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In May 2019, thousands of Romanian citizens living in Western Europe spent hours in mile-long queues to cast their ballot in a European Parliament election combined with a national referendum on corruption. With very few polling stations open and a highly inefficient and understaffed voting system, hundreds of those that spent a large part of the day queuing were denied the opportunity to actually vote. As the doors of embassies and consulates were shut at 9 pm, those still outside expressed their frustration and anger, first by chanting “We want to vote!” and “Thieves!” and later by storming the embassy premises, jumping over fences, and banging on doors (Jamieson, 2019). In the Netherlands, riot police intervened to control the frustrated crowd (Dutch News, 2019), and regular police forces were called by embassy staff in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and elsewhere.

The images from these events went viral, becoming the strongest, though not necessarily representative, illustrations of the phenomenon of external voting. In light of the evidence gathered and discussed in this book, we are able to dismiss some of the misconceptions these images may cause. For instance, long queues outside polling stations may be, and often are, interpreted as a sign of high turnouts. In fact, as we have seen in Chap. 3, voter turnout is, with few exceptions, consistently low. More often than not, long queues are an indicator of inefficient voting procedures or even deliberate voter suppression. What the May 2019 Romanian voters’ experience highlights is the vulnerability of non-resident voters to the problem of access, electoral infrastructure, and voting regulations, discussed in Chap. 4, which are all controlled by the governments and electoral authorities of the countries of origin. These may be changed from election to election, either in favor of migrants or to their detriment, depending on the incumbents’ political interest or simply disinterest in diasporas. Our interviewees’ experiences with voting in the presidential elections in Romania November 2019 suggest that the embassies and consulates in Norway and Spain certainly had increased the capacity for external votes to be cast, without undue waiting times.

However, the dramatic images from the streets outside Romanian embassies also illustrate another feature of external voting, one which may be counterintuitive. They suggest that emigrants can still be very interested in homeland politics, even after many years spent abroad, and their political engagement can be quite passionate, even if it carries quite significant risks—such as confronting host country police. One voter, a Romanian based in Amsterdam, explained her motivation:

The reason I do this [vote in Romanian elections] after living for ten years abroad is that I still feel connected to my home country and I want it to become a better place to which I hope to return one day. I wish to see there a more democratic democracy, as I got used to seeing here in western Europe. What happened today in Amsterdam was not democratic […] At the end of the day, we were hundreds of disappointed people outside unable to vote. The queue was still filling up the square in front of the voting station. And I’m sure they were many more that gave up along the way at seeing such a long line. (Jamieson, 2019)

This extended attachment to homeland politics, which does not necessarily wane with time, or does not do so in simple linear terms, makes the transnational political practice of external voting particularly interesting. As out-of-country voters are citizens of their countries of origin, often formed and influenced by domestic debates, their behavior and electoral choices are sometimes best captured by the robust theoretical and methodological apparatus of comparative politics. On the other hand, they remain a peculiar category of voters, who are exposed to different life experiences, transnational political circumstances, and who are often mobile and transcend spatial and social boundaries. We can try grasping their transnational positionality with concepts and tools from migration studies, human geography, and using more interpretative methods.

A synthesis of these distinct vantage points on external voting is what we aimed to achieve in this volume, where we brought together different kinds of empirical evidence and methods from different social science disciplines to interrogate the phenomenon of external voting and learn more about this understudied form of electoral behavior. Chapter 2 sketched the historical and political context of migration within the European Union following the 2004–2007 Eastern Enlargement. We looked at intra-European migration and the internal EU space because external voting franchise is almost universal, and the cultural and political context allowed us to bracket off certain factors and focus on the dynamics of electoral participation from abroad. In Chap. 3, we presented aggregate data from electoral results across 6 sending countries, 15 host countries, and almost two decades of voting. In Chap. 4, we zoomed in on four communities of intra-European migrants to better understand why and when they engage in external voting, how they perceive this political practice, and what meaning they attach to this form of political expression.

In the remaining part of this final chapter, we will summarize what we have learned, and what this book’s findings can tell us about external voting both in Europe and more generally. We will follow the order of the research questions posed in the introduction (Chap. 1) and discuss them in light of the evidence gathered. We will then move on to a discussion of the problem of the legitimacy of external voting, which is raised both by political theorists looking at transnational politics and, as we have seen in Chap. 4, by migrants themselves, and influences their decision to vote or not. Further, we return to the context of Central European democracy backsliding and consider whether and under what circumstances migrants may be a source of political remittances and act as political agents. Finally, we point to potential avenues for future research and gaps that our own inquiry was not able to adequately address.

