Diaspora campaign strategies in Mexico

• In Event: Estado y ciudadania: entre las politicas y la participacion

Abstract

Politicians in many countries campaign among citizens residing abroad, despite the fact that such communities have extremely low rates of participation or, in some cases, no right to vote at all. This raises the question: What benefit does a foreign-residing electorate provide parties? There are three potential, non-mutually-exclusive explanations: the direct votes of migrants themselves, fundraising potential from the diaspora, or the influence migrants wield over the voting preferences of family members in their home countries. Using Mexico as a case study, this project seeks to understand the motivations and strategies of political parties and politicians that engage in diaspora campaigning. I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with officials of of all three major parties in Mexico. Results from the interviews confirm that party elites view the impact of the direct vote as negligible, have little sense of fundraising as a primary motivation, and are motivated instead almost entirely on the belief that winning the support of migrants is crucial to winning the support of family members in Mexico.

Author

• Michael Paarlberg, Georgetown University