What conditions facilitate the political incorporation of immigrants and non-residents in the age of mass migration and unequal democracy? Non-citizen and non-resident voting rights have been documented by separate datasets and studied in disconnected literatures. By contrast, at this workshop we consider these phenomena together, as they concern the same population seen from the perspective of different states. We focus on two interrelated questions: (1) What patterns of non-resident citizen and non-citizen resident voting rights exist across countries and what associations exist between them within countries?) (2) Has the expansion or restriction of voting rights for non-resident citizens and non-citizen residents been politically contested and what were the political constellations and actors that have driven policy reform?
We consider both their connection in domestic policy contexts as well as international processes of diffusion and interaction. The question of enfranchisement of migrants has also been separated from that of citizenship status. However, the size and composition of non-resident citizens depends on citizenship laws regulating the acquisition, retention, intergenerational transmission, or loss of citizenship outside the territory. Apart from analysing the patterns of franchise expansion for a large number of countries, we want to explore the politics of franchise expansion or restrictions in a series of regional and country case studies. We focus on case studies in Asia, Europe and Latin America. We are interested in finding out which political interests and actors have driven either kind of franchise expansion/restriction and will put a particular focus on how political polarisation and democratic backlashes or deconsolidation affect the politics of the franchise for migrants.
The workshop is jointly organised by the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, the Graduate Institute Geneva and the Global Citizenship Observatory, European University Institute (part of the Global Governance Programme at the Robert Schuman Centre) and co-financed by the Graduate Institute Geneva and the European University Institute.