CfP PANEL “DIASPORA MOBILIZATION AND HOMELAND POLITICS”- 2020 ECPR GENERAL CONFERENCE INNSBRUCK

Panel Chairs: Sebastián Umpierrez- Universidad Diego Portales (sebastian.umpierrez@mail.udp.cl) and Sorina Soare- University of Florence (sorinacristina.soare@unifi.it)

Panel to be submitted to Section 35- International Migration Policies and Politics: Current Challenges and Opportunities

Panel abstract: Countries worldwide have gradually granted voting rights to non-resident nationals: a growing number of emigrants and their descendants is more visible around the globe each year. Political participation, consultation and representation have extended into the transnational realm to establish, control or foster state-diaspora nexus. Bearing this dynamic context in mind, several scholars have examined migrants’ strategies to influence homeland politics via electoral mobilisation and through non-electoral modes of political engagement (e.g., protests, demonstrations, boycotts, petitions, artistic expressions). Others have analysed the role of transnational networks across different host countries regarding political mobilisation from abroad and political parties’ transnational role within a new arena of citizenship. Non-resident nationals comprise a new niche of voters while also present many opportunities and challenges for sending countries’ electoral and party systems, diplomatic offices and migrant civil organisations. Ranging from political parties’ responsiveness to diaspora demands, to connections between migrant civil organisations and external voting, as well as to assessing public opinion on diaspora engagement in homeland politics, this panel brings together a set of papers exploring various angles of migrants’ political participation and representation at both the individual and aggregate levels. 

Please send your paper proposals (including a title, a 250-word paper abstract and the name and institutional affiliation of the authors) to Sebastián Umpierrez (sebastian.umpierrez@mail.udp.cl) and Sorina Soare (sorinacristina.soare@unifi.it) with sufficient time in advance of the official deadline for full panel submissions (i.e. before 19th of February 2020).