What Have We Learned About External Voting? Discussion of Findings

The main puzzles that motivated the research presented here were related to the way external voting is actually organized, practiced, and perceived by migrants, and what the voting results can tell us about transnational politics, particularly in Europe following the Eastward expansion of the EU. How do migrants use their external voting franchise? What parties and candidates do they vote for when they have the opportunity? Do the results of external voting differ systematically from domestic results? Furthermore, what direction and ideological coloring does this difference take? Another set of questions related to the turnout: how high or low is it, and what trends can we uncover? Lastly, we were interested in migrants’ perception of external voting, which influences their decision to participate or not. What have we learned from the evidence gathered in the DIASPOlitic project?

Differences Between Diaspora Voting and “Homeland” Results

Our analysis of external voting results (votes cast abroad) and results in countries of origin elections used the concept of disparity to measure systematic differences between the two. Where overall disparities are concerned, our findings show that the aggregate electoral preferences of diaspora voters remain distinct from those observed in the country of origin, in both parliamentary and presidential elections. Although there are often significant differences between various diaspora communities in the extent of this disparity, there are very few cases in which diaspora voting comes close to mirroring origin-country voting precisely.

On the other hand, there is little conclusive evidence of consistent divergence. While for instance migrants from Czechia and Romania are increasingly less likely to vote the same way in parliamentary elections as their origin-country equivalents, in other cases there are either no discernible trends, or ambiguous ones. In the cases of Bulgaria, Latvia, and Poland, an initial post-accession convergence was followed by divergence. These findings are in line with the conclusion of Ahmadov and Sasse (2015, p. 1787) that migration experience does not necessarily result in divergences of political outlooks.

In sum, the idea that with the passage of time diaspora communities will become more detached from and less responsive to domestic politics receives no support from our analysis. Nevertheless, the absence of increasing disparity at the overall level may occur alongside increasing disparity with respect to particular issues.

Ideological Differences

Our analysis of ideological disparities shows that few conclusions can be drawn about tendencies among diaspora voters overall. To some extent, this reflects supply-side differences: if a country offers its electorate only parties with, say, anti-LGBT-rights attitudes, then this will be reflected in the absolute positioning of even the most LGBT-friendly diaspora community. However, even in cases where there is a significant ideological skew, clear relative differences can be identified, and in some cases, there is evidence of increasing divergence.

With respect to populism, our findings echo those of Turcu and Urbatsch (2022), who find that populists generally enjoy lower expatriate vote shares. The obverse of this is that pluralist parties are more likely to enjoy greater support abroad. It is worth noting that recent disparities between diaspora and origin-country voters on the latter issue are more substantial in Czechia and Poland, where recent political debate has revolved around divergent conceptions of democracy (Bustikova & Guasti, 2017). Koinova (2009) has argued that diasporas may play a role in encouraging democratization, and these findings suggest that diasporas may also be a source of opposition to democratic backsliding. However, more cases are needed to determine whether this relationship holds more generally, and we will return to this question shortly.

Where socio-cultural issues are concerned, the picture is more mixed. On the GAL/TAN dimension, which aggregates a number of non-economic issues, there are—with the exception of recent elections in Poland and Romania—few consistent differences between diaspora and origin-country voters. However, a more disaggregated approach which compares the choices of voters by issue shows that diaspora voters are generally more likely to support pro-LGBT parties and less likely to support parties that are opposed to immigration. In most cases, and perhaps unsurprisingly, migrant communities are more likely to vote for pro-immigration parties than their origin-country counterparts. This may be evidence against the notion that earlier migrants seek to “kick away the migration ladder,” but we should be very careful in drawing such conclusions. As we have seen in Chap. 4, some migrants vote in both country-of-origin and country-of-residence elections, and their attitude toward the broad issue of “migration” may be very different in those two political contexts.

