(iPoster) Symmetry or Asymmetry? Transnational Political Participation among Dual Citizens

• In Event: Poster Session: Immigration Politics in a Changing World & Middle East Section
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Immigration Politics in a Changing World

Abstract

Worldwide, there are an estimated 500 million first- and second-generation immigrants, many of whom hold dual citizenship. Many states have responded to growing numbers of dual citizens by reducing the costs of transnational political participation for citizens abroad. These developments mean that a sizable and growing share of the world's population can hypothetically engage in dual transnational' participation (Finn 2020), i.e. participate in the political processes of multiple countries simultaneously. However, research on the extent to which individuals with political rights in multiple countries participate in the political processes of multiple countries is limited, presents mixed findings, and offers few insights into what drives dual transnational participation at the individual-level. This study, which is based on a novel survey of British-Italian and German-Italian dual citizens recruited using a Facebook-based advertisement campaign, is designed to provide insight into both rates and drivers of dual transnational participation. Our descriptive analyses yield a complex picture. For the most part, political participation skews towards the country of residence. Yet, there is significant variation by mode of participation: for example, dual transnational participation is much more common when it comes to voting and posting online about politics as compared to higher-cost forms of participation, such as making a political donation and contacting a political leader. Our second analysis provides insight into individual-level drivers of dual transnational participation. The two most important factors driving dual transnational participation are partisanship and political sophistication across both national contexts of belonging, though resources, trust, and national identity matter also.

Authors

• Kaitlin Alper, University of Southern Denmark

• Eroll Kuhn, Sam Houston State University