Making voices count: the political participation of Romanian immigrants in Western Europe

ABSTRACT

Research on immigrants’ political participation paid little attention to cross-national comparisons between first-generation immigrants coming from one country. To fill this empirical void, this article identifies the determinants of Romanian labour migrants’ political participation in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. It argues and tests the effect of individual orientations, attitudes, social interaction, and resources. The data come from a web survey conducted in the summer of 2013. The empirical results show that, with small country-level variations, the political participation is a function of membership in organisations, a longer period of stay, the size of immigrants’ social network, and education.

KEYWORDS:

• Political participation
• labour migrants
• civic engagement
• length of stay
• Romania

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sergiu Gherghina is a Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, Goethe University Frankfurt. His research interests lie in party politics in Central and Eastern Europe, legislative and voting behavior, democratization, and the use of direct democracy.

ORCID

Sergiu Gherghina http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6627-5598

Notes

1. Dalton also refers to e-petitions, since the Internet plays an important role in his argument.

2. This article accounts only for the political discussions in an organised setting. There are good theoretical reasons to leave out discussions with family members (for details, see Teorell, Torcal, and Montero 2007).

3. Milbrath (1965) sees political participation as cumulative and argues that people get involved first in the top behaviours. According to him, those who participate in the top activities are also likely to perform in those lower in rank.

4. The study has also tested for other SES factors (e.g. occupation, age, interaction effects between age, education and occupation) and knowledge of the language in the country of residence. They were not reported, since they had no strong or significant effect.

5. A detailed account of this variation is available in the Web Survey Report (in Romanian) at: http://fspac.ubbcluj.ro/ethnicmobilization/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Research-report-Romanian-migrants-websurvey1.pdf, last accessed 21 June 2014.

6. The index lumps together conventional and non-conventional forms of participation, because there are no theoretical reasons to believe that they respond to different logics in the cases addressed in this article. Cronbach's alpha for all four countries was 0.80, Cronbach's alpha for France = 0.73, Cronbach's alpha for Germany = 0.82, Cronbach's alpha for Italy = 0.84, and Cronbach's alpha for Spain = 0.82.

7. When creating the index, the data were checked to see whether one type of political participation is more present in the final categories; the result was negative. For example, people who belong to the category "one type of participation” are not predominantly voters.

8. The question refers to the total period spent in the host country, not only the uninterrupted period of time.

9. The survey has asked migrants about the activities of the associations and organisations in which they are members. The vast majority of respondents have joined cultural associations or organisations aiming to provide information for better integration. Only a limited percentage of respondents (3% in France and 8% in Italy) mentioned membership in organisations with political activities and goals.

10. The level of significance should not be interpreted in the traditional way of results’ applicability to a broader population. The sample is not probabilistic and thus generalisations do not make much sense. Instead, it is reported to indicate that the association is not the result of random chance.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article has been conducted within the framework of the project “Political Mobilization of Minorities and Anti-Minority Discourse in the European Crisis of Multiculturalism”, PN-II-IDPCE-2011-3-0394, funded by the National Council for Scientific Research in Romania.