Hazlo por los tuyos : transnational citizenship and political participation in the 2012 general elections : the case of the Mexican community in Madrid

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HAZLO POR LOS TUYOS:

TRANSNATIONAL CITIZENSHIP AND

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN THE

2012 GENERAL ELECTIONS

The case of the Mexican community in Madrid

International Migration and Social Cohesion Mauricio Olivares-Méndez mauricioom@gmail.com

Universität Osnabrück Dr. Frank Wolff

frank.wolff@uni-osnabrueck.de

Universiteit van Amsterdam Dr. Floris Vermeulen

f.f.vermeulen@uva.nl

Universidad de Deusto Dr. Edurne Bartolomé Peral edurne.bartolome@deusto.es

Osnabrück. May, 2015

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Foreword

This project is the result of my journey through the Joint European Master in International Migration and Social Cohesion. More than that, it’s a product of a long-held interest on how and why people engage, participate, change and cooperate.

When Jon Stewart asked Madeleine Albright if she was a pessimist or an optimist she said “An optimist that worries a lot”. Although I would never compare myself to the former US Secretary of State (for her sake and mine), I think that has been my approach to studying anything related to democracy and citizenship. I don’t think the definitions of how we decide, who gets to decide and where do people are allowed to decide about their community’s future are a finished product. They are the result of a messy and contested process that excludes people or dissolves their will to act into passive acceptance. I worry about all this. All the time. Still, stories from some of the interview partners in this project or from friends all over the world keep me seeing the silver lining.

I like to acknowledge the input of my advisers and preemptively apologize if this is a hard text to read. In case the narrative turns out to be good enough, scratch that apology or use it for something else that you find lacking. I would also like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the hours and hours of discussion (thesis-related and otherwise) that was provided by my lovely classmates. I won’t name them all because I don’t want to be “that guy” (and they won’t read my thesis), but they surely made this journey more interesting, gratifying and incredibly fun. I would also like to thank everyone involved in funding my studies, I literally couldn’t have done it without you.

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Beyond acknowledgments, I want to thank my parents and siblings for their support and the blind trust they have in me, even when I myself was doubting it all. Because they sometimes know me better than I know myself. Because their example to keep going and enjoying life is something I wouldn’t learn from any academic paper. LQDM.

I want to thank my very own heterogeneous friendship network, your constant reminder that you are always close to me, even when you are bragging about the fun you’re having while not in school, keeps me grounded and connected. And while on that subject, a big thanks to whoever invented WhatsApp, for making long distances shorter.

In these past few years I’ve learned a great deal about myself; I’ve learned a lot about the world; I’ve learned that there is quite a bit of it that is unknowable. I’ve also learned to be comfortable with that. I hope this project can be a reflection of that personal growth, otherwise, realizations are the worst.

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INTRODUCTION

With the (sometimes forced) evolution of State’s conceptions of citizenship and belonging, territory is no longer directly associated with access to political rights in the country of origin. Caused by a wide array of factors, this evolution has proven to be a challenge for policy makers and migrants themselves. In 2005, the Mexican Congress passed a piece of legislation that allowed Mexican migrants abroad to vote through mail-in ballots starting with the 2006 general elections. Theory would say that when the cost of voting increases then participation decreases; when the costs exceed the benefits, nobody votes. If bounded rationality models of political behavior are to be believed, Mexican migrants are presented with an added cost; they not only have to spend their time and resources evaluating the proposals of competing parties as any other potential voter would do, but they also have to do it from abroad, without the cognitive short-cuts of the classic model of electoral campaigning and months before the actual election day. Eppur si muovono. And yet, they move. Transnational political participation happens, albeit in different numbers.

The 2012 electoral process, the second cycle with external balloting, counted with the registration of 59,115 Mexican citizens abroad, an increment of 45% since the previous general elections. These potential voters were spread out in 104 different countries, 77% of them residing in the United States, with the biggest concentrations in Europe residing in Spain (2,345, a 89% increase from the previous election), Germany (1,421, 262% up from the previous election) and France (1,375, 170% up from the previous election) (IFE, 2012). This story is one of access to political rights of migrants but, here, who is deciding the means and the requirements for access is their country of origin. The studies of transnational

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identities, political alignments and re-socialization inside new political contexts, are all related to the way political engagement could be translated to active political participation (Fox, 2005; McCann, Cornelius, & Leal, 2009; Rivera-Salgado, Bada, & Escala-Rabadán, 2005) External voting becomes more significant in the face of increasing migration (Nohlen & Grotz, 2007) and, with it, the push and pull for the expansion of immigrant rights.

Recently, the Federal Electoral Institute [IFE] was subject to a major overhaul and was transformed into the National Electoral Institute [INE], equipped with a brand new General Law for Electoral Institutions and Processes giving broader tools and mechanisms to facilitate the process and improve the diffusion of information and the communication with the absentee voters. With insight to the way migrants experience their transnationality, their political life, and the electoral process, the vote promoters and the Electoral Institute could help facilitate and improve political integration and engagement for the next cycle.

The Mexican government, through the IFE, has presented voting as the political activity of excellence; one could argue that the weight placed in this activity –on the detriment of other types of political engagement- has resulted in a generally vote-centric political engagement in Mexico, especially after 1997. Mexican citizens residing abroad, on the other hand, might have developed a different stand on their political rights and the way they can engage with their community and their home country.

