| dc.description.abstract | In a time of increasingly fragile democracies and an increase in human mobility, the political attitudes and behaviors of migrants as citizens has become an important component to our understanding of emerging democracies, particularly in Latin America. This dissertation contributes to a growing body of work on migrants as political actors in two ways. First, by analyzing the individual motivations for potential migration, this study provides insights on who potential migrants are, and how they behave politically before departure. Through this focus, I also hope to deepen our understanding of the socioeconomic and political profiles of current diasporas and how they might behave politically. Second, by delving into the political behavioral profile of potential migrants, I offer insight on the ways in which those individuals “waiting to leave” engage with their political system. The final section of this project examines the voting behavior of actual migrants through analysis of retrospective economic voting patterns of the expatriate communities of five Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. I test whether those abroad use the economic conditions of their country of residence to reward or punish the incumbent party in presidential elections back home. Using survey data from Latin America, I find that sociodemographic features such as age, marital status, gender, and receiving remittances are the main drivers of emigration intention. Experiences such as crime victimization and evaluations, including of the national economy also matter, but the effect is not as large. Using the same data, among those with emigration intentions, they are less likely to have participated, as compared to their fellow citizens. In addition, those with the characteristics of emigration intention are also less likely to vote. Looking at the voting patterns of expatriate communities, there is some support for the idea that those abroad use the economic conditions in which they live to evaluate the incumbent party back home, but that it is harder for them to evaluate the economic situation abroad relative to economic conditions back home. | |
