Abstract
Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non-citizen residents on the grounds that this would increase political influence, interest and self-esteem among this group of immigrants. Three decades later, in the political and public debate, electoral participation on the part of immigrants is perceived as being substantially lower than for native-born citizens. As a result, questions have arisen regarding the degree to which this may be symptomatic of a larger integration issue. The aim of this paper is to explore the determinants of voting in municipal elections for immigrants—both naturalised and non-citizens, in Sweden, by controlling for a number of socio-economic and demographic and immigrant specific characteristics. More specifically, using cohort analysis, the idea is to study the impact of time spent in the country on the voting behaviour of immigrants, foreign citizens and naturalised over time. Two unique sets of data were used in the research. The 2002, 2006 and 2010 electoral surveys (participation study) all contain information about individual electoral participation in municipal elections. This information is matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden, which also contains information relating to every Swedish resident. From these two sources of information, a database is created that matches voting to individual characteristics. This study analyses 60 thousand immigrants of which 43 thousand are non-citizens. After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, the results show that the acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference in the voting odds. Immigrants who obtain citizenship are far more likely to vote than those who do not. Country of birth also makes a difference: Compared to immigrants from the Nordic countries, Europeans and North American immigrants are equal or less likely to vote, whereas immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America are more likely to vote. Finally, immigrants’ odds of voting increase as their length of stay in the country does.
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Notes
Historically, the election of 2006 represents a reversal in the downward trend in electoral participation in Sweden.
Other European countries that have granted voting rights to foreign citizens are Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Malta, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the UK.
If either under 18 or with a criminal record, there is a waiting period before the applicant can apply for Swedish citizenship.
Immigrants are categorized by geography (the Nordic countries and all countries outside Europe) and political affiliation (European Union countries and other European countries).
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the journal as well as Nahikari Irastorza and commentators at the ESSA-C 9th Biennial Conference 2012 for both theoretical and methodological help on this paper.
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Bevelander, P. Voting Participation of Immigrants in Sweden—a Cohort Analysis of the 2002, 2006 and 2010 Elections. Int. Migration & Integration 16, 61–80 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-014-0332-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-014-0332-x