Research problem

The Federal Electoral Institute promoted voter registration through a campaign that called its nationals living abroad to “Do it for [their] own” (“Hazlo por los tuyos”), implying that the main rationale for political mobilization would be the impact their votes could have on their

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families’ lives back in Mexico and, generally, that “the electoral behavior of external voters might be dictated by the well-being of those who stayed behind” (Lafleur & Sánchez-Domínguez, 2014:8). In the Institute’s final report on the external voting experience of 2012 it is stated that a hired marketing agency pitched the strategy

“based in the nostalgia that Mexican nationals feel when they live in another country, considering that even in that situation they are still worried about everything being alright at the place where they used to live; because they have many and very good reasons to vote (their family and friends)”1_{(IFE, 2012:28)}

The proposal was approved on April 4th_{, 2011 with the full slogan: “Tienes muy buenas}

razones para votar. Es tu derecho, hazlo por los tuyos”, which translates to “You have very

good reasons to vote. It’s your right, do it for your own”, and it was eventually shorthanded to “Es tu derecho, hazlo por los tuyos” in most promotional material. Most of the focalized publicity was released within Mexico, to use families as the conduct through which the migrants would get the information to register, and in several locations in the United States2_.

However, in the rest of the promotional material used online and in the packages sent to those who completed their registration, the slogan kept appearing, regardless of the place of residence of the migrant.

Based on interviews done with migrants who were involved in the struggle to get their right to vote recognized by the Mexican government, Calderón-Chelius (2003; 2010) argues that mobilized Mexican voters abroad acted more under the premises, values and hopes of democracy than as an answer to the campaigns and the actual electoral process. In a more

1_{This and all further translation were done by the author}

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recent book, the same author says that, to the average Mexican migrant, the idea of voting became an assertion, a gesture of civic engagement, a way to make a political statement about their country (Calderón Chelius, 2014), it became an individual tool for expression instead of one that was only a reflection of the family ties migrants still had with their home country. It would be important to find out if there is an actual dissonance between the electoral institute’s campaign and the migrant communities regarding the reasons to engage on transnational politics. This importance stems from the implications that it has for the promotion of electoral turnout but also, more broadly, to their sense of political belonging.

How does the discourse on political engagement of the Mexican government’s campaign differ from that of the members of the migrant population?

As Goldring (1998) pointed out in her own research, “the question is a part of a broader concern with the citizenship practices of people who orient their lives around more than one nation state, and state responses to them” (p.165). The query can be separated into the following sub-questions:

How do Mexican migrants reflect on their personal political engagement and that of

the Mexican community in general? How do they understand their role within a

transnational political community?

Who participates in the electoral process and what is their motivation?

In what other ways do the migrants in this community engage and mobilize

politically?

To be able to answer these questions the project has been structured around two general objectives. The first one has to be understanding the context where the transnational political

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activity unfolds. Networks, background and membership constrain and shape the opportunities and willingness of migrants to participate in home country politics. Hence, only by analyzing their experiences first in a broader sense, is that we can gain insight into the motives behind their participation (or lack thereof). The second objective is to sketch the Who, Why and How of the Mexican migrant engagement in the 2012 electoral cycle. To be able to pin point the differences or similarities from the IFE’s campaign and the migrants’ own reflections about political engagement, we have to understand who are the migrants that actually participate in transnational politics, why do they do it and how is their participation enacted.

Relevance of the case

Studies on Latin-American migrants’ political and electoral behavior are fairly new and have been largely concentrated in the communities living within the United States3_{. There is}

virtually no scholarship devoted exclusively to the migratory experience of Mexican migrants in Europe and none focusing on their political engagement4_{. Though understandable}

due to the migratory pull of the neighboring country5_{, the lack of research has led to policies}

for the engagement of Mexican citizens abroad to be modeled after the migrant population in the U.S without knowing much of other migrant communities.

3_{Examples of these projects include the ones done about migrant communities from Bolivia (Lafleur, 2012),}

Colombia (Bermúdez, 2014; González, 2010; Escobar, Arana, & McCann, 2014; McIlwaine, Bermudez, Cock, Bejarano Soto, & Calderón, 2011), Dominican Republic (Itzingsohn & Villacrés, 2008), Ecuador (Boccagni, 2011), Mexico (Durand & Schiavon, 2014; Calderón Chelius, 2010; Lafleur & Calderón Chelius, 2011; Leal, Lee, & McCann, 2012), and Peru (Escrivá, Santa Cruz, Bermúdez, & Ortega Breña, 2010).

4_{Only one piece of published research was found on the Mexicans in Spain (Rodríguez Lozano, 2010) but it}

doesn’t discuss any side of the political engagement of migrants. Some researchers have taken into consideration Mexican migrants outside the US but always pooled together with the data retrieved in the United States (Calderón Chelius, 2010; Durand, Cruz, & Schiavon, 2014).

5_{Estimates of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (Instituto de Mexicanos en el Exterior) place 98.69% of the}

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Electoral results have shown that there is something different in the political behavior of migrants to the US and other places. Although the migrant population in the United States still send the biggest amount of external ballots, participation from migrants in the US decreased in relative terms when relating it to the amount of registered voters in 2012. Inversely, the rest of the world, saw an increase in participation. Important examples are Canada, Germany, France and Spain, where the absolute number of voters doubled or tripled itself in comparison to the previous election (González González, 2014).

This projects seeks to start to fill the gap in literature through an analysis of the Mexican community residing in Spain and its political participation during the last electoral cycle.

Spain was chosen, and in particular the city of Madrid, due to it being the host of the largest

Mexican migrant community in Europe6_{, due to it being the largest sender of ballots of any}

country in Europe and due to reasons related to access7_.

