities that define themselves as, and operate beyond national borders and the emergence of systems of rights above or below those of independent states or cutting across international borders (see Bauböck Citation2003, Citation2005). The extension of voting rights to non-citizen residents within states and the extension of voting rights in a state to emigrant or diasporic communities are considered two sides of an example of these trends. For a critical review of the literature on transnational citizenship, see Fox (2005).

^3. With Hansen and Koehler, I agree that ‘… the tentacular effect of nationality traditions and the causal effect of political culture are mediated through language, argument and institutional context’ (Citation2005, p. 642).

^4. In citizenship studies, some prominent theoretical contributions have convincingly argued that the rhetoric of liberal democracy built upon worthy universal and egalitarian ideals has concealed the reality that citizenship is not really equal for all. While some focus on the internal aspects of the ideal of a democratic equal citizenship denouncing that in all democracies there are groups who hold some, but not all, of the essential elements of citizenship (Young Citation1998, Cohen Citation2009), others focus on the international aspects of that ideal (Hindess Citation2000, Ong Citation2006). Young (Citation1998) and Cohen (Citation2009) have showed that the state deprives citizens of important rights along the lines of race, religion, sexuality, migration status and criminal records. Young (Citation1998) has pleaded to explicitly recognise differentiated citizenship as a goal to strive for (rather than a reality to conceal and deny) as long as it allows giving special rights to oppressed groups that are otherwise worse off behind the veil of ‘equal treatment’. On a similar line, but with a more analytical goal, Cohen has proposed a theoretical scheme to characterise different kinds of ‘semi-citizenship’ arguing convincingly that citizenship is inevitably a gradient category and a formal status that defines rights, which are relationships between the person and the state. Despite the analytical and normative strength of ‘differentiated citizenship’ and ‘semi-citizenship’ to define the differentiation of citizenship relations among the citizens of a state, I decided to use the term ‘quasi-citizenship’ to refer to the status of Brazilians in Portugal (and vice versa) because it conflates the ‘internal aspect’ of citizenship as relation between citizen and state (which is the main focus of Cohen and Young) with the international aspect of citizenship (citizenship-as-nationality) by extending important citizen rights to foreigners of a specific nationality, thus making it obvious that for transnational realities being ‘citizen of a state’ is not a category of equal value: its value depends on the state one is a citizen of. This is a good example of how the critiques to the ideal of citizenship raised by Ong and Hindess could meet those raised by Young and Cohen, since normative arguments (just as empirical claims made by citizens) for redistribution and recognition of citizen rights may transcend borders of states (see Isin and Turner Citation2007) but a whole argument on that needs to be developed in another article.

^5. Although frames are part of the ‘discursive universe’, ‘discourse’ conveys a broad signifying practice in society at a given point in time, surely too broad to be applied to a parliamentary debate (see Polletta and Ho Citation2008, p. 191, Fairclough 1992). The concepts of ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ are preferred here because they focus on concrete signifying devices and strategies of agents immersed in a context of interpretive struggles. The literature on frames and framing is well established and very broad across the social sciences. Despite important epistemological differences in the use that sociologists, psychologists, political scientists and communication experts give to the terms ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ (see Benford and Snow Citation2000), it can be said in general that framing makes reference to a phenomenon that implies ‘agency, process and contention’ (Benford and Snow Citation2000, p. 614). To analyse a parliamentary debate, it is plausible to assume that the institutional context makes some resources – linguistic, relational and otherwise – available from the start of the debates. Then, an analysis of framing follows how agents select and adapt particular interpretations of reality throughout a debate, advancing some proposals, while distracting from others, and managing to make sceptics and adversaries commit. This researcher employed a qualitative and inductive perspective treating the stenographic versions of the parliamentary debates, remaining open to discover new frames that may differ from the ones that started the debate, challenge them, or even be the outcome of negotiating the meaning of a situation over time (see Gamson Citation1992, p. 111, Rose and Miller 1992, p. 175). In line with its original uses in the social movements' literature, the use of framing analysis in this article allows us to bridge both purely actor-centred approaches, which struggle to differentiate ideas and their effects from the effects of the actors who bear them, and the structural excessiveness of some discursive approaches that seem biased to confirm the pervasiveness of ideas and where actors lose their agency (Keller 2005). As Triandafyllou and Fotiou (1998) has shown, in the particular study of policy-making, frame analysis is able to show how competing interpretations and perspectives may lead to very different decisions.

^6. The principal destinations of Portuguese legal emigrants, from 1950 until 1988, were France, Brazil, USA, Germany and Canada. The rest of the world received less emigrants than Brazil (Baganha 1998, p. 195).

^7. From 1961 until 1974, approximately 1.3 million Portuguese emigrated from the mainland.

^8. Officially called PALOP countries after ‘países africanos de língua oficial portuguesa’: African countries of Portuguese as official language.

^9. The idea that the empire was the only real guarantor of Portugal's independence remained ingrained in the national psyche. According to polls in 1978, 20% of the population believed Portugal would not survive without its empire (Lloyd-Jones Citation2001, p. 2).

^10. A specific body, Alto-Comissátio para a Imigracaõ e Minorias Étnicas (ACIME), was created to oversee immigrant and ethnic minority issues (Decreto-Lei N 3-A, 26 January 1996). In 1998, the Immigration Affairs Council (COCAI) was created to assist ACIME (OIM Citation2007, p. 199).

