Voting here and there: political integration and transnational political engagement among immigrants in Europe

In this article, I examine voting patterns in origin and receiving country national elections among immigrants in Europe. The existing scholarship on transnational political engagement offers two competing interpretations of the relationship between immigrant integration and transnational engagement, which I classify as the resocialization and complementarity perspectives. The resocialization perspective assumes that transnational political engagement gradually declines as immigrants become socialized into the new receiving society. Conversely, the complementarity perspective assumes that immigrant integration increases transnational political engagement. I test these competing perspectives with survey data collected between 2004 and 2008 for 12 different immigrant groups residing in seven European cities. The analysis examines how immigrant political and civic participation in receiving countries affect their proclivities to vote in homeland elections. I also analyse the effects of receiving and origin country contexts on immigrant voting behaviour in homeland elections. While my findings support both the resocialization and complementarity perspectives, they also highlight the ways in which a set of origin‐country contexts shape immigrant propensities to engage in transnational electoral politics. I observe a degree of complementarity among immigrants with resources who are motivated and eligible to participate in both receiving and origin‐country elections.     

Documenting and Explaining the Persistence of Homeland Politics Among Germany's Turks1

This article examines the development of Germany's Turkish organizations since 1961. These have failed to mobilize Germany's Turks around shared ethnocultural grievances against the host society. A transnational political opportunity structure, a contextual framework involving host and sending countries, entices distinct actors leading Germany's Turkish organizations to focus on homeland differences instead of common interests. In this transnational context, actors — whom I will label political migrants — influence immigrant community cohesion by using associations to pursue goals rooted in the homeland or host country. When a sending country generates contentious political migrants in an ethnoculturally dissimilar, homogeneous democracy and the hosts fail to incorporate the foreigners, infighting focused on the homeland is likely to preoccupy the immigrant community.     

Representation Beyond the State: Towards Transnational Democratic Non-state Politics

The crises of representative democracy and of state-based politics have been declared many times and ‘participation’ is often advocated as a remedy for the shortcomings of both. While the literature has extensively discussed representative practices in relation to territorial states, we argue in this article that more attention should be paid to the question of representation within transnational social movements striving for a politics that transcends current territorially bounded representative democracy. Analysing the World Social Forum and West African participatory trade policy-making, we find that as transnational social movements aiming at democratic goals deepen their interactions, they can face demanding questions such as: who or what has a right to be made present in a given political process and how is this established? We claim that avoiding the question of representation in transnational non-state-centred politics leaves power too many places to hide.     

Chinese Transnationalism in Britain: A Longer History

This article looks at the early history of the British Chinese community in the light of transnational studies. It questions the belief that homeland and intradiasporic economic ties are predominantly new, save on the rare occasions that elites maintained them, and that early political transnationalism was less common still and even more sure to be elite based. In so doing, it draws attention to the role played by political elites in galvanising migrant communities. It also analyses the role played by class-based organisations in constructing transnational ties, a form of Chinese transnationalism that other studies fail to note. It finds that transnational practices and institutions pervaded the early community in its immigrant phases, both from below and from above. This immigration was overwhelmingly proletarian, but nonetheless transnational. Though basically economic, the transnational community was also political. Capturing a mass base among Chinese overseas was a central strategy of late-Qing dissidents. Crucially, China's early radicals shared a Cantonese origin with their compatriots in Britain, North America, Australia, and elsewhere. The article's findings challenge transnational theories, which stress contemporaneity, economics, and elites. The political cultivation of Chinese in Southeast Asia by Republicans and Communists has been the subject of numerous studies. Far less is known about analogous activities in Europe. By exploring early Republican and Communist influences on the Chinese in Britain, this article traces further paths along which diasporic nationalism spread.     

The Politics of Migrants' Transnational Political Practices

This article critically examines transnational political engagement of migrants and refugees in local, national and global political processes. Based on inductive reading of existing scholarship and in particular the author's own research on Turks and Kurds in Europe, the article discusses key concepts and trends in our understanding of why, how and with what consequences migrants engage in transnational political practices. These practices, this article suggests, are influenced by the particular multilevel institutional environment, which migrant political actors negotiate their way through. This environment includes not only political institutions in the sending and receiving country, but also global norms and institutions and networks of other nonstate actors. Finally, the article argues for critical examination of the democratic transparency and accountability of migrants' transnational networks in any analysis of their long and short‐term impact on domestic and global politics.     