Notes on the methodology

Semi-structured interviews

To gain insight on the characteristics of the political engagement of Mexican community members in Madrid within a short time -and riding on no previous research on the case-, I decided to use qualitative research. The focus of this methodology approach is on “how combinations of attributes and conditions come together” ” (Daly, 2003:193) to produce meaning, and on how respondents make sense of their experiences in the particular context in which they come about (Sumner, 2006). This approach has been the one used in many

6_{Electoral results on the 2012 cycle: 2345 registered voters and 2180 ballots received; 3rd place overall, after}

the US and Canada (IFE, 2012)

7_{My familiarity with the city and the lack of a language barrier made the project more feasible in the limited}

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recent research projects that set out to study migrants’ political engagement, looking to “explore ‘in depth’ and ‘in context’ the practices, lived experiences, social relationships and views of political engaged migrants and their interlocutors” (Però & Solomos, 2010:10) The unavailability of quantitative data and the novelty of the case to study constrain my choices but also open up the possibilities of what I might be able to find through a

semi-structured interview setting. A mainly discursive format, the semi-structured interview

allows "the respondent to develop their answers in their own terms and at their own length and depth" (Leonard, 2003:167), and its flexibility and opportunities for follow-ups and clarifications make the tool one of the most used data collection methods in the social sciences (Wilson & Sapsford, 2006)

This method, however, has several limitations. When engaging in an interview, the interviewer and interviewee are not only asking and responding to questions; they also react to each other’s appearances, characteristics, identity and personality (Hennink, Hutter, & Bailey, 2011), they are regarded as agents co-constructing the content of the interview (Schwandrt, 2007), and, as such, the data retrieved is always situated and contextual (Silverman, 2001). This is not a neutral tool, the interviewer creates the reality of the

interview situation and thusly the interview itself produces situated understandings

grounded in these specific interactional episodes (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Leonard, 2003). This research scenario is not necessarily a handicap, but one has to be aware of it, having in mind that, as Punch (2014) posited, interview data are not a report on external reality but of a constructed reality.

As Wilson and Sapsford (2006) point out: “the procedures used to question respondents – to elicit data – may distort or bias what the respondent believes, or how he or she might act in

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a natural situation” (p.113). Procedural reactivity8_{, is reduced when using less structured}

methods of interviewing but they do so at the possible expense of reliability (Wilson & Sapsford, 2006), making difficult to obtain the same information with the same method. The trade-off can’t be avoided, but awareness and publicity of these limitations are of the utmost relevance when embarking on a project dependent on this tools.

Access to respondents: snowball sampling

The snowball technique is a form of non-statistical sampling in qualitative research. It is especially useful to gain access to hard-to-reach or hidden populations, vulnerable groups or elites (Atkinson & Flint, 2003), or when there is no clear way to locate members of the population of interest (Morgan, 2008). It also presents practical advantages when producing descriptive research where trust is required or when there are few potential subjects. When using this method, a first subject provides the researcher with the contact information of a second subject and this one in turn of a third subject and so on (Vogt, 1999), this referral system takes advantage of the respondents’ social networks because sponsorship can usually encourage cooperation and facilitates access (Foster, 2006).

A disadvantage related to the snowball technique is that respondents are selected through subjective choices and pre-established links between the subjects as opposed to being drawn randomly. Any eligible participant who is not connected to the first set of respondents would not be included in the sample producing a certain degree of selection bias (Morgan, 2008). Since this project is not striving for representativeness but for a way in to the community’s political experiences, a differentiated and simultaneous snowball technique that uses a

8_{Procedural reactivity happens when procedures used to question respondents – to elicit data –distort or bias}

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diverse set of first contacts can help to mitigate the bias, finding some level of variance within the final sample. This variation increases the likelihood that “subsequent links in the snowballing process will reach different segments of the total set of eligible participants” (Morgan, 2008:816)

An important and related matter surrounding this type of research method is the self-selection

bias. This means that, from the start, those willing to talk about the themes related to the

interviews will be the ones who actually have an opinion on them, will find it somewhat comfortable discussing it with a researcher and will find themselves with the time to do so because their personal and professional lives permit them to do it9_.

Data collection

The fieldwork was done in the city of Madrid in the course of three weeks of the month of February, 2015. Eligible migrants were those who were living in Madrid at the time the electoral process developed (at least from November 2011 to July 2012). Unlike other studies have been able to do (Calderón Chelius, 2010; Durand & Schiavon, 2014; Leal, Lee, & McCann, 2012), this project didn’t get the assistance of the Federal Electoral Institute to gain information or to contact Mexican citizens abroad, so all contacts were made while on the field.

The empiric phase rode primarily on the input and experiences of different migrant categories that were build a priori. The snowballs were started with (a) members of migrant or

9_{With this I try convey that some migrants with a difficult economic situation, working two full time jobs,}

being undocumented, being single parents or not being able to move around in the city will be less likely to accept being a respondent, especially when trust is an issue.

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themed NGOs, (b) known activist involved in mobilizations regarding Mexican politics, and (c) average Mexican migrants found through social media.

Basic information on the time of residence abroad, education, occupation, frequency of travel back home and their migratory status was gathered to look for in-group salient characteristics. After the routine questions aimed to build a profile of the respondent, questions on the interviewees’ were phrased on a natural way but keeping an order on the topics to be addressed. Several questions to prompt or elicit specific memories had to be used since the experiences regarding the electoral process happened almost three years in the past. The four broad topics (in bold) were known to the interviewees, and were based on “the research question and the tentative conceptual model of the phenomenon that underlies the research” (Ayres, 2006:810). The topics of the questions were:

1) The respondents’ everyday context, the heterogeneity or homogeneity of the social groups were they participate and their friendships, their relationship to the local Spanish population and other migrant groups, and their relationship to the Spanish government and its institutions.

2) The respondents’ sense of membership and belonging while residing abroad, the quality, quantity and medium through which they are informed about social matters, their identity as citizens of a country (or two), and their thoughts on their access to political rights while residing abroad.

3) The respondents’ impressions about the Mexican community in Spain, their level of cohesion and organization, the topics around which they do organize, and the

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4) The respondents’ activity surrounding the electoral cycle, the voting experience – whether successful or not-, other ways of engagement, previous participation and reasons for voting.

