Courting migrants: how states make diasporas and diasporas make states

In: Oxford scholarship online

Abstract

Long-distance engagement by migrants in the politics of their homelands is not a new phenomenon, but, as this text argues, politicians are increasingly looking beyond their national boundaries for electoral and political support. While migrants rarely cast decisive votes in homeland elections, they are not marginal to homeland politics. Based on in-depth research on state-migrant relations in four high-migration countries, 'Courting Migrants' looks at how extraterritorial outreach by homeland states and parties alters the boundaries of political membership and intersects with migrant agency to transform politics at home.