Abstract
The focus of this chapter is the role of origin countries in influencing immigrants’ political and civic participation in their host societies. It is our aim to understand how these processes can affect immigrant integration in destination countries. More specifically, our objective is to explore the following questions: first, whether and how emigration countries can influence immigrants’ political and civic participation in destination countries; and second, whether links between origin countries, civil societies and migrants have an impact on the political and civic participation of the latter in the receiving countries. We also propose to analyse origin countries’ possible influence on political and civic participation through a very specific approach based on the identification of different actors intervening in these processes. In this framework, we distinguish between state and non-state (or civil society) actors and we look at how they can play a role in the political and civic participation of immigrants at destination. The rationale behind this differentiation is that these two categories of actors do not generally use the same tools, and often they may not share the same goals (Gabrielli and Zapata-Barrero 2015).
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Notes
- 1.
See a comparative case-study is the INVOLVE project of involvement of third-country nationals as a means of integration (CEV 2006).
- 2.
As in the cases of Mexico, Morocco and China, among others, this stance very often represents an important shift for a state that previously denounced emigrants as deserters.
- 3.
The idea of emigrant communities as off-shore districts of the state is reflected in some specific electoral systems, as in the case of Ecuador and Italy, where external electoral constituencies are given special representation. Some other examples of these actions, but which have a more paternalistic approach, can be found in Mexico, Haiti and Ireland.
- 4.
Assuming a monthly average wage of 1,770,000 zloty in 1991 (http://www.stat.gov.pl/gus/5840_1630_ENG_HTML.htm), that is, around 160 dollars (at the exchange rate at this time: 11,100 Polish zloty/1 dollar [http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/18/world/abortion-ban-sought-by-church-is-rejected-by-polish-parliament.html?pagewanted=2]. Koslowsky (2004: 14) gives different figures, equating 50 dollars with a Polish monthly salary.
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Gabrielli, L., Gsir, S., Zapata-Barrero, R. (2017). Political and Civic Participation of Immigrants in Host Countries. An Interpretative Framework from the Perspective of the Origin Countries and Societies. In: Weinar, A., Unterreiner, A., Fargues, P. (eds) Migrant Integration Between Homeland and Host Society Volume 1. Global Migration Issues, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56176-9_5
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