Thesis structure

The structure of this thesis follows the general objectives presented above. The first chapter will present an overview of the main concepts explored in the project; it sets the discussion within the frame of the scholarship on transnationalism and goes on to describe transnational citizenship, external voting and transnational political participation.

The next short section attempts to present the relevant information to start describing the characteristics of the Mexican migrant community in Spain. It intends to provide “what is known” of the community before the fieldwork. The information is quantitative in nature and was retrieved from the Mexican and Spanish governments, different NGOs, newspapers and academic sources prior and during the fieldwork.

The third chapter tackles the first objective of the thesis, understanding the way the respondents’ everyday life develops in Madrid, how their networks are structured and how they make sense of their belonging. Analyzing the migratory experience of the interviewees is important to understand where the transnational political participation occurs.

For the second objective, the fourth chapter lets the respondents, and then the author, explore who and why migrants participate. When is the authors turn, this project draws a distinction between migrants with a ‘thin’ and a ‘thick’ understanding of their role as citizens in transnational politics. Using reflections from the respondents on their experiences during the 2012 electoral cycle, the section argues that those who have a thick transnational citizenship

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understanding have a discourse on their motives to participate that is clearly different to the one presented in the IFE’s campaign.

The fifth section will present a brief example of how migrant political participation developed outside of the external vote during 2012, the #YoSoy132 movement. This example of political mobilization was brought up constantly by the respondents themselves as a meaningful and transformative experience for the migrant community.

The sixth section will summarize the arguments and will provide an answer to the research questions. Finally a conclusion is presented along evocative examples of transnational political participation in the aftermath of the mobilizations of 2012.

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THEORETICAL BACKGROUND:

Transnationalism, citizenship and participation

To be able to study the life of a migrant community, especially its political side, it seems important to try and understand where their activities are framed. This is where the literature on transnationalism can shine a light on the forces that shape the political life of expatriate communities. The academic production on transnationalism is fractured and has no single approach to the relation between migrants and the state (Waldinger, 2013), between borders, movement and stasis. However, the following literature review and concept discussion attempts to bring together the key arguments that can help to explain migrants’ engagement with political affairs.

Transnationalism

As Faist (2000) said “whether we talk of transnational social spaces, transnational social fields, transnationalism or transnational social formations in international migration systems, we usually refer to sustained ties of persons, networks and organizations across the borders of multiple nation-states, ranging from weakly to strongly institutionalized forms” (p.189) For the purpose of this research, transnationalism is seen as “the process by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (Basch, Glick Schiller, & Szanton Blanc, 1994:6). This set of inter-locking networks of social relations cross geographic, cultural, and political borders and constitute the transnational social field (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004).

As opposed to the assimilationist understanding of migrants’ lives in their host countries, the transnational perspective assumes that migrants are involved in activities and develop

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simultaneous social, religious, cultural, political, and economical involvements in several locations (Lafleur, 2013; Coubès, Velasco, & Zlolniski, 2014), it moves away from the emigrant-immigrant binary and re-focuses research efforts on the understanding of the cross-border way of life (Levitt & Sorensen, 2004). Migrants are often involved in what Però (2008) has called ‘multidirectional politics’, being simultaneously involved in the political life of their host country and their country of origin, incorporating in both different daily activities, routines and institutions (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004); “they take actions, make decisions, and develop subjectivities and identities embedded in networks of relationships” that extend across borders (Basch, Glick Schiller, & Szanton Blanc, 1994:7). The study of transnationalism, as an alternative to assimilation, “demonstrates how international migration inherently generates cross-border connections, which then gradually yield a transnational social field linking migrants and stay-at-homes” (Waldinger & Soehl, 2013:335); is an answer to those who suggested that assimilation processes and long-standing cross-border ties where mutually exclusive or binary opposites (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004).

Although it’s not a new phenomenon, the current understanding and interest in transnationality arose when researchers realized that migrants do not necessarily shed their identities to build a new one as a part of an assimilation process (Pedraza, 2013), that people who leave their country of origin are not only immigrants, but also emigrants with established ties to the people and places that they left behind (Waldinger, 2015). Severed ties are even less common now with the advent of different and new communication channels and strategies, and with the active involvement of governments to include migrants’ voices (or their numbers) in democratic processes. The difference is one of quality, migrants are now able to participate, economically politically, socially and emotionally in a regular, constant

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way; they create "two homes" that rest on the pillar of an identity incorporating simultaneously two or more social worlds (Pedraza, 2013)10_.

Having said all this, it is important to now present the role that governments have on incentivizing the enactment of transnational activity through the recognition of citizenship and the political rights that come with this status.

Transnational citizenship

A less explored tier of the transnational experience is the one relating to the migrants’ actual inclusion into the political life of their country of origin due to the extension of traditionally resident-only rights. This extension redefines the boundaries of membership. Some rights, such as the right to vote and be voted have remained mostly attached to formal citizenship status11_{, while other civil and social rights have been gradually extended to all denizens}

regardless of their status (Bauböck, 2007). It seems clear that both formal and informal institutions have a place shaping the lives of migrants in their host society.

Nation-states have different reasons to recognize their nationals as citizens with full rights, encouraging ties of solidarity and loyalty to the motherland; governments vary with respect on how willing they are to encourage transnational political activism and on how they might extend political rights to emigrants and their descendants (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004). Depending on the type of diaspora, governments will be more or less likely to try to recognize or establish relations with their expatriate community. Members of opposition movements

10_{This is not to say that the existence of technology explains the maintenance of transnational ties, rather as}

Basch, Glick-Schiller and Szanton Blanc (1994) argues, it is the capitalist global mode of production that (partially) rests on the transnational ties.

