The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy is pleased to partner with the Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT) at the European University Institute on their joint project (Dis)enfranchising migrants. Patterns and politics of granting voting rights to non-citizen residents and non-resident citizens in contemporary democracies.

The project investigates patterns of non-resident citizen and non-citizen resident voting rights across and within countries. It aims at finding out which political interests and actors drive franchise expansion/restriction and how political polarisation and democratic backlashes or deconsolidation affect the politics of the franchise for migrants. The project draws on a new GLOBALCIT electoral rights dataset, as well as case on specific studies of Austria, Ecuador, India, Switzerland, and Uruguay.

The initial results were presented at a joint workshop that was held in Florence on 6-7 December and that was funded by the EUI-Graduate Institute grant obtained by the researchers in July. Lucy Dubochet, Matias López, Christine Lutringer, Maria Mexi, Lipin Ram and Yanina Welp participated from the AHCD team. The main goal of the workshop was to examine the conditions facilitating the political incorporation of both immigrants and non-residents, which are commonly documented by separate datasets and studied in disconnected literatures, as part of the same phenomena. It seems all the more relevant to consider both phenomena jointly since they concern the same population as seen from the perspective of different states, but also because they both contribute to shaping the notion of citizenship.

The workshop focused on the two interrelated questions of the project: (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? During four sessions, the topics were considered both from a global approach (session 1, Global patterns and trends) and from specific region and country-based case studies (sessions 2, 3 and 4, on Latin American, European, and Indian case studies). 

Among the findings that were presented, a general path towards increasing regulations to offer voting rights for non resident citizens was observed, as well as, to a minor extent, to non citizen residents. The same notion of what means to be a ‘non citizen’ was discussed in relation to particular cases such as Switzerland and Austria, where many second and third generation migrants who were born in the country strive to access voting rights. 

Factors behind this observed general increase in voting rights for migrants include the strategic calculation of parties promoting it as well as imitation. Nonetheless, more systematic research is required to better understand it. Meanwhile, it would be wrong to assume the general path as linear and or uncontested given that some cases are in fact moving backwards, as the situation of Venezuela nowadays exemplifies, while others remain unchanged, as in Uruguay. 

Key aspects in the discussion pertained to the limits of voting rights for non resident citizens that were born outside the country of reference. The distance between laws and their implementation was also an important aspect highlighted in the papers presented, given that regulation itself is often not sufficient to guarantee effective voting. 

Contextual factors were seen as fundamental: behind some common general patterns, there are specific features that shape the discussion and regulation of voting rights. These include demographic patterns, the presence and weight of radical right nativist parties, and the role of electoral bodies.