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

移民研究的一个趋势-跨国主义-表明，自1990年代中期以来，移民越来越多地与原籍国保持经济、社会和政治联系。然而，直到最近，政治学研究才开始关注我们所说的“移民政策”，即主要涉及海外公民的派遣国所采取的政策。然而，迄今为止的研究结果基本上局限于个案研究，没有什么普遍性，或就外部投票权等具体分问题开展了更广泛的工作。因此，各国采取这些政策的原因、它们的变化及其影响在很大程度上仍然不为人知。从经验上讲，拉丁美洲和加勒比国家是采取移民政策的全球领先者，因此，本研究项目涉及两个中心主题：1）母国如何接触移民，是什么推动了这些政策的通过？和2）：如何“移民政治”，即祖国的政治行为者与移民的互动，发挥在通过这些政策？为了回答这些问题，我们提出了一个混合方法的研究设计，进行了三个步骤：首先，我们产生了一个原始的数据集，确定和编纂的主要移民政策，在大N水平的所有拉丁美洲和主要加勒比国家，缺少的东西到目前为止。其次，我们使用这个数据库进行定量的大N分析，以检验假设的结构性原因，为通过移民政策;这是通过相关的结构性因素，有关派遣国及其移民社区作为自变量与移民政策作为因变量，如上述编纂。第三步，然后，是一个定性的，小n的案例研究，以了解政治动态的派遣国和移民在移民政策的定义和通过。使用Liebermann开发的“嵌套分析”概念，选择的案例事先没有定义，但将从大N分析中得出。总体而言，该项目将基于全面的实证基础，提供关于派遣国如何以及为什么积极采取政策吸引海外移民的新见解，以及这不仅影响政治，而是对输出社会政体的重新定义

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.