How Immigrant Origin Politicians Shape Constituent-Legislator Communication

• In Event: The Political, Economic and Social Ramifications of Immigration

Abstract

Immigrant-origin politicians are, belatedly, becoming more common in legislatures across Western Europe. In this paper we use survey data from German cities to assess how this affects the willingness of constituents to tell their legislators about their policy preferences. We begin by measuring the extent to which immigrant-origin and non-immigrant residents say they welcome the presence of immigrant-origin politicians in city legislatures. We then use survey experiments to test the whether residents are more or less likely to say they would share their policy views with otherwise similar city councilors who have immigrant versus non-immigrant backgrounds. This allows us to test whether members of immigrant-origin minorities support “descriptive representation” of people with a similar background to themselves. We also test whether descriptive representation facilitates political communication in the way that theorists such as Jane Mansfield and Anne Phillips have suggested. In addition, we test for the possibility that anti-immigrant sentiment leads nativist constituents to react against the political representation of immigrant-origin minorities by withholding their political views.

We find significant public support for the idea of immigrant political representation. This extends to many non-immigrant Germans, although support is highest among immigrant-origin groups that tend to face discrimination in Germany, such as Turkish-origin residents. However, in the experimental tests we find no evidence that immigrant-origin residents are more willing to convey their views to politicians who share an immigrant background. Nor do we find evidence, among immigrant-origin residents, of a preference to communicate their views to politicians from the same country of origin. In contrast, we do find significant evidence that people who hold anti-immigrant views (a group that includes some immigrant-origin residents) prefer to tell non-immigrant politicians about their policy positions, rather than convey that information to immigrant-origin politicians.

These results yield a mixed view of how European cities are accommodating the social diversity that ensues from immigration. In Germany, at least, many residents welcome the political representation of immigrant-origin minorities. Even so, the presence of immigrant-origin politicians does not appear to be necessary, in order to ensure that immigrant-origin residents are willing to communicate their political demands. This could imply that these political systems are already seen as quite open to immigrant-origin voters. However, we also find that German cities are home to a substantial number of voters holding anti-immigrant attitudes, who prefer not to communicate their political priorities to immigrant-origin politicians. Whereas some popular accounts of the social and political effects of immigration portray immigrants as failing to adhere to the democratic norms of Western Europe, our results suggest that anti-immigrant feelings may be the bigger barrier to the open and equal practice of democratic governance.

Author

• Alex Street, Carroll College