Behind the Numbers: Talking Politics with Foreign-born Chinese Americans

This paper discusses results of in‐depth follow‐up interviews conducted with selected individuals of Chinese descent residing in Los Angeles and San Francisco who were previously chosen at random to participate in the 2000 and 2001 Pilot National Asian American Political Survey. A total of 15 male and female informants who had migrated from Taiwan, mainland China, and Hong Kong were interviewed in Mandarin Chinese. They were asked to compare the performance of the US Government with that of the government in their respective ethnic homeland. They were also asked to explain their reasons for supporting a certain US political party, ideology, and type of candidate. In addition, they commented on the state of political participation or the lack of it among Chinese Americans. Finally, they explained the complexity of their ethnic self‐identification and experiences of racial discrimination. Their responses were interpreted within the context of the historical formation of the Chinese American community as well as the summary results of the mass opinion survey. The results help dispel myths about Chinese Americans being politically indifferent and irrational. They help illuminate the possible relationships among ethnic identity, homeland politics, and political participation in the host land. They also provide exciting insights into improving the survey instrument for a majority immigrant and non‐Anglophone population.     

Transnational migration: taking stock and future directions

Increasing numbers of sending states are systematically offering social and political membership to migrants residing outside their territories. The proliferation of these dual memberships contradicts conventional notions about immigrant incorporation, their impact on sending countries, and the relationship between migration and development in both contexts. But how do ordinary individuals actually live their lives across borders? Is assimilation incompatible with transnational membership? How does economic and social development change when it takes place across borders? This article takes stock of what is known about everyday transnational practices and the institutional actors that facilitate or impede them and outlines questions for future research. In it, I define what I mean by transnational practices and describe the institutions that create and are created by these activities. I discuss the ways in which they distribute migrants’ resources and energies across borders, based primarily on studies of migration to the United States.     

Feminism and the Challenges of the "Post-Cold War' World

Women's political participation is increasing in many countries around the world, but their participation in democratic politics has not altered the neoliberal consensus that is harmful to their interests. Two reasons for this are explored here: the impact of the Cold War in shaping the post-Cold War discourse on markets and states, and the anti-state bias of much of contemporary feminist theory. The essay calls for a rethinking of the consequences of difference theories for feminist political practices, and for a renewed focus on redistributional issues.     

Negotiating civic identity across different political contexts: Immigrant participation in social movements and political incorporation

This article examines the understudied intersection between migration and contentious politics, focusing specifically on immigrant participation in social movements within their host societies. Drawing upon data from the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) Movement in Hong Kong, it illuminates the process through which Chinese immigrants become politicized, evolve collective identities, and mobilize against civil dominance. Further, it underscores the transformative potential of social movements in facilitating immigrant political incorporation. However, it also recognizes the unilateral acceptance determined by mainstream society, which often leaves immigrants sidelined in discussions regarding their qualifications for unconventional political participation. To address civil inequality, immigrants establish their civil identities, challenge dominance, and amass political capital for future incorporation. This study extends the migration and social movements literature by shedding light on the political dynamics of immigrant participation and the hurdles they encounter during their journey toward political incorporation. It also underscores the significant role of progressive social movements in fostering immigrant political participation. Furthermore, the research highlights the unique immigrant political identity that emerges and evolves through participation in social movements, contesting exclusion and monopolistic dominance over democratic realization.     

The transnational politics of the Tomato King: meaning and impact

Abstract In this article we deploy transnational ethnography to explore the transnational electoral politics by which Andrés Bermúdez, a successful tomato grower and labour contractor from Winters, California, who came to be called ‘the Tomato King’, was elected mayor of the municipality of Jerez in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. We seek to explain the meaning of his transnational electoral victory and its impact on the role of ‘the migrant’ as a new social actor in Mexican political development. We thus situate the Bermudista phenomenon in the context of the literature on migrant transnational politics. We hope to move the literature on migrant political transnationalism forward by advancing an agency‐oriented perspective that incorporates both the politics of representation of ‘el migrante’ in transnational electoral campaigns and the emerging dynamics of transnational coalition politics. Our approach underlines the need to carefully historicize the relationship between transnationalism and citizenship ‐ namely, to map the contingency and agency underlying the changing practices of states, migrants, and transnational institutional networks vis‐à‐vis questions of transnational citizenship. This is best done by paying close attention to the actual social and political practices whereby human agents pursue historically specific political projects that extend the practices of citizenship across borders.     

