Joana Azevedo

Out of Sight, Out of Mind? External Voting and the Political Representation of Portuguese Emigrants

Over recent decades, emigrants have gained expanded voting rights on a global scale. Despite the normative debates about this issue, there are few empirical studies on why states decide to implement external voting and how electoral systems perform. This article seeks to fill this gap by looking at the Portuguese case. Our study suggests that a combination of political and socio-economic factors explains the implementation of external voting. On the other hand, the interests of political parties and the low level of civil society engagement are key to determining the failure of electoral reforms and the attempts to overcome the shortcomings of external voting.

Contextual reasons for emigrants’ electoral participation in home country elections: the Portuguese case

ABSTRACT Although emigrants represent an increasing share of the electoral population in many democracies, not much is known about their participation in home country elections. With the purpose of contributing to fill such gap, this article develops a longitudinal and exploratory analysis of the contextual factors of emigrants’ participation in national elections in the case of Portugal (1976–2015), a country with one of the highest emigration rates of the EU today. It begins by presenting a longitudinal analysis of the electoral participation of Portuguese emigrants. Afterwards, the conditions underlying levels of participation are examined. Using aggregate data covering the main 15 destination countries, this study compares institutional, socio-economic and political contextual factors for voting. Findings indicate that the lack of political participation of emigrants is first demonstrated by the very low registration rates, although it varies according to the country, and that voting methods and socio-economic factors in the destination country are the most relevant to explain voting in home country elections.

Regresso e circulação de emigrantes portugueses no início do século XXI

O principal objetivo deste artigo e avaliar a importância do regresso de emigrantes portugueses durante a decada de 2001-2011, tendo em conta o volume do regresso, os perfis sociodemograficos, as variacoes por paises de emigracao e a emergencia de novas formas de mobilidade. Um objetivo particular consiste em produzir uma tipologia das formas de regresso: algumas mais associadas a visao tradicional da emigracao na idade ativa e regresso na fase da reforma, outras indiciadoras de movimentos de tipo diferente, com regressos mais precoces durante a vida ativa. A observacao de dados recentes permite descortinar algumas das novas modalidades de emigracao, incluindo uma tendencia crescente para a circulacao.