Where the remaining socio-cultural questions are concerned, however, the differences we observe are origin-country-specific rather than general. The clearest and most consistent differences between diaspora and origin-country electorates are economic in character. Diaspora voters are more likely to vote for parties with a more right-wing economic profile, while origin-country voters are more likely to vote for parties that take a universalistic approach to welfare. Diaspora voters from Czechia stand out in particular on this dimension, being significantly more likely to support parties with a more right-wing economic profile.

The substantial disparity between diaspora and origin-country voting in Romania with respect to clientelism also indicates the potential importance of individual issues that are relevant in particular country contexts. This observation, which is also echoed in the distinct divergences we can see in post-2015 Poland with respect to LGBT rights, immigration, and cultural superiority, suggests that differences between diaspora and origin-country voters’ choices are not simply the residual products of structural socio-demographic differences, but also reflect active engagement with contemporary political issues: diaspora voters “do not blindly vote from abroad” (Ognibene & Paulis, 2021, p. 15).

What Do We Know About Turnout?

Our findings with respect to turnout both reflect and build on the insights already generated by the existing literature. Following accession, large numbers of Central and Eastern European migrants moved to Western Europe, but the fluctuation in turnouts suggests that recently rising average turnout is not necessarily attributable simply to rising numbers of migrants. Rather, it appears to be a function of the number of migrants, the socio-demographic profile of the diaspora communities, the nature of the polling infrastructure, and the nature of the political contest.

While Kostelka (2017, p. 1078) finds that the weakness of post-communist transnational participation has contributed to a significant proportion of the decline in turnout in elections across the region, it is clear that—Czechia aside—the proportion of diaspora voters participating in these elections has increased as a percentage of turnout overall. There is no simple explanation for this outcome. Partly it is attributable to a rising number of diaspora voters abroad. It may to some extent reflect the socio-demographic composition of diaspora electorates, although it is worth noting that younger and more mobile citizens are by no means the most disciplined of voters in the origin country. It may reflect a differential decline in turnout rates among diaspora and origin-country voters rather than an absolute increase in the latter. It may also reflect improvements to overseas voting infrastructure. Yet it cannot be reduced to a single factor.

Clearly, the extra barriers to participation that diaspora voters face, and the often uneven quality and unpredictable functioning of electoral infrastructure abroad, contribute substantially to the removal of a significant proportion of potential voters from the electorate. Yet as the examples of the 2019 presidential elections and 2020 parliamentary elections in Romania demonstrate, both amendments to electoral laws and political mobilization can result in significant increases in turnout among the diaspora, even a number of years—and election cycles—after the onset of a wave of migration. These findings are in line with Escobar et al.’s (2015, p. 22) analysis of the turnout practices of Colombian migrants, in which they find that there is no clear relationship between time spent abroad and propensity to participate. The striking mobilization of the Irish diaspora to return home to vote in the abortion referendum of 2018 is testament to the extent to which diaspora voters may be motivated to exercise their democratic rights, even in the presence of substantial barriers to doing so.

Our data on presidential elections, which at times see record turnouts abroad, are a case in point. The reason for this might be that diaspora voters participate in presidential elections on the same basis as origin-country voters, whereas translating diaspora votes into parliamentary seats is more complicated and often makes the link between vote and outcome less clear. However, the diaspora turnout in presidential elections is not consistently higher than in parliamentary elections, suggesting that the more “direct” nature of the election is not decisive.

It is important to underline that while post-EU-accession diaspora voters, who face some visible barriers to participation, are less likely to turn out in elections than their origin-country counterparts, their participation has not diminished with time, and those who do vote make choices that are legible with respect to origin-country political dynamics and relatively consistent over time.

Why Do Migrants Vote, or Not?

Returning to the problem of electoral infrastructure and access, our qualitative research insights also reveal that the practicalities of being able to vote go far beyond rules of enfranchisement but relate heavily to the nitty-gritty aspects of implementation, often in far-flung diasporic contexts, with poorly staffed consular services, and limited actual interactions with diaspora members. Thus, in many cases, the reasons why migrants vote or decide not to take part in elections relate to the practicalities of casting a ballot in a given election. This includes issues like requirements for registration, timelines, and location of polling stations, when these are not digitally provided and where postal voting is not an option (Szulecki et al., 2021).