Immigrant Transnational Organizations and Development: A Comparative Study1

This article explores how ninety Colombian, Dominican, and Mexican transnational immigrant organizations pursue philanthropic projects that aid in the development of their country or community of origin. We find that each nationality's context of exit and reception affects the origin, strength, and character of their organizations. We produce “maps” of the interaction of transnational organizations with each country of origin and conduct multivariate regressions to establish determinants of key organizational characteristics, including their degree of formalization and form of creation. Generally, Colombian organizations assume more middle‐class forms, Dominican organizations stem largely from politics in the country of origin, and Mexican organizations are primarily hometown associations with greater involvement of the national state. We observe that regardless of nationality, transnational immigrant organizations’ members are older, better‐established, and possess above‐average levels of education, suggesting that participation in transnational activities and assimilation are not incompatible. The character of proactive activities by each national state are examined. Theoretical implications for immigrant adaptation and community/national development are discussed.     

THE TRANSNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIES OF IMMIGRANT POLITICS: Insights from a Comparative Study of Migrant Grassroots Organizing1

Greater global interconnectedness produces a transformation in the ways in which groups constitute and interpret the boundaries of community formation and political practice. This article considers the ways in which a group engages (or not) with the possibilities for transnational identity formation and border‐crossing politics granted by the changing structures of the global order. A comparative analysis identifies similarities and differences in the patterns of community formation and political engagement of Salvadoran migrants settled across different urban centers of North America. Variations in the territorial orientation and scales of immigrant political practice are explained by the national and city‐level contexts of immigrant reception, the institutional opportunity structure in which migrant groups are embedded, and the nature of relations between migrants and their migrant and nonmigrant institutional interlocutors in places of settlement and their country of origin.     

The multiplicity of citizenship: transnational and local practices and identifications of middle‐class migrants

In this article we focus on local and transnational forms of active citizenship, understood as the sum of all political practices and processes of identification. Our study, conducted among middle‐class immigrants in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, indicates that the importance of active transnational citizenship should not be overstated. Among these immigrants, political practices are primarily focused on the local level; political practices directed to the home country appear to be quite rare. However, although transnational activities in the public sphere are rather exceptional, many immigrants do participate in homeland‐directed activities in the private sphere. If we look at processes of identification, we see that a majority of the middle‐class immigrants have a strong local identity. Many of them combine this local identification with feelings of belonging to people in their home country.     

Migrant Mobilization for Homeland Politics: A Social Movement Approach

From the campaign of Chilean exiles all over the world to overthrow the regime of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s to the contemporary mobilization of the Kurdish diaspora in Western Europe, various cases demonstrate the persistence of homeland ties among migrants, especially those who experienced repression and displacement by the government in their countries of origin. Diverse frameworks and concepts in both the humanities and the social sciences have been deployed to explain the involvement of migrants in politics in their home countries, from “long‐distance nationalism” to “transnational activism.” Each points to different dynamic processes and causal mechanisms. In recent years, scholars have advocated the use of a social movement framework in the analysis of migrant mobilization, despite the marginalization of such studies in theory development. In this article, I examine the concepts put forward by the political process model (PPM) as they apply to the analysis of migrants' involvement in politics in their native land. I propose ways for PPM to be useful in the explanation of the dynamics and processes of homeland‐oriented migrant mobilization.     

Political cultures and transnational social fields: Chileans,Colombians and Canadian activists in Toronto

We offer an institutional analysis of Chilean and Colombian transnational politics in Toronto to account for cross‐group variation in transnational political practices and the formation of different types of transnational social fields of political action. The article is based on interviews conducted with Chilean and Colombian community activists and Canadian refugee rights and social justice activists. We use the concept of political culture to account for differences in Chilean and Colombian transnational politics and to explain the different kinds of relationships the two groups have developed with non‐migrants. We introduce the concept of activist dialogues, understood as patterns of strategic political interaction between groups, to characterize how migrants and non‐migrants read and navigate their interlocutors' ways of doing politics. We argue that variation in the character of activist dialogues results in different types of transnational social fields of political action. Chilean–Canadian activist dialogues reflect a convergence of political cultures and strategies of action; Colombian–Canadian activist dialogues are marked by a relationship in which there is a divergence of strategies of action. Convergent dialogues produce thicker and more stable transnational social fields. Divergent dialogues are associated with a series of ad hoc initiatives, the absence of stable and strongly institutionalized partnerships, and a thinner transnational social field of political action.     