11_{Few exceptions do exist, such as the case of residency-based rights to vote in, among others, New Zealand,}

Norway, Iceland, Belize and Venezuela. Specific variants and limitations to this right can be found within the European Union and the Commonwealth countries (Bauböck, 2005).

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that go into exile are likely to be mobile, but not likely to be granted full recognition; economic migrants that are able to send remittances are more likely to be subjects to out-reach programs and campaigns by the government of their own country12_{. States might pass}

legislation permitting its citizens to acquire another nationality to promote emigration, sending of remittances and also to promote the return to their countries, since dual nationals are more likely to return compared to those who had to give up their original nationalities13

(Janoski & Wang, 2005). In any case, these migrants are imbued in a transnational social field and, as such, can be referred to as transnational citizens.

Citizenship is the institutionalization of the political syntax of social and symbolic ties (Faist cited in Çaglar, 2002). The concept of transnational citizenship, as opposed to others14_,

extends the definition of citizenship beyond clear-cut pictures of the nation-state recognizing that those ties extend across borders. It seeks to reflect the non-exclusive affiliations that migrants maintain to more than one nation-state (Chang, 2004). Is the result of an expansive transformation of membership within the modern migration context (Bauböck, Kraler, Martiniello, & Perching, 2006) reflecting “institutional changes and new conceptions of citizenship in states linked to each other through migration chains” (Bauböck, 2006:28)( Individuals in a transnational field who are simultaneously assigned a certain “membership status and membership-based rights or obligations” (Bauböck, 2007:2395) in two or more countries can be called transnational citizens. Their membership is multi-sited, they

12_{The Mexican ‘Programa Paisano’ is a good example for an out-reach program aimed to encourage the}

establishment of permanent communication channels, benefits and social services with and for the Mexican diaspora in the United States.

13_{Mexico passed its new nationality law in 1998, allowing Mexicans to apply for other nationalities without}

losing their original one.

14_{Rubio-Marín (2006), as an example, uses the term external citizenship to describe the political side of}

migrants activity directed to their homeland though it doesn’t delve fully into the fluidity and simultaneity that the rest of the scholarship on transnationality presents.

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participate in political processes of both countries, sometimes equally in both and sometimes more in one than in the other (Laguerre, 1998).

Fox (2005) recommends being cautious when using the term ‘citizenship’ due to the possibility of concept stretching. He posits that the term transnational citizenship has only analytical use when referring to dual citizenship, regarding other conceptions as “genres of civic and political participation that fall short of the category of citizenship” (p.172). The present text, however, works on the idea that migrants’ governments’ recognition of their citizenship and attached political rights while residing abroad, coupled with their actual involvement, can fit the requirements of transnational citizenship. As Çaglar (2002) says, citizenship can't be reduced exclusively to the relationship between the state and the individual, it also encompasses deep horizontal ties among the citizens.

There is more to citizenship than a legal status, it includes 'informal' politics and engagement in community organizations (Goldring, 2001) and it might include migrants with access to certain rights but with no guarantee to them (i.e. denizens, with legal citizenship in their country of origin but not in their country of residence). Accordingly, scholars of citizenship within migration studies are more inclined to “examine the practices and performance of citizenship rights, rather than only the formal status of membership” (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2008:204); this is because citizenship also "concerns the moral and performative dimensions of membership that define the meanings and practices of belonging in society" (Holston & Appadurai, 1999).

For the purpose of this research, migrants active in the transnational field are regarded as transnational citizens; they are enfranchised by at least one of the nation-states in which they develop their activities, loyalties and identities no matter the distinction between the legal

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status of their membership. Citizens abroad might get involve in different ways and intensities depending on their location, the cause or their incentives to do so.

The modern conception of citizenship rights for migrants include at least the right to return and the right to diplomatic protection, in some places they can also include specific rights concerning property, and in some other even representation in decision-making processes or parliament. Whether the holder of citizenship lives in the country of origin, has settled in a new polity or lives constantly in both, citizenship can be exercised through conventional forms, like voting in electoral processes when the mechanisms are in place, or less conventional types of political mobilization activities like protests, demonstrations, sit-ins, hunger-strikes or boycotts (Martiniello, 2006).

The next two sections will deal with both types of engagement in transnational politics.

Transnational political participation

Migrants’ political mobilization in the contemporary world has developed around the issues of vulnerability, abuse, injustice and denial of recognition, rights and opportunities to secure a decent living has pushed for Migrant associations and NGO-led regularization campaigns such as the ‘Sans-Papiers’, ‘Sin Papeles’, ‘Strangers into citizens’ (Però & Solomos, 2010:5), the DREAMers movement and others. Not stopping only with mobilization for material justice, some migrants –particularly those with a regular migration status- also have strategies to mobilize on matters of discrimination, cultural rights, inclusion (Solomos, 2003), political rights and diplomatic action by both their country of origin and the one of settlement. Political participation is understood as the active dimension of citizenship, it refers to the various ways in which individuals take part in the management of collective affairs of a given

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political community (Martiniello, 2006). When migrants engage in the political affairs of their country of origin they do so in a particular political and institutional context, that is to say, their mobilization and agency is facilitated or constrained by their local surroundings (Guarnizo & Smith, 1998).

The action of the state and the migrants are closely intertwined: the states, through their policies, can influence the political activism (or disposition) modifying the opportunity structure of its citizens living abroad but, at the same time, states sometimes revise their policies based on the pressure exerted by its immigrants (Lafleur & Martiniello, 2009). As developed within a transnational field, political identity and membership of migrants are not only a function of integration into the receiving country, but a result of the complex interplay between the events and policies of the country of origin, and the process of migration and settlement in the receiving country (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003a).