Voting behaviors pre- and post-migration really also need to be understood jointly, and in the plural, recognizing that (to an extent) every single election is a separate event, which may or may not be participated in, and the considerations and dynamics driving voting or non-voting in each instance may vary. While the salience of the practicalities around voting cannot be underestimated, the disillusionment with the political programs on offer in certain elections appears as an even more weighty explanation for low voter turnout. That means that émigré voters face a supply side problem in terms of homeland political parties’ lack of interest in their problems of simply lack of adequate choice, even if they follow country of origin politics closely. This fact may be due to their experience of politics in country-of-residence context, and their own comparison of approaches to certain key political issues (Erdal et al., 2022).

Legitimacy and Normative Considerations Surrounding External Voting

One surprising finding of our qualitative research was the prominence of the normative considerations of external voting as such as a factor provided by migrants to explain their (non)participation. On the one hand, external voting was cast in terms of fulfilling a civic duty and exercising a democratic privilege which others had longed for and struggled to achieve. As two Romanians living in Oslo, explain:

Ever since I was able to vote, I always voted […] My parents were very careful about teaching me this responsibility. I am not very involved politically speaking but this is the least I can do. It is our responsibility to vote. Others are fighting to have this right. (Elena, Romanian in Oslo, in her 30s)

I consider that as long as it is our right to go in the street and complain about the things the people that lead us didn’t do regarding the tax system for example then I should also have my part of the responsibility. If we talk about politics from the comfort of our couch then yes, it is acceptable not to vote but if we want to go out on the streets and protest then the vote should be mandatory. I personally always did everything I could to go and vote.

(Daniela, Romanian in Oslo, in her 40s)

On the other hand, the idea that migrants can influence politics and chose decision-makers in a country they no longer reside in is highly controversial. One Romanian migrant, quoted in Chap. 4, argued for “taking away the right to vote of any person who changes their residence,” asking “why should we dictate the destiny of a country that we do not live in?”

What clearly emerges from these quotes is the clash between two competing principles and two sources of political legitimacy. According to one, political participation tied to citizenship, and so political rights are transferable beyond territorial confines of the state. According to the other, democratic participation requires residence, physical presence on the territory of a polity, and thus being part of a society through everyday presence, not through birthright.

These problems and the tension between citizenship-based participation and residence-based participation are at the heart of political debates around both external voting and immigrant enfranchisement. They are present in the media in countries that are discussing emigrant franchise, currently most notably Ireland, where are referendum on external voting rights is to be held in 2024 (O’Shea, 2022). It is also discussed on the occasion of almost any election where expat ballots are said to influence the result of the election—no matter if that claim is true or false. It has also been the subject of discussions among the authors of this volume, who all have a migratory background and enjoy complex electoral rights across different polities.

The citizenship versus territory question is central to the first wave of scholarship on external voting (Fliess & Østergaard-Nielsen, 2021), which still remains a matter of heated debate among political theorists and lawyers (Bauböck, 2005, 2006, 2016; Lappin, 2016; López-Guerra, 2005; Rubio-Marin, 2006). What is striking is just how lively these supposedly abstract problems are in migrants’ own accounts. A practical solution which is provided by several among our respondents is in line with the theoretical proposal made by Rainer Bauböck, in what he called “stakeholder citizenship.” As another migrant quoted in Chap. 4 suggested, “I only think it is ok to vote if you are thinking of going back to your country or if you still have a family back there and you are thinking about their well-being.” This notion of having a stake in the future of the polity in which you are a voter appears sensible and intuitively acceptable.

However, as the material we have gathered and partly presented in this book shows, it is easier said than done. What degree of engagement and what plan for a “future” can constitute the basis for a political claim to participation is very difficult to delineate in practice. Meanwhile, it is clear that political cultures of different countries have varying acceptance for diaspora politics. For instance, throughout the history of Poland since the eighteenth century partitions, émigré political activism and diaspora institutions played a central role in maintaining and shaping national identities and political projects, which arguably explains the early introduction of external voting. The hopes some societies have for emigrant political engagement, and the “stake” that migrants can have in homeland politics, bring us to yet another important discussion in transnational politics—that of political remittances, and the possibility of “remitting democracy” back home.

Do Migrants Desire to Be “Agents of Change”?

