Background, framework and focus of the special issue

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue seeks to explore the potentialities of strengthening a new field of research within migration and diversity studies: Immigrant incorporation in political parties. The point of departure of all contributions is that there is what we call a “diversity gap” between political parties as public representative organisations and diversity dynamics in democratic societies. This Special Issue seeks to explore the current strategies of political parties developing first conceptual frameworks, theoretical foundations and empirical hypothesis and approaches. The case studies come from four European countries, two from the North and two from the South of Europe: Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

KEYWORDS:

• Political parties
• diversity
• immigration
• incorporation
• democracy
• Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The research this work is based on was supported by European Commission in the European Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals [grant number HOME/2011/EIFX/CA/1978].

ORCID

Ricard Zapata-Barrero http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3478-1330

Iris Dähnke http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1172-5317

Lea Markard http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4326-560X

Notes

1. See, among others, Gerstle and Mollenkopf (2001), Messina (2006), Adamsom (2007), Vogel (2007), Martiniello (2005, 2009), Mollenkopf and Hochschild (2010), Koopmans and Statham (2000), Morales and Giugni (2010), Morales (2011), De Rooij (2012), Zapata-Barrero and Gropas (2012), Zapata-Barrero et al. (2013).

2. See, for instance, Bird, Saalfeld, and Wüst (2010), Sobolewska (2013), Bloemraad and Schönwälder (2013), and the bibliography of the different contributions in this Special Issue.

3. See website: http://www.cjd-nord.de/angebote/migration-forschung-und-beratung/abgeschlossene-projekte-forschung/divpol/

4. The empirical results, statistics and numbers presented only refer to those four countries. For detailed DIVPOL result and more country reports including Italy, Poland and Sweden, see above website.

5. For the full questionnaire, see the DIVPOL project webpage http://www.cjd-nord.de/angebote/migration-forschung-und-beratung/abgeschlossene-projekte-forschung/divpol/ch/704457e34ecdcb392d0c909909f3d3d0/?tx__%5Bcontroller%5D=Standard

6. In Portugal, this applies only to Brazilians who hold a special status, under which equivalent political rights get suspended in Brazil. In the U.K., resident nationals of Commonwealth countries or Ireland are also entitled to vote at the national level.