Patrick Ireland (1994) first applied the political opportunity approach for the understanding of migrant political action, explaining mobilization through the institutional set up and incentives (positive and negative) in which migrants’ lives take place. This structure consists of, a) laws that grant differentiated statuses and rights to migrant groups, b) of public administration and policies that might or might not address migrants’ claims and concerns, and c) a public culture that can be anywhere in a continuum between inclusive and accepting of diversity or isolating and pro-homogeneity (Bauböck, Kraler, Martiniello, & Perching, 2006). A rigid read of the political opportunity structure approach would lead (and has lead) to its application to mostly dyadic relations between the migrant community and their host country, not taking into account the simultaneous relation of migrants’ with their country of origin. Østergaard-Nielsen (2003a; 2003b) made the case for the decoupling of the idea of

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the structure of opportunities with a unique territory, opening the way to a transnational-space turn. These political structures of opportunity include (but are not limited to) political rights granted to migrants and the attitudes of society and government (in both, host and home countries), citizenship laws and migratory status, and gatekeepers for the access to the channels of political participation; they are significant for “migrants’ collective patterns of organization and strategies of participation” since they provide “certain resources for, and models of, organizing” (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003a:23).

But, focusing only on the structure of opportunities can regard migrants’ as passive agents that only respond to the structure15_{, so the inclusion of further influences for mobilization}

should be taken into account when studying migrant political engagement. Però (2008) sets the first steps to move away from what he calls the ‘monocausal institutional determinism’ (p.122) of the opportunity structure approach to deepen the understanding of migrants’ agency. He notes that their political socialization, backgrounds, experiences and values can also help to explain the success and configuration of migrants’ mobilizations. One final challenge to the political opportunity structure approach is incorporating other factors that are more difficult to grasp such as migrants’ feelings and emotions (Però & Solomos, 2010), value-orientated actions, membership, sense of identity or non-egoistic goods, such as altruistic, ideological or patriotic collective goods (Mayer, 2014), since the motivation for mobilizing is not always related to its chances of success or the allocation of selective incentives16_,

15_{Però and Solomos (2008) on the opportunity structure approach paradox: “This overemphasis of the}

institutional structure places the POS approach in the paradoxical situation of having started off seeking to recognize migrants’ political agency and overcome perceptions that saw them as quiescent, but ended up explaining it away with another structural account.”

16_{A discussion otherwise best served by the political science debate on collective action problems that started}

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What seems to be clear is that migrant political mobilization entails high costs and low direct benefits, and that options for participation are few and obstacles to engage are high (Waldinger & Soehl, 2013). In the absence of constant socialization of political practices and information, the new context of settlement might produce spiraling disengagement because participation responds primarily “to the level and intensity of political involvement in one’s own social circle” (Waldinger, 2013:6). In this scenario, the constant reenforcement and social cues that could lead to mobilization in the homeland would be found lacking in an individual’s reduced -or sometimes inexistent- migrant social circle. But expatriate communities rarely lack members for whom homeland politics are a concern. Some migrants, even if they are the minority, might focus their efforts on the conformation of civic organizations of co-nationals abroad. These groups might first revolve around each other due to a desire for maintaining cultural ties but it isn’t rare for them to gradually constitute cultural, social and civic associations of member-support and solidarity, even enabling the organized support of specific endeavors in the community of origin (i.e. Home town associations) (Calderón Chelius, 2010) or specific mobilizations regarding political scenarios in the home country or the one of residence.

External voting

Voting might be the political act most closely associated with citizenship. Though it has been slow, a constantly growing number of governments have developed different ways to enfranchise their citizens abroad transforming it into a staple of transnational political participation. The importance of voting from abroad as a practice tied to citizenship is that equalizes the input of citizens who live inside and outside of the country in determining the future of the polity.

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Different states usually develop their rules to define the electorate using location, interest, identity or legal citizenship (Kull, 2008). Currently there is no wide debate on whether the access to external voting fits into the dominant democratic discourse, in fact, there seems to be a general agreement within the international community that it should be a feature of modern electoral frameworks. However, a debate does exist on whether the right to vote should be restricted to only those of temporary residence (i.e. students, contract workers, tourists, government officials on diplomatic missions) and not to citizens who reside permanently in another country. This distinction comes from the fact that to some scholars – and politicians-, the members of the latter group seem to no longer hold a stake in the process once they made the decision to reside permanently outside the boundaries of the state or at least they would not be governed by those who they elect, contravening a series of democratic principles (López-Guerra, 2005; Bauböck, 2007; Kull, 2008; Schaffer, 2012; Song, 2012; Rubio-Marín, 2006). The problem comes from deciding how to constitute the demos in a democracy17_.

External voting refers to expatriates enjoying voting rights that are exercisable outside of their country of legal citizenship. This extension comes from a broad country-specific definition of who to include in a given political community; it represents the actual recognition that nation-states have for their expatriates as citizens regardless of their place of residence. This process recognizes the constitution of new citizenry notions that preserve the political rights of citizens that are on constant geographic mobilization distinguishing

17_{Unlike the previous conceptual debates, this is a normative discussion, and is not the focus of the project to}

support any argument that would define in any way who should gain access to external voting, but to present this inherently political activity as a transnational one.

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different ways of belonging, of membership and of access to justice in a transnational setting (Calderón Chelius, 2010).

Many reasons have been put forward to explain why voting rights are being extended to citizens abroad, whether this is to strengthen cultural, economic and political rights with migrant groups (or their host countries); to enable the promotion of specific political agendas; or, to enhance the legitimacy and accountability of democratic governments (IDEA-IFE, 2007; Morini, 2013); or due to the fact that states court the loyalty of their emigrants because they see them as a potential political force to advance their interests (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004; Mahler, 2000), one thing is clear, there is an overall trend for governments in all continents to expand electoral rights to their citizens regardless of their place of residence. José Itzigsohn (2000) has described a pattern of political transnationalism where the state, political parties and grassroots organizations push for the opening of the political field through mechanisms like the vote or double citizenship in the search of migrants’ loyalties or resources; this decisions are more often than not of political nature without a complete consideration of the costs and complexities of the external voting processes (Goldsmith, Erben, & Shujaat, 2012). In summary, a growing number of international migrants, the constant pressure for democratization and the economic globalization are generally presented as the main driving forces for the expansion of the vote abroad.

