15:00 - 16:40
PS9
Room:
Room: Terrace 2A
Panel Session 9
Bernard Grofman - Necessary Conditions for Ethnic Party Success
Zack Grant - Doomed by Identity Politics? The British Labour Party and the Politics of White Working Class Representation
Odelia Oshri, Reut itzkovitch-Malka - Political integration and immigrants’ party choice
Julia Schulte-Cloos - Familiarity reduces voters' bias against ethnic minority candidates
Marie Skutilová - The regional parties in the context of devolution: The case of Scotland and Wales
Political integration and immigrants’ party choice
PS9-3
Presented by: Odelia Oshri, Reut itzkovitch-Malka
Odelia Oshri 1Reut itzkovitch-Malka 2
1 The Hebrew university of Jerusalem
2 The Open University of Israel
What explains defection from migrants’ voting norms as a group? Over the past two decades immigrants have become an emerging political force in advanced democracies. Yet, little is known about the electoral choices of immigrants, and the studies that do exist are largely descriptive. This study fills this lacuna and studies immigrants’ voting behavior in a comparative perspective. It examines whether social integration of immigrants into the host society might drive them into shifting their support from their group’s voting norms. We theorize that immigrants who face social exclusion and discrimination are likely to follow their group’s voting norms more so than those who are well integrated. We further suggest a number of testable explanations for these patterns: (1) integrated immigrants’ ties to their migrant community are weaker, thus they adhere less to it norms; (2) integrated immigrants may want to symbolically distance themselves from their migrant community and signal their separation from it using their vote choice; (3) as integrated immigrants usually enjoy an improved socio-economic status they may no longer need the social benefits provided by the left – the main political mobilizer of immigrants. Using public opinion survey data we study whether the level of social integration of immigrants is linked to vote choice. Our findings have important implications for theory and policy, suggesting that in the long-run leftwing parties lose support as a consequence of immigrants’ integration into the host society.