Doctoral Dissertation Research: Emigrant Political Rights in Latin America, Dual Citizenship, Voting, and Representation

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

For over a century, migrants abroad have supported the economic development of their homelands by sending remittances. Previous research has shown that this type of money transfers is instrumental to avoid financial crises in sending countries. In Latin America, remittances occupy one of the mainline items within the gross domestic product of several national economies. However, the economic contributions by citizens abroad have not translated into substantive political representation. Migrants contribute to the welfare of their households and the homeland economy, and yet, their political participation in polity of the place of birth remains incipient. Therefore, understanding the conditions that guided the creation and implementation of political rights and laws that govern them is critical for developing public policies aimed at reducing political inequalities for citizens abroad. After all, as previous research has shown, the political participation of migrants in their homeland also enhances their political involvement in the countries where they live as immigrants. In the last thirty years, Latin American states have created legislation to approve political rights for its citizens abroad including dual citizenship, extraterritorial voting, and parliamentary representation. This legislation, however, has not always translated into substantive political rights. The scholarship on emigrant politics has focused on the approval of emigrant political rights without paying attention to the socio-legal conditions that led to various degrees of implementation. If Latin American states have created similar legislation on the books, why did different levels of substantive implementation emerge? This project studies the creation and implementation of political rights and laws for Latin American emigrants from a comparative perspective. It combines a two-phase process of data collection and analysis. First, using numerical data from nineteen countries in Latin America, this project employs Qualitative Comparative Analysis to develop a systematic cross-case analysis of causal conditions leading to the creation of emigrant laws. Second, combining data from interviews, newspaper articles, administrative records, official documents, and archives, this project deploys several cycles of qualitative coding techniques to trace divergent political trajectories of emigrants living abroad. Conceptually, this project emphasizes how violence, politicization of emigrants, and critical junctures of democratization influence policy decisions related to extraterritorial political rights. Findings from this research will provide insights into the differentiated conditions in which Latin American countries grant political rights to their citizens abroad, contributing to a growing literature on democratization and inclusion. Furthermore, this research project will explain the striking differences between how countries approve policy on paper and how they implement it on the ground. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.