According to Bauböck (2007) the political salience of external voting will be greater where it has been recently introduced, where many expatriates share a diasporic identity, where expatriates’ political preferences deviate significantly from those of domestic voters, and where the electoral system provides incentives for campaigning abroad. Although wide research hasn’t been done on this matter for external votes, other factors such as the perceived

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closeness of the race and the level of the offices for which there are candidates might affect turnout abroad as it does in any constituency.

Currently, more than 113 county-members of the United Nations have some kind of rule that permits citizens abroad to vote (IDEA-IFE, 2007); nonetheless no expatriate electoral system can reproduce the same voting infrastructure they have locally on another country's territory (Waldinger & Soehl, 2013), so different countries have produced a variety of ways to allocate migrants’ votes into the national pool casted on Election Day. The main form in which electoral systems discriminate is on the basis of residence, either denying participation to those who don’t reside within the territory, phasing out their citizens’ right to vote based on the amount of years that they have lived abroad or allowing them to vote only if they return to the country to do so (Rubio-Marín, 2006). In addition, there are many different ways how the vote of a migrant can be casted, how it is counted, what positions external voters are able to vote for and with which requirements (see IDEA-IDE, 2007).

When states discuss to put an end to the political exclusion of some of its citizens due to their absence from its territory what is at stake is the very same construction and practice of the new ways of belonging, of membership, of political rights and, with that, of access to justice in a transnational setting (Calderón-Chelius, 2010)

This theoretical discussion on the transnational aspect of migrants’ political life and its different expressions presents the most important conceptual tools that will be used to understand how the Mexican migrants engage politically and how are they mobilized. First, the general discussion was framed within the scholarship on transnationalism, where

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migrants’ experiences are not limited by borders but informed by simultaneity. Then, the concept of transnational citizenship presented the migrant who engage in transnational politics. This was followed by a discussion on how this actors participate both in a broad sense and through external voting.

Having the conceptual tools to understand how transnational political participation occurs and who the actors that take part on it are, this project goes on to start describing the case at hand. The next section presents what can be known about the Mexican migration to Spain from the data available through the statistics offices of the Spanish and Mexican governments and through reports and newspaper articles.

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MEXICANS IN SPAIN: A preliminary profile

New research has started to point out the qualitative differences between the Mexican migrants who settle in the United States and those who do it elsewhere, noting more relative participation of migrants not located in the U.S (González González, 2014). The high participation rates could correspond to a more economically stable, politically sophisticated and highly educated migrant population. As an example of this, the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (Instituto de Mexicanos en el Extranjero, [IME]) reports that half of the population of Mexicans residing in Europe are employed in white collar jobs, with only 7% performing blue collar jobs (IME, 2013). Previous research such as the one conducted by Montero-Sieburth and Cabrera Pérez (2013) in The Netherlands supports the idea that Mexican migrants in Europe have higher levels of education and a more effective path to labor and professional insertion than their counterparts in the United States.

Durand, Cruz and Schiavon (2014) profiled the Mexican migrants who had contacted the IFE to get information on the voting process resulting on 21% of respondents being a college graduate and 59% having a postgraduate-level education18_{. These findings echoed previous}

research showing that Mexicans are one of the migrant communities with the highest level of education in Spain when compared to other Latin-American groups (Rodríguez Lozano, 2010). The case of Spain seems highly relevant due to the history, cultural similarity, lack of language barrier and absolute number of migrants.

18_{Caution has to be taken when reading this information due to the fact it was retrieved using a voluntary online}

survey and in order to be invited to participate, the respondents had to have previously contacted the IFE for information, making self-selection issues highly relevant. Having this in mind, the sample of 1158 respondents might not reflect the characteristics of all Mexican migrants abroad but it could reflect the profile of those who do vote –or at least are interested enough in the elections to ask for information-

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It has been reported that the wave of migrants from Mexico to Spain has been mostly comprised of professionals, students and entrepreneurs concentrated mainly in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia (Sánchez Andrés & Pérez Herrero, 2012)19_{. Though there doesn’t}

seem to be a way to determine the exact amount of Mexican citizens in Spain (due to the high numbers of double-nationality and the differences in measuring techniques) we can have access to some information from both the Spanish and Mexican governments to give an idea of the size and characteristics of the Mexican community.

According to information from the National Institute for Statistics (Instituto Nacional de

Estadística), at the end of 2012 there were 25,635 Mexican nationals registered with the

Spanish government, 10,406 men and 15,229 women with an average age of 33 years (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2013a)20_,21_{. A slightly different set of data from the same}

institution reveals that the amount of individuals residing in Spain who were born in Mexico amounted to 50,569; almost half of them holding a Spanish citizenship (47.79%) and the rest registered as Mexican nationals (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2013b)22_{, revealing a high}

proportion of potential double-citizenship holders23_.

The numbers for Mexicans living in Madrid for the same year were between 7,682 (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2013c) and 7,996 (Consejería de Asuntos Sociales, 2012)

19_{Many of these migrants work on one of the many of the Mexican companies that have international operations}

such as Cemex, Bimbo, FCE, Grupo Modelo, and many more. Those who are classified as entrepreneurs or self-employed are mainly those who set up restaurants of Mexican food (Sánchez Andrés & Pérez Herrero, 2012), these migrants seem to be mainly catering to locals instead of to their own kin.

