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For those fleeing violent political conflict home-country politics may be uniquely challenging. Given the high stakes which refugees are more likely to engage in home country politics? This article focuses on two sets of factors: experiences of hardship in the context of emigration, transiting and settling to their destination country; and the ongoing social ties to family and friends left behind. For our analysis, we draw on a recently collected nationally representative survey of Syrian refugees in Canada (N = 1974). We find that among those resettled in Canada, experiences of hardships in Syria and while in transit in their interim country are associated with less engagement in the political affairs of Syria. On the other hand, those who have a harder time settling into life in Canada also tend to remain more interested in home-country politics. In contrast to some findings in research on labour migrants, those who maintain close personal ties to friends and family back in Syria remain more engaged with politics. Together, the findings highlight the unique pressures refugees face and the role these pressures may have on continued interest in the political affairs of their home country after migrating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of migrant transnationalism emphasize the enduring imprint of the pre-migration connections that the newcomers bring with them. But how do the children of migrants, raised in the parents’ adopted country develop ties to the parental home country? Using a structural equation model and data from a recent survey of adult immigrant offspring in Los Angeles, this paper shows that second generation cross-border activities are strongly affected by earlier experiences of and exposure to home country influences . Socialization in the parental household is powerful, transmitting distinct home country competencies, loyalties and ties, but not a coherent package of transnationalism. Our analysis of five measures of cross-border activities and loyalties among the grown children of migrants shows that transmission is specific to the social logic underlying the connection: activities rooted in family relationships such as remitting are transmitted differently than emotional attachments to the parent’s home country.

How, and as what are immigrant minorities incorporated into the political process? A set of prominent approaches focus on the political opportunity structure immigrants encounter. Though promising in many aspects, political opportunity approaches fail to consider the internal heterogeneity of both immigrant populations and opportunity structures. This is partly a result of taking ethnic groups rather than political entrepreneurs as the unit of analysis and of not disaggregating the political context properly. This paper shows how Russian-Jewish immigrant political entrepreneurs in New York City used very di�fferent strategies of ethnic mobilization, each emphasizing a di�fferent ethnic cleavage: one was making claims in the name of Russians, the other downplaying the Russianness and highlighting the Jewish identity dimension. Both strategies had good chances at success thus illustrating that political opportunity structures may encourage di�fferent claims making strategies at the same time. Ethno-political entrepreneurs navigate complex and di�fferentiated political landscapes that are ex-ante only partially transparent.

There is a duality at the heart of the migration phenomenon, as the very same people who are immigrants are also emigrants, making a living and possibly setting down roots in the receiving society, but still connected to and oriented toward the home society where their significant others still often reside. While research has shown that home country political conditions and experiences affect immigrant political behaviour in the receiving society, scholarship has yet to ask how those same factors affect the ways in which emigrants relate to the body politic left behind. This paper seeks to fill that lacuna. We find that pre-migration political experiences impart a lasting post-migration interest in home country politics and that such effects are substantial compared with the impacts associated with other cross-border connections, such as remittance sending or return travel.

Politics is an underdeveloped topic in migration studies, a lacuna that derives from prevailing intellectual biases, whether having to do with those that focus on individual action or those that emphasize social processes. This paper identifies the central issues entailed in the study of migrant politics, whether having to do with receiving society immigrant politics or sending society emigrant politics, reviewing and assessing the ways in which scholars have tackled this problem.

Social ties play a central role in migrant labor market integration. Whereas existing research focusses on the co-ethnic ties that also drive migration, this paper examines the effect of connections that reach beyond the co-ethnic community. Studying the effects of such ties is challenging as they are generally both a cause and consequence of integration. We examine a case where a quasi-random sub-set of migrants is provided ties that reach outside the co-ethnic community upon arrival in Canada through a refugee sponsor program where community groups support refugees with whom they have no pre-existing ties called the Blended Visa-Office Referred (BVOR) program. Although sponsorship has no effect on the probability of employment, we find that it improves skill utilization. Refugees with sponsors are more likely to obtain higher-skilled employment and less likely to be self-employed. We also present data on the characteristics of friendship networks to support our argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International migration yields pervasive cross-border social engagements, yet homeland political involvements are modest to minimal. This contrast reflects the ways in which the distinctive characteristics of expatriate political life impede participation in the polity that emigrants have left behind. As polities are bounded, moving to the territory of a different state yields political detachment: diminishing awareness of home country political matters and weakened ties to the home state's electoral institutions. To assess this argument, we use a representative survey of the Mexican-born population in the United States to analyze two critical conditions for participation in expatriate elections: emigrants' ability to demonstrate eligibility to vote and their knowledge about voting procedures. We find clear signs of detachment. Most Mexican emigrants are not in a position to participate in homeland politics. Social ties, while pervasive, are associated with more knowledge only for the very small segment of the most engaged.

Do discriminatory US immigration policies affect foreign public opinion about Americans? When examining negative reactions to US actions perceived as bullying on the world stage, existing research has focused either on US policies that involve direct foreign military intervention or seek to influence foreign countries' domestic economic policy or policies advocating minority representation. We argue that US immigration policies – especially when they are perceived as discriminatory – can similarly generate anti-American sentiment. We use a conjoint experiment embedded in a unique survey of Nigerian expatriates in Ghana. Comparing respondents before and after President Trump surpisingly announced a ban on Nigerian immigration to the United States, we find a large drop (13 percentage points) in Nigerian's favorability towards Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the Pew Hispanic Center's 2006 National Survey of Latinos to study the everyday, routine cross-border activities of travel, remittance sending and telephone communication among Latin American immigrants in the United States. We ask how migrants vary in the intensity of their cross-border connections, distinguishing among the transmigrants, those captured by the host-country national social field, and those who maintain some ongoing home-country tie. We then examine the characteristics associated both with variations in the intensity of connectedness and with each specific type of connection. We show that most migrants maintain some degree of home-country connectedness, with a minority severing ties and a still smaller minority maintaining ties at a high degree of intensity. Connectivity is highly responsive to the location of key social ties, acculturation, and citizenship status, as well as the costs associated with the different types of cross-border activity. Keywords: Transnationalism; immigration; cross-border activities; remittances; assimilation; return visits. DOI: 10.1080/01419871003624050

Survey research on migrants is notoriously challenging, especially if the goal is to collect data across a range of countries. Social networking sites’ ability to micro-target advertisements to migrant communities combined with their near-global reach makes them an attractive option. Yet there is little rigorous evaluation of the quality of data thus collected—especially for populations from developing countries. We compare samples of Nigerian emigrants in Canada and Italy and Nigerians (at home) in Nigeria recruited through targeted advertising on Facebook and Instagram to population estimates. We find our samples contain varying degrees of bias in the case of age and gender and systematically miss those with little formal education. How much this affects our samples’ representativeness varies across contexts: discrepancies are much smaller for emigrant populations in Canada than in Italy and much larger in Nigeria, where a large share of the population has little formal education and limited literacy. Post-stratifying each sample on age, gender, and education does not ameliorate bias on other variables such as ethnicity, religion, period of migration, or political attitudes. We discuss the potential and limitations of social-media-driven sampling and highlight key considerations for implementing it to collect multi-sited data on migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]