Migrants and their families in the home country: a bi-directional influence on voting behaviour

Abstract

The voting behavior of migrants has been studied extensively but limited attention has been paid to how discussion with families in the home country can be important. This article analyzes under what circumstances migrants influence or are influenced by their families in voting decisions. The analysis uses individual level data from a survey conducted in 2018 on a sample of 1,839 Romanian migrants. The results indicate that most migrants are not engaged in acts of persuasion about voting. Those who influence their families have a direct interest in the election results, are informed about what happens in the country and are politically active. The migrants who are influenced by their families have limited experience in the countries of residence and strong ties to their home country.

The mobilizing effects of political media consumption among external voters

“…Chauvet et al (2016) find in their study of Malian migrants in France that exposure to French media is correlated with a stronger interest in French political affairs, together with more scepticism towards Malian institutions and lower interest in Malian politics. In another study focusing on Romanian emigrants, Grad et al (2020) show that those who read origin-country newspapers and follow origin-country TV stations are significantly more likely to try to influence the vote choice of their families in the country of origin, compared to their co-nationals who do not follow origin-country media.…”

“…Abundant research on domestic voters has found political media consumption to be positively related to turnout (Prior 2005;Liu et al 2013), and the available research on external voters appears to support this pattern (e.g. Gherghina and Tseng 2016;Grad et al 2020). Hence, our first expectation is that, H1.…”