20_{This number hides many Mexican migrants who when obtaining the Spanish citizenship disappear from the}

registry of foreigners but might still be in possession of their Mexican citizenship.

21_{At the end of that same year there were 100,782 Spanish citizens residing in Mexico, doubling the amount of}

Mexicans in Spain (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2014)

22_{This number, in turn, includes a number of Spanish nationals who due to exile of temporary migration where}

born in Mexico but have otherwise no connection to the country.

23_{This report can be contrasted to what researchers from the Rey Juan Carlos University calculated at the end}

of the first semester of 2013: 17,598 Mexicans residing in Spain throughout the nineteen autonomous communities (Santillán Buelna, 2014)

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documented residents. In addition to this numbers, during the electoral cycle of 2012, there were 4,533 Mexicans who had a valid student residence permit (Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración, 2013), constituting an important part of the community in constant renovation.

According to a report of Mexican students abroad (PATLANI, 2014), 37% of them list Europe as a destination for undergraduate and graduate courses, with a majority of the students choosing Spain (3,487 in 201224_{) as a destination mostly due to language and}

cultural affinities with said country, the economic opportunities for studying at Spanish universities and the appeal of its geographical location for the students who want to travel throughout Europe (PATLANI, 2012). Using the information provided by OECD member countries, the study also reveals that the Mexican student population is ranked at the first place in the relative numbers of foreign non-EU exchange students enrolled in Spanish universities with 5.9% of the international students in Spain being Mexican, followed by the United States (1.9%), Chile (1.7%) and Canada (1.2%)25_.

The Association of Mexicans in Spain (AME, Asociación de Mexicanos en España) has registered in its database twenty seven different Mexican migrant organizations that span from simple information sharing networks to formally registered associations with decades of experience (such as the Colonia de mexicanos en Madrid). Among the 2,644 migrant organizations that the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME, Instituto de Mexicanos en el

24_{This number will not reflect any student that also has Spanish nationality.}

25_{The same OECD data reports 45.1% of Mexican students abroad are located in the United States and those}

in Spain on a distant second place with 10.4%. This numbers can be argued to represent two distinct types of migrant students. Those located in the United States probably comprise a lot of 1.5 generation migrants, who grew up across the border even though they were born in Mexico (e.g. DREAMers), those who study in Spain, however, probably respond to academic exchanges and those enrolled in postgraduate programs, in accordance to the results of the survey. Furthermore, the data doesn’t show other-EU nationals as foreign, so the relative numbers of non-EU students seems bigger.

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Exterior) has in its registry, nineteen are based in Spain, by far more than any other country in Europe.

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MEXICANS IN SPAIN: A qualitative profile

Networks and social assets

As Ávila Molero (2008) and Ginieniewicz (2012) found on their research of Argentinean migrants in Spain, Mexican migrants in the Spanish territory seem to become part of diversified networks that define the quality and quantity of interactions with the migrant community and with the Spanish population. Whether due to their spouses, family background or occupation, the majority of those interviewed described their network as one that was highly heterogeneous leading to an experience that has been called “transitional integration” (Patuly, 2015) or “disperse assimilation”26_{(Ávila Molero, 2008)}

The majority of the respondents reported to have a mixed network with around half of their acquaintances from Mexico and half from Spain; they also revealed a tendency to lose contact with their Mexican acquaintances the longer the interviewees had lived in Madrid. The revolving nature of the Mexican migrant population has left its mark on the composition of the friendship networks of the more stable settlers:

At the start I spent more time with Mexicans, also because you don't know anyone here, also with other foreigners […] but the longer I live here, more I'm involved in a Spanish circle, now it’s mainly Spanish people, my best friends, my wife… […] It's not like I came here thinking that I would only hang out with Mexicans or only with Spaniards, it was more like "let's see what happens [Mauro]27

26_{As problematic as the term ‘assimilation’ can be is not the focus of this section to discuss the merits of the}

term but to make a simile of the experience of the Mexican migrants. I’ve decided to use it, always in quotation marks, to name the phenomenon in the same way as Ávila Molero (2008) and keep the underlying conversation going.

27_{Mauro is a 28 years old cultural journalist working in Madrid since 2008, he moved to Spain to start his}

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When I got here I had more Mexican friends, now I think they are mostly Spanish. What happens is that a lot of the Mexicans I knew went back, the situation for some was a bit complicated [due to the Spanish economic crisis], and to be honest, many were not planning to stay longer. I think in general people come, spend some time and then go back [Mariana]28

To the experience of some of the respondents, however, their immediate network comprises also a considerable amount of other Latin American migrants, some due to their field of occupation (e.g., the restaurant and hotel business) and some due to their political and cultural affinity

My links are stronger to Mexicans and other Latin American groups, Bolivians, Peruvians... Because there is more affinity, and my relation with the Spanish is more with [social] collectives due to M15 and all that, given everything that was happening in Mexico there was a strong connection, let's say that my strongest link to the Spanish community is with those who are politically active [...] Because of the temper of the Latin Americans it’s easier to befriend them, they are warmer, with the Spanish it’s a little bit more difficult [Pedro]29 Migrants having heterogeneous networks has been attributed to human capital accumulation, that is, to their social assets related to, among other things, educational attainment, the construction of an internal and external image of the community, and to legal status (Ginieniewicz, 2012; Ávila Molero, 2008; García, 2004; Retis, 2004). These social assets

personally and professionally on his own without his family to support him. He is married to a Spanish woman and waiting for his citizenship application process to finish soon. He has been back to Mexico twice since he moved to Spain.

28_{Mariana is a 29 years old community manager while studying a Master’s degree in Human Resources. She}

already had the Spanish citizenship on account of his father being