^11. This turn was all but permanent. After winning the elections in March 2002, the PSD formed a coalition with the CDS and announced in its government programme (Programa do XV Governo Constitucional) a new migration policy that would go back to the pre-1995 state – i.e. expelling migrants from the territory; restricting the concept of resident and limiting entries per year (cf. Lei 22/2002). It is important to note, though, that even through restrictive phases a more favourable treatment for Lusophone migrants was maintained.

^12. Experts in Portuguese nationality law consider that despite the introduction of new forms of acquisition of nationality through jus soli, this Organic Law 2/2006 also reinforced jus sanguinis by making the descendants of Portuguese residing abroad automatically Portuguese if they only declare their wish so or register. Contrary to the proposal of the Left Bloc, the principle of ius soli was not made absolute for the second generation immigrants; although the residence requirement applies to the immigrant parents of the children born in Portugal, the acquisition of nationality for these children still depends on the migrant situation and length of residence of the parents (Piçarra and Gil Citation2010, pp. 1, 15–22, 30).

^13. The number of registered voters resident outside of Portugal in 1996 was 183, 944; in 2008: 207, 005, a total of 2.18% of all voters (http://www.pordata.pt/Portugal/Recenseados+total++por+nacionalidade+e+por+residencia-2250 [Accessed September 2013]).

^14. Article 7 states that ‘Portugal acknowledges the abolition of imperialism, colonialism and any other form of aggression, dominion and exploitation in the relations between peoples […] Portugal keeps its privileged links of friendship and cooperation with Lusophone countries’ (English version of the Portuguese constitution/ Constituição da República Portuguesa [online]. Available from: http://www.en.parlamento.pt/Legislation/CRP/Constitution7th.pdf)

^15. These are: ‘Electoral Census Law’ and the ‘Electoral Law of Local Autarchies’.

^16. All translations of original documents and all emphasis within quotations made by the author.

^17. To apply Article 8-B, 1 of the European Union Treaty. Consulted on eur-lex.europa.eu, 12 August 2009.

^18. In order to secure a quick pass through the Commission, the proposal had been drafted following the technical pattern used two years earlier to make room in local electoral law for European Parliament elections.

^19. In January 1996, the PSD bloc had presented a law project with this objective, but it was not even discussed. External voting rights had been granted already in 1976 for legislative elections. Following Portugal's entry into the European Community in 1986, external voting rights were granted for the national lists for the European Parliament. Only in the constitutional revision of 1997 the PS and the PSD agreed to let Portuguese citizens abroad to vote for presidential elections and national referenda too. Costa Lobo suggests that the PSD constant promotion of presidential voting rights for emigrants is no wonder given that since 1976 the PSD had a consistent majority of voters for legislative elections among external voters (2007, p. 83).

^20. Shortly before the discussion and passing of the Law 50/96 in the VII legislature, the Law project 47/VII, authored by the PSD, aimed at regulating the exercise of vote by Portuguese residing abroad, allowing them to vote in embassies and consulates and not only per post. In plenum discussion it was strongly rejected by the PCP with the argument that it was a charade by the PSD to get through bureaucratic means what it had lost on the polls, specifically by manipulating the consular network. Otherwise, PCP deputies argued, it could not be explained how come in 10 years of government with overwhelming majorities the PSD had expressed no interest in such a reform (DAR I, No. 31/VII/1, 25.01.1996, pp. 874–894). The CDS-PP supported the reform mildly but not without expressing a note of concern and distrust that the PSD only proposed this when in opposition. The Greens stated that the proposal tried to make of emigrants ‘a flag’ that would serve politically the SPD. In the end, it was rejected with the Greens, PCP and PS against and only the PSD and CDS-PP in favour. It showed that for minority parties it is fundamental to guarantee that electoral rules do not bias voters: with potentially 5 million. Regarding the votes of the Portuguese abroad, even apparent technicalities led to heated discussions.

^21. In the general public, the absence of immigration as a topic was generalised well into the 1990s. Not even intellectuals in Portugal were as outspoken as in other countries regarding denizen enfranchisement. Until the 1990s, Portuguese emigrants and their communities abroad had been the dominant both as an academic and as a political issue. Academic literature on migrant participation in Portugal can only be found from the 1990s onwards (see Albuquerque et al.Citation2000). Not even in the media was migration but an intermittent topic dependent on certain events, such as political campaigns or incidents that attract media coverage and where immigrants play a central role (Figuereido Citation2002). Even migrants who rose to power did so through institutional channels opened and negotiated by political parties, mainly the PS.

^22. The most recent list of countries from which denizens residing in Portugal have passive electoral capacity includes all member states of the EU, Brazil and Cape Green, Peru and Uruguay for local elections. Regarding active electoral capacity, besides the already mentioned, it includes Argentina, Chile, Estonia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. Only Venezuela was added after the reform of 1996 (Declaration 253 from 23 July 2009).

^23. This proposal was made initially in 2007 by the PSD in the Ethics Commission of the Parliament. The Left Bloc is reported to have proposed going even further, to an extraordinary constitutional revision that would give ‘full political rights’ to foreign residents in Portugal (Susete, 13 December 2007; Lusa/fim, 1 March 2009).