Authors

Discussion

Many migrants can vote in the national elections of their home countries. Around these elections political parties seek to mobilize migrants since their votes can make a difference especially when the turnout is low. While many studies covered the interactions between migrants and political parties from their home countries during campaigns, we know very little about what happens between elections. It remains unclear whether parties are active only around elections and how the migrants perceive this behavior. This paper seeks to address this gap in the literature and aims to explain the ways in which migrants perceive the activities of political parties from their home countries outside election campaigns. The analysis uses individual-level data from an original survey to be conducted in January 2022 among at least 1,000 Romanian migrants abroad. Romanians are the appropriate case for this study due to their high levels of participation in the politics of their home country, high numbers and dispersion across several European countries. We test the effect of variables such as political interest, political knowledge, media exposure, level of political participation and socio-demographics on the perception about the activity of political parties.