We have already discussed migrants’ possible motivations for voting in country-of-origin elections, and how these are often embedded within transnational lifeworlds. It follows that migrants may want to affect change within these transnational lifeworlds—at least, that is one possibility. Whether this is change that is intra-familial, more social, or political also in a more public and formal sense, is likely to vary. In research on migrants’ impacts on their contexts of origin, the money sent “back home” remittances are often discussed. Indeed, in many origin contexts, remittances can be significant, for families, for local communities, and even at the national level boosting foreign exchange reserves. But also, other types of less tangible flows might place a mark—resulting from migration. These are often discussed as “social remittances” (Levitt, 1998; Levitt & Lamba-Nieves, 2011), and increasingly a subset focused on political issues, as “political remittances” (Hartnett, 2020; Krawatzek & Müller-Funk, 2020; Tabar & Maalouf, 2016).

As we argue elsewhere (Erdal et al., 2022), there is a need to better understand how the fact of being exposed to multiple contexts impacts how people think about various issues can potentially be connected with a desire to forge change, for instance, in the origin context. As we discussed above, migration means exposure to multiple contexts, where gender equality may be seen differently, may be differently legislated or practiced. The mere fact of being exposed to this results in some reflection. Whether or not it is then turned into further reflection and possible consideration of own views, or accepted as artifacts of different societal contexts, may vary. But the exposure and knowledge of different modes of organizing in different societies is a result of migration, whenever migrants have at least a minimum of exposure to the society they arrive in.

So, exposure and comparative evaluation appear to be relatively common. Meanwhile, articulation of thoughts about this comparative evaluation, or even thoughts about paths to change which might emanate from insights from such comparative evaluations, we argue, are relatively rare. Building on this, we turn to the question: Do migrants desire to be “agents of change”?

First, it is worth underscoring the non-linearity and inconsistency we find in interviewees’ comparative evaluations across different themes. It is thus not given that more conservative, or more liberal, views on a given issue are a sound predictor of the type of views on any other single issue. Such human inconsistency is not necessarily surprising but also contradicts the assumption of democratizing—or liberal—political remittances from migrants living in liberal democracies. The non-linearity of migrants’ views reflects the complexity of their life journeys: socialization and re-socialization before and after migration; the socio-political contexts they relate to simultaneously; the networks they are part of; and their personal life experiences.

This contextualizes the question of a desire to be an agent of change—and specifically in this context: of the desire to be an agent of political change, impacting societal changes in the country of origin. We argue that the process consists of content creation [exposure—comparative evaluation—articulation]—desire—transmission—impact. And we find that many migrants engage in comparative evaluation, due to their exposure to multiple contexts. But how can we discern the desire to be an agent of change, which is necessary for transmission to put impact in motion? From comparative evaluation—to an articulation of paths toward change, there is a gap, which many migrants do not appear to seek to bridge, or even to be interested in seeking at all.

We therefore analyzed our data with the question of desire, but also of attempts at articulation of paths toward change in mind. We found three types of reasoning which can shed light on why migrants may not desire to engage, not have faith in the possibility of political change, or not be interested in taking on the role as agents of change:

  • Personal: For example, if migrants see their future in country of settlement, rather than returning to the country of origin; or if migrants consider the chance of success in creating change to come at too high a personal cost.

  • Pathological: For example, if migrants are disillusioned with the particularities of the situation in their country of origin; or if migrants do not think that change is possible in the country of origin.

  • Incompatible: For example, if migrants do not have faith in the transferability of specific ideas to country of origin; or if migrants do not think that the country of origin can learn from the country of settlement.

Conversely, while we do not in our dataset find much strong expression of desire among migrants to act as agents of change, we recognize that isolated voices, in parts of their interviews, do espouse hopes for possible change, including change which migrants could be part of. Thus, we argue that there should be analytical purchase in also exploring an inverse set of reasoning. Here the personal might be flipped toward a desire for becoming an agent in change, whether by considering return—or assessing the risks and costs of engagements more positively. Similarly, the pathological might change and rather be inspired and hopeful for change, whereas assessments of incompatibility might be reconsidered, with potential for transferability being recognized.

Meanwhile, the factors we propose may aid explaining migrants non-desire to be agents of change, often remain implicit, not fully explored, or not the focus of existing studies. This, we argue, is also relevant to questions of the determinants and motivations for external voting and transnational political engagement, where, we suggest, the question of desire to affect change in the context of origin often appears to be a somehow implicit and unaddressed assumption.