Asset or Liability: Transnational Links and Political Participation of Foreign‐Born Citizens in Taiwan

Viewed as outsiders clinging onto links with their country of origin, immigrants do not often feature positively in electoral politics in their host society. Challenging this conventional view, this article examines how immigrants make use of their transnational ties to foster their political participation in the host state. This exploration is conducted through our study of the political participation of Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants in Taiwan. Our research finds that transnational ties are politicized by the mainstream political parties. However, such politicization does not necessarily restrict immigrants’ agency and their sociopolitical space for political participation. Their transnational ties constitute a dynamic sociopolitical field in which these maintained connections are acted upon and give rise to a variety of strategies for responding to issues affecting their interests.     

The political transnationalism of Ecuadorians in Barcelona,Madrid and Milan: the role of individual resources,organizational engagement and the political context

In this article, we examine the transnational political engagement of Ecuadorians in three European cities – Barcelona, Madrid and Milan. Drawing on previous studies that emphasize the role of organizational and institutional resources for political mobilization (as well as those that take into consideration respondents’ resources and the migration process), we analyse the results of a survey conducted between 2006 and 2008 on approximately 300 Ecuadorian individuals in each of these three cities. We examine two different dimensions of Ecuadorian political transnationalism at the individual level, namely attitudinal and participatory. Contrary to previous findings, our results show that recently arrived Ecuadorians and those with less stable household conditions are more involved in transnational politics. Associational involvement shows multiple effects. Engagement in Ecuadorian associations fosters political interest in and information about Ecuador, whereas involvement in any organization promotes electoral transnational politics. The political context is only relevant when accounting for participation in Ecuadorian elections.     

Regrounding the ‘Ungrounded Empires’:localization as the geographical catalyst for transnationalism

The emerging literature on transnationalism has reshaped the study of immigration in the USA from ‘melting pot’ and later ‘salad bowl’, to ‘switching board’, which emphasizes the ability of migrants to forge and maintain ties to their home countries. Often under the heading of ‘transnationalism from below’, these studies highlight an alternative form of globalization, in which migrants act as active agents to initiate and structure global interactions. The role of geography, and in particular, localization in transnational spaces, is central to the transnationalism debate, but is yet to be well articulated. While it has been commonly claimed that transnationalism represents deterritorialized practices and organizations, we argue that it is in fact rooted in the territorial division of labour and local community networks in immigrant sending and receiving countries. We examine closely two business sectors engaged in by the Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles: high‐tech firms and accounting firms. Each illustrates, respectively, the close ties of Chinese transnational activities with the economic base of the Los Angeles region, and the contribution of local‐based, low‐wage, small ethnic businesses to the transnational practices. We conclude that deeper localization is the geographical catalyst for transnational networks and practices.     

The Acehnese diaspora after the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding: return challenges and diasporic post-conflict transformations

This article sheds light on how the Acehnese diaspora adapted to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), a peace deal signed between the Indonesian government and the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement, GAM) after almost 30 years of small-scale war in Aceh. Analysing diasporic responses requires taking two sites into consideration: the host countries where Acehnese diasporans reside and the homeland, to which diasporans return and engage in local politics. Spontaneous and temporary return decreased the Acehnese diaspora significantly in numbers and this decline correlated with a loss of impact on homeland politics. Unlike in conflict times, the homeland no longer requires their involvement. Most remaining diasporans adjust to the loss of significance by transforming their collective activities to suit their new and more limited opportunities. Rather than long-distance politics they focus on identity politics to nurture their Acehneseness abroad. However, at the same time, the process of de-diasporisation is accompanied by a subtle wave of political re-diasporisation. Since the conflict in Aceh was the main rationale for the diasporisation of the Acehnese overseas, the end of conflict now threatens the diasporic cohesion. In order to save not only the notion of togetherness, but also the diaspora's reputation as a spearhead for Aceh's independence, a few diasporans continue to dedicate their activities to this separatist cause.     

Constructing Transnational Identities without Leaving Home: Korean Immigrant Women's Cognitive Border-crossing

Literature on contemporary immigrants suggests that increasing volume of transnational practices foster identity construction across borders, thereby disjoining geographical space and social space in which identities are constructed and negotiated. While studies pay increasing attention to the linkage between transnational organizing of economic and political activities and that of identities, relatively less attention has been given to transnational identity construction of immigrant groups without high level of transnationalism. This essay documents the identity dynamics among less mobile immigrants, who, albeit their immobility, negotiate their identities transnationally by way of various identity practices to imagine themselves as members of multiple communities across national and cultural boundaries. Based on thirty in-depth interviews with first generation Korean immigrant women, the author examines mechanisms of identity organizing which simultaneously indicate a gradual adaptation to the U.S. society and resistance to assimilation.