The Inclusion Paradox of Enfranchising Expats in Latin America
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12315 |
| Author | Ana Margheritis |
| Published date | 01 April 2017 |
| Date | 01 April 2017 |
The Inclusion Paradox of Enfranchising
Expats in Latin America
Ana Margheritis*
ABSTRACT
Enfranchising emigrants implicitly involves inviting them to have a voice and increasing
engagement in home politics, thus maintaining active membership of their nation of origin.
However, in the Latin American Southern Cone (as well as in several other countries in the
region), both state policies and expats’responses have fallen short of making that invitation
effective. What explains this inclusion paradox? Why, while franchise is expanding has effec-
tive political inclusion of citizens living abroad not materialized? This article addresses these
questions for the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Conclusions highlight relatively
unexplored explanatory factors and enhance our understanding of the links between migration
policy innovation and political inclusion beyond borders in some of the least studied cases in
the literature.
INTRODUCTION
Enfranchising expats in the Latin American Southern Cone (LASC) exhibits an “inclusion paradox”
today in the sense that it combines contradictory elements. LASC countries have recently reached
out to their citizens abroad, ending a long record of neglect and silence and framing those efforts
in a socio-political agenda driven by human rights and equality considerations. Together with other
measures, enfranchising emigrants is part of the invitation issued to expats to have a voice in the
fate of the country, participate in home politics, and make membership of the nation effective. It is
framed in a nationalist discourse that promises to enhance democratic participation. It is not the
only but the most visible indicator of whether political inclusion actually exists for this segment of
society. However, regarding the exercise of entitlements, both states and citizens abroad fall short
of enacting them. In comparison with other diaspora engagement initiatives, extra-territorial voting
rights were not the priority. Governments did not act on this diligently or consistently; they have
not always facilitated the exercise of rights for non-residents citizens. Parliamentary representation
of emigrants has been discussed but not yet approved. There is little effort to expand voting rights
beyond national presidential elections, to encourage political mobilization, or to increase turnout.
As for citizens abroad, turnout has been quite low and political mobilization ambivalent and inter-
mittent; thus, expats are often unable to seize the chance of being included as full members of the
nation.
This study investigates why political inclusion has not yet fully materialized or achieved its full
potential. It addresses this question for the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay where states’
acknowledging and acting on the emigration problem in the last ten-to-fifteen years is a a sign of
policy innovation. Brazil took note of emigration trends in the mid-1990s; a broad consular reform
* University of Southampton, UK
doi: 10.1111/imig.12315
©2017 The Author
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (2) 2017
ISS N 00 20- 7985 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
to improve and manage relations with citizens abroad was institutionalized a decade later. In the
2000s, both Argentina and Uruguay implemented specific measures to reach out to expats. In the
former, those efforts were launched in 2003, peaked in 2008-2009, and stalled since then. In
the latter, state initiatives continued to advance since 2005, although not exempt from tensions,
delays, and setbacks.
1
The existing literature on these policies has been largely oblivious of these cases; it has mainly
adopted a top-down approach to explaining policy innovation, and has offered very few compar-
isons. The stages of franchise reform are not usually disentangled as this article does to unveil
explanatory factors. Thus, this comparative work broadens the scope of our knowledge by bringing
in original insights about new cases based on rigorous empirical investigation.
2
It confirms the need
for integrating state-led and migrant-led perspectives, and invites us to revisit some assumptions,
namely that a) states are relatively well positioned to succeed in policy innovation, b) migrants are
eager to become involved in transnational politics, and c) state initiatives generally lead to increas-
ing diaspora engagement with home politics. More concretely, the LASC countries expand our
understanding of transnational political engagement in significant ways by showing 1) the variety
of motivations behind half-hearted efforts by states and migrants to make inclusion feasible; 2) the
way historically constructed notions of citizenship and belonging enable or constrain policy innova-
tion, and what the potential drivers of further reform might be, and 3) the role of some relatively
underexplored explanatory factors such as the reshaping of institutional capacities in transitional
contexts, the post-neoliberal underpinnings of governmental projects, the segmented character of
both diasporas and policies, and citizens’views of political elites and institutions. These contribu-
tions engage not just with the literature on diaspora policies but, more broadly, with debates about
the nexus between migration and development. In that discussion, the assumptions mentioned
above have nurtured a celebratory view of transnational practices which are often deemed as more
intense and frequent than what they actually are (Faist et al., 2011, among others).
Following this introduction, this study first presents the analytical framework which highlights
the need to integrate various disciplinary perspectives and the bottom-up and top-down dynamics
that shape today political inclusion in transnational space. The third section reviews several expla-
nations to the inclusion paradox vis-
a-vis the evidence, focusing on three main stages in the adop-
tion and implementation of policy reform (i.e. the political act of enfranchising expats; the exercise
of extra-territorial voting rights, and the potential expansion of political inclusion). It shows that
existing approaches fall short of capturing the key factors at play in the LASC. This section also
identifies differences and similarities across the three cases and ends with suggestions of promising
venues for future research. The concluding section proposes some others and summarizes the main
policy lessons for our understanding of the politics of franchise and citizenship reform, as well as
the challenges that lie ahead for both policymakers and societies.
THE POLITICS OF TRANSNATIONAL POLITICAL MEMBERSHIP
Emigration policies and citizenship reform in the three cases studied here remain relatively under-
investigated and descriptive. Diaspora issues are usually addressed from a sociological or anthropo-
logical point of view that underestimates the political dimension of migrant inclusion in the polity,
the policymaking process, and the politics of the country of origin. Given that nation- and state-
building was closely intertwined with being countries of immigration, there was historically little
scholarly (and political) concern with nationals abroad. In addition, most studies on enfranchising
and extra-territorial voting are framed within either citizenship or electoral behaviour discussions,
thus setting aside the fact that expanding enfranchising beyond borders is a crucial aspect of a
broader political process (i.e. enhancing political inclusion) and part and parcel of states’attempt to
redefine the nature and scope of membership via emigration policies.
The Inclusion Paradox of Enfranchising Expats in Latin America 127
©2017 The Author. International Migration ©2017 IOM
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