Immigrants, emigrants, and the right to vote: a story of double standards
| Résumé |
International migration simultaneously creates populations of
emigrants living outside their state of nationality, and of
immigrants living in states the nationality of which they do not
hold. The discrepancy between resident and national populations has
produced protracted situations of mass disenfranchisement, but also
triggered new forms of re-enfranchisement beyond nationality and/or
residence. The chapter compares the double trend in contemporary
democracies of extending the right to vote to non-resident citizens
and to non-citizen residents. It shows that notwithstanding
significant interstate variations, states have been far more prone
to expand the franchise to their own nationals abroad, than to
foreigners durably settled within their territorial jurisdiction.
These uneven policy developments contradict two central assumptions
in the field of citizenship studies, namely that citizenship in
today’s democracies has become more liberal and less valuable than
in the past. Instead, they reveal a growing inequality of treatment
between immigrants and emigrants also visible in other migration
policy areas. They tell a story of double standards, where
emigrants are represented as benevolent tourists whose right to
participate is taken for granted, whereas immigrants take the
suspicious traits of vagabonds, whose right to participate must be
earned through naturalisation. |
| Mots-clés |
Immigrants, Emigrants, Voting rights, Citizenship, Franchise |
| Citation | Arrighi de Casanova, J. T. (2021). Immigrants, emigrants, and the right to vote: a story of double standards. In Handbook of Citizenship and Migration. (pp. 194-209). London: Edward Elgar Publishing. |
| Type | Chapitre de livre (Anglais) |
| Année | 2021 |
| Titre du livre | Handbook of Citizenship and Migration |
| Editeur commercial | Edward Elgar Publishing (London) |
| Pages | 194-209 |
| Titre de la collection | Handbook in Migration |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.4337/9781789903133.00021 |