Polities beyond Borders. The New Dynamics of Emigrant Politics and Policies in Latin America

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A current of research in migration studies -transnationalism- is demonstrating since the mid-1990s that emigrants are increasingly keeping economic, social and political ties with their country of origin. However, only recently political science research has begun to focus on what we call 'emigrant policies', that is, policies adopted by sending states that primarily concern citizens abroad. However, findings thus far have been largely confined to either case studies with little generalizability or broader work on specific sub-issues, such as external voting rights. As a result, the reasons why states adopt these policies, their variation and their effects remain largely unknown. Empirically focusing on the Latin American and Caribbean countries as global front-runners in the adoption of emigrant policies, this research project thus addresses two central themes: 1) How do homeland states reach out to emigrants, and what drives the adoption of these policies? And 2): How do 'emigrant politics', that is, the interaction of homeland political actors with emigrants, play out in the adoption of these policies? To answer these questions, we propose a mixed-methods research design which proceeds in three steps: First, we generate an original data-set identifying and codifying the principal emigrant policies at the large N level of all Latin American and major Caribbean countries, something missing so far. Second, we use this database for a quantitative large-N analysis in order to test hypothesis on structural causes for the adoption of emigrant policies; this is done by correlating a number of structural factors regarding the sending state and its emigration community as independent variable with the emigration policies as codified above as the dependent variable. The third step, then, is a qualitative, small-n case study to understand the political dynamics of sending states and emigrants in the definition and adoption of emigrant policies. Using the concept of 'nested analysis' developed by Liebermann, the cases to be selected for this are not defined beforehand but will result from the large-N analysis.Overall, this project will, based on a comprehensive empirical basis, provide new insights on how and why sending states actively adopt policies to engage its emigrated citizens abroad, and on how this impacts not only the politics, but the very re-definition of the polity of the sending societies.