Political Participation amongst Migrants. The Case of the Nordic Countries

Abstract

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­The ongoing process of globalization in combination with the ever increasing migration trends has brought integration issues to the limelight in the modern political world. The successful integration of migrants is one of the key themes that are debated in all migrant receiving countries, where successful integration is seen to be of utmost importance for the development of a society. Political participation amongst migrants is furthermore an important arena, which can be seen as a measure of successful integration. Even though this topic is deemed as an important focus area for future research on integration issues, it has been researched very little. The author aims to fill the research gap by attempting to analyze current trends of political participation amongst migrants in the Nordic countries and to identify some of the reasons that would help explain why some countries are more successful in activating migrant political participation than others. In attempting to address this aim, the author has applied a comparative analysis of the most similar cases and has thereby chosen the following relatively homogeneous countries: Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, to be studied. This study is divided into two parts; the first part of the thesis introduces the aims of the study, describes the research design, defines some of the central terms and outlines the theoretical framework for the study. The author further introduces the political opportunity structures theory as a means to understand the access and motivational initiatives that are present for migrant political participation. The political opportunity structures theory is seen as an interesting and important aspect in migrant and minority studies as it connects political participation with the underlying political structures in the country of settlement that can either constrain or enable migrant political participation. Previous literature found that the presence of the right political opportunity structures in a society was seen to have a positive correlation to the political participation rates. For the purpose of this study, the author looks at the six most common core political opportunity structures used in previous literature; electoral system , Citizenship Acts, political rights, political parties, access to labor market and access to educational opportunities, for further analysis. The second part of this study consists of data analysis and findings. Chapter 4 reviews migrant voting turn out and representation in local elections, and gives an overview of the current situation of migrant political participation through the analysis of statistical information. This chapter further shows the historical extent of interest migrants have shown to the political elections in the Nordic countries. In this chapter the author finally attempts to identify variations in the political behaviour of migrants in the Nordic countries that are worth examining in light of the research questions posed by this study. Variations in migrant political participation that are identified in Chapter 4 are further analyzed in Chapter 5. This chapter reviews the observations through the six political opportunity structures presented in the theoretical framework. This analysis attempts to illustrate how and which political opportunity structures explain variations in migrant political participation in the Nordic countries. The findings, which were observed in the comparative analysis, were very interesting. Contrary to belief, the analysis actually showed that Nordic migrant political participation had been relatively higher in the earlier times, whereas the trend now displays a rather gradual decline over the years. This trend was shown to be apparent for all the Nordic countries under scrutiny. This drop in the migrant political participation rate, although being a fact for all Nordic countries, has however been seen to vary significantly between the countries being studied. Among the six political opportunity structures, the electoral systems, political rights and labour market opportunities were found to be the most significant factors that could help to explain the political participation variations amongst migrants in the Nordic countries. The comparative analysis suggested that Denmark, Sweden and Norway, had more migrant friendly elections systems that are deemed to be conducive for collective mobilization and could be one reason for the higher migrant political participation than in Finland. The analysis further suggested that the aforementioned countries were also seen to have stronger labour market structures, longer history of migration and migrant political participation. This again could be another reason for the lower ratings for migrant political participation in Finland. These and other important findings and suggestions for future research are further discussed and presented in the final chapter of the study. Asiasanat:Migrant, migration, migration history, the Nordic countries, political participation, Political opportunity structures, integration, democracy, multiculturalism, electoral systems, political rights, citizenship, denizenship, political party, labor market, education.