Migrant Perspectives on External Voting

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores migrants’ perspectives on voting in country-of-origin elections and on participation in democratic politics in countries of origin in Central and East Europe. We build on 80 semi-structured interviews with migrants from Poland and Romania, living in Barcelona, Spain, and Oslo, Norway. The chapter offers an analysis of their thoughts on and experiences of practicing external voting, as well as choosing not to cast a ballot in any given election. The first part explores the reasons why migrants do—or do not—vote “back home,” offering illustrations from our data, focusing on motivations for external voting, practicalities that impede or facilitate external voting, and discussing intersecting scales of motivation. These discussions are set within the context of migrants’ broader motivations to engage in politics transnationally, and intimately connected with their reflections on the principled question of the democratic legitimacy of external voting. The second part of the chapter extends the view from external voting to migrants’ own perspectives on transnational political engagement, including but not limited to external voting, as set within often transnational lifeworlds affected by both “here” and “there” in varying ways.