We should emphasize that migrants’ external voting must be seen in relation to their life abroad—which could be assumed to have some impacts—whether in affecting political views, in relation to experiences of acceptance or discrimination, or regarding whether voting in the country of settlement is possible and/or practiced too. Thus, migrant voting in country-of-origin elections is usefully explored in relation to the transnational social fields within which (many) migrants’ lives unfold (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004). Furthermore, migrants’ electoral participation in countries of origin is varyingly associated with the nature and extent of diaspora politics—in the context of a given country of origin, but also in relation to the specific country and place of residence abroad. This brings in a collective level of consideration, which may be significant in cases where emigrant political influence has mattered.

Research Frontiers and Future Knowledge Needs

We conclude this volume with some gaps that remain unaddressed, and which will require future research. These are divided between empirical knowledge needs on the research frontier of transnational politics and external voting, in general and specifically in the context of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as more normative knowledge needs related to the problematization of external voting as a feature of modern democracies.

Three Areas for Further Research: Empirical Knowledge Needs

The most immediate gap requiring further research, also employing the data we have presented here, relates to the influence of country-of-origin politics and socio-economic contexts on migrant socialization, political views, and in consequence on external voting results. We have seen important systematic differences not only between sending countries (i.e., Latvian and Bulgarian diasporas) but also between different diaspora communities originating from the same country (e.g., Poles in Italy vs. Poles in Spain). Whether these differences reflect demographic composition of different diaspora groups or are a result of a selection bias is difficult to assess, but aggregate external voting data can be confronted with aggregate host country data, including factors such as the political ideology of incumbent governments, attitude toward immigration, socio-economic situation, and welfare state provisions. Some attempts in that direction have already been made (see Ognibene & Paulis, 2021), but the hypothetical formative influence of host country contexts on diasporas requires much more research.

As we have noted already in Chap. 3, the data we have gathered does not allow us to draw conclusions regarding the role of migrants and diaspora communities in democracy backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe. We have learned that CEE migrants tend to choose parties which are less populist, more pluralist, and more liberal (particularly economically) than the homeland mean voter. This can be interpreted as evidence of socialization to a more “mature” and consolidated democracy and internalization of its values. But we should be very careful with such conclusions, not just for normative reasons—and overestimating the quality of democracy in Western Europe. Results of external voting do not necessarily reflect the political preferences of entire émigré communities. With low turnout, they may simply reflect the political preferences of those voters who did show up on a particular election day. Even if we could treat these results as representative for entire migrant communities, the relationship with backsliding is difficult to assess. Are these voters the “absent” liberals, who could have shaped domestic politics in CEE countries differently, had they not left? Or are they passive agents of change, in that the stories they tell and examples they give inform their families and friends about Western European realities and influence their political choices?

To get a better understanding of the degree in which external voting results are representative of diaspora communities, and to know more about who votes between different elections—beyond the limited clues we got from the interviews discussed in Chap. 4—we would need a meso-level analysis, drawing on representative surveys that could connect aggregate data with individual experiences. This would also allow for exploring non-voter political views which are untraceable with election results. While this kind of survey-based exploration of migrant communities is already quite popular (see for example Chauvet et al., 2016; Himmelroos & Peltoniemi, 2021; Michel & Blatter, 2021; Peltoniemi, 2018; Pérez-Armendáriz & Crow, 2010; Rother, 2009; Wass et al., 2021), comparative studies looking at larger numbers of migrant communities remain rare, and the fact that external voting results are still seldom used, there is not enough bridge-building between these levels yet.

Finally, exploring the way mass migration from CEE impacts sending countries requires more attention to be paid to those “left behind.” Though it may appear paradoxical, political remittances, as a transnational phenomenon, can only be fully traceable if we complement a focus on migrants with a focus on their countries of origin. Trailblazing work in this area has been done by Anne White, Izabela Grabowska, and colleagues on the cultural diffusion and social remittances influencing Poland in the wake of EU accession (White et al., 2018; White & Grabowska, 2019), but a similar endeavor focusing specifically on political remittances is yet to be conducted. A combination of different methods would be required to capture the mechanisms through which migration—as a process—and migrants—as more or less voluntary agents of change—influence domestic politics (understood most broadly): spanning from surveys, through interviews with migrants’ friends and families, through textual analyses combing media as well as political speeches for references to migrant experiences and inputs.

