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ABSTRACT
Ireland’s inclusive political rights for migrants, together with a favourable naturalization process and accessible political parties, present favourable factors for political participation; however, migrant representation among elected representatives has remained very low. Examining the institutional context and group structures, this article explores the trajectory of migrant involvement in Irish political parties from the point of first engagement to becoming a representative in an effort to explain their under-representation in Irish political life. It is shown that neither political parties nor migrants have made a collective and sustained effort to increase migrant representation in local municipalities, which is a necessary pre-requisite for enhancing representation in the legislature. The article concludes that while opportunity structures provide some explanation towards migrant under-representation in Irish electoral politics, additional factors such as how political actors interact as a group with the institutional context are also important.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors of the special issue, Ricard Zapata-Barrero, Iris Dähnke and Lea Markard, the anonymous journal reviewers and Judith Brown for their valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Long-term arrangement includes renting from the local authority or a housing association (CSO Citation2012). UK nationals are excluded from the analysis throughout the text since for historical reasons they have long-standing presence in Ireland.
2. They need to be ordinarily resident for six months.
3. The research was carried out by the author and Arthur McIlveen for The Integration Centre and throughout the text it is referred to as “our study” and “our research” Szlovak and McIlveen (Citation2014).
4. Marsh (Citation2007) found this analysing The Irish National Election Study (INES), an extensive five-wave panel survey of (initially) 2663 respondents that was carried out through the period 2002–07 encompassing several elections.
5. A PR-STV election proceeds according to the following steps:
All the first preference votes are counted in the first round. Any candidate who has reached or exceeded the quota is declared elected. Quota is the minimum number of votes required to fill a seat and it is calculated by using the Droop quota: (valid votes cast/seats to fill+ 1)+1.
If a candidate has more votes than the quota, that candidate's surplus votes are transferred to other candidates. Votes that would have gone to the winner instead go to the next preference listed on their ballot papers.
If there are not enough candidates that have reached the quota, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and his or her votes go to the next preference listed on their ballot papers.
The process of distributing either the surplus votes of the elected candidate reaching the quota or the next preference votes of the eliminated candidate is repeated until all seats are filled.
6. Most notably of those was the claim made by the Darren Scully who he caused national controversy in 2011 after making a number of inflammatory comments about black African constituents. As a result his party whip was removed but he was not expelled from the party. In 2014 he was re-admitted to the party only to win a seat in the local election.
7. Fanning interviewed a number of party officials in Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour Party and Green Party. They also carried out documentary research on the activities of political parties.
8. The common view is that that split between parties can be ascribed to their different stance in relation to the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 that concluded the War of Independence in Ireland but Byrne and O’Malley argued that the two parties represent in fact the legacy of two different type of nationalism (Byrne and O’Malley Citation2012).
9. Dobbs's paper analyses the migrant voter registration campaign carried by local authorities and migrant organisations during the 2009 local elections in Ireland. She finds that although local government is well placed to address some of the informational and social barriers to political integration, it is less well equipped to build networks between migrant communities and critical political actors.
10. During the 2010 election in the UK, 68% of black and ethnic minority voters chose Labour and sixteen per cent voted for the Conservatives (Heath and Khan Citation2012).
11. 165 TDs (Member of the Lower House of the Irish Parliament) were contacted by telephone, with seventy-four participating in the survey.
12. Two-third of non-EU born migrants in Ireland with at least ten years residence reported taking part in political party, association, petition, demonstration or contacting a politician (MIPEX Citation2015). Due to likely small numbers, it is difficult to establish if this is the result of settlement or other factors.
13. The Opening Power to Diversity scheme involved non-EU born migrants working with members of the Irish Parliament for six months. The work of interns consisted of research, attending meetings, administrative work, dealing with queries and sending notes to the press known as press releases (Crosscare Citation2013).
14. For instance, in the Mulhuddart electoral area two Fine Gael and two Fianna Fail candidates were selected in 2004, with only one Fianna Fail candidate being elected. In 2009 Fianna Fail ran three and Fine Gael two, including one migrant candidate in each party. Similar patterns can be observed in Lucan electoral area. (see www.electionireland.org and Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government Citation2004).
15. While the successful migrant candidate collected just 353 first preference votes, he profited from 1023 number two votes, being transferred from his Irish running mate who got elected in the first round (see www.electionireland.org. and Department of Environment Citation2014).
16. Research through the Irish Election Study estimated that sixty per cent of Irish voters gave their subsequent preferences to candidates from the same party (Marsh Citation2007). In political jargon, candidates who are not expected to perform well but produce useful number two votes to the other party candidate in the area are called “sweepers”.