Description
Migrants are transnational political actors who can be politically active in both their host and origin country. They can organise and/or vote in both countries, but are also subject to political mobilisation and rules governing their access to formal political participation in the two contexts. Here, we focus on Turkish emigrants to examine how citizenship rules governing access to host country political participation and transnational political mobilisation and campaigning from their origin country affect their participation in origin country elections. Regarding citizenship rules, we investigate how dual citizenship, which affects both the legal membership and emotional attachment to their host and origin countries, shapes their involvement in origin country politics. For transnational political mobilisation and campaigning, we seek to understand how Turkish politicians’ visits and the presence of political organisations, by mobilising and reconfiguring such attachments to the origin country, motivate emigrants’ vote choice. We quantitatively analyse data covering all elections where emigrants were allowed to vote. Our findings highlight the importance of emigrants' confined transnational citizenship and of political mobilisation via grassroots organisations abroad. High level visits by politicians show little effect. This study contributes to our understanding of migrants’ political behaviour in transnational contexts, and how they engage in the political lives of both their countries of residence and origin.