Three Areas for Further Research: Normative Dimension

External voting entails the enfranchisement of non-resident citizens to vote in country-of-origin elections (at various levels). This raises a set of questions on the legitimacy of such an arrangement in democratic terms: why and on what basis? And for how long? Some countries practice a 10- or 15-year enfranchisement for citizens moving abroad, but removing voting rights after such a period of time. Furthermore, there are a number of questions pertaining to how such elections from afar should be organized, logistically speaking—where should people vote, in person or online for instance? And when—simultaneous to the country of origin—or beforehand? And quite profoundly, how should the external voters consider democratic representation—do their votes get pooled in local constituencies where they last resided, in other forms, or are their specific diaspora representatives? All of these issues have democratic legitimacy angles to them—and very practical implementation angles too and impact the determinants of external voting in contrasting ways. To date, we do not know enough systematically about the impacts of different arrangements of external voting, nor how this aligns with conceptualizations of non-resident citizens voting rights from different states, within the Central and Eastern Europe region, and beyond.

A related area which external voting research would merit from further engagement with is the relationships between citizenship and political participation. Arguably, questions of external voting, including external voting rights, ought to be asked and addressed based on engagement with this relationship (see also Bauböck, 2003; Brubaker, 2010; Finn, 2019). This touches on questions about whether or not political participation can or should be limited to residents, also when thinking of political participation beyond external voting. Where, historically, exile governments and diasporic political engagement clearly demonstrates that this cannot always be regulated by the powers that be (Smith, 2003). But how then does external voting fit within the broader landscape of transnational political engagements, for instance in Romania or Poland? How do the state, political parties, and civil society conceive of this interaction, and how it could be productive within the democratic political process? Poland is a country with many citizens abroad, from very different historical migration flows, including descendants of Polish emigrants, not least in the United States. Poland’s diaspora policy aims to both maintain and foster patriotism, but significant questions remain—conceptually, in policy, about implementation, and not least with regard to impact (Nowak & Nowosielski, 2022; Weinar, 2017). As we have shown in this book, often the differences between resident and non-resident citizens, when it comes to factors affecting turn-out at elections, cannot perhaps prima facie be assumed. When it comes to political participation broadly, the difference between being present and absent in everyday life is arguably likely to be more significant. Further systematic and comparative empirical evidence is needed, not only across Central and East Europe.

Thirdly, we propose that external voting research may be brought forward by engaging in debates on migration and national inclusion. This is in a sense a natural extension of focusing more on external voting and its relationship with residence—sometimes assumed to be a fixed matter—but also increasingly recognized to be a bit more complicated. While most people change residence serially one place at a time, some people do actually live in several places simultaneously (Carling et al., 2021). And taking matters of citizenship and political participation further too—on the backdrop of questions of residence (and its possible multiplicity)—and acknowledging the increase of dual citizenship, not just in Europe but around the world, brings us to ask the question: Who is a member (citizen, resident) of what (the nation, the polity, the nation-state), and on what grounds (citizenship, nationhood, residence)?

This question, in any democracy, clearly has a bearing on who should have the right to vote and reveals that the answer is not straightforward. There are pragmatic options—jus domicili—citizenship based on residence, based on a general rule of single citizenship, and thus also voting rights only in the state of residence and citizenship, is one such proposition (Bauder, 2014). But this is quite far from the reality of citizenship and voting-right organization today. The thorny issue of the nation, and its role in defining membership in the polity, thus comes to the fore. For countries in Central and East Europe, questions of emigration have grown in salience since the start of the 2000s, and for Poland questions of immigration increasingly too, with the country becoming a country of immigration, certainly from the 2020s.

These demographic shifts, shaping the composition of populations—also have a bearing on conceptualizations of who “we” are—who “the people” are. Here, migrants, both those coming and leaving, possibly returning or circulating, are likely to continue to challenge conceptions of nationhood that are not flexible and dynamic enough to accommodate ongoing change. While inclusive nationhood may be a politically contentious idea in some quarters, in Central and East Europe, as is the case in Western Europe, demographic realities are likely to continue to matter, slowly forging change in everyday life on the ground (Antonsich & Matejskova, 2015; Erdal & Sagmo, 2017)—which ultimately impacts questions of democratic political representation. These processes of change are in urgent need of further documentation and analysis, with a need for perspectives from across disciplines. We hope that this book can make a small contribution to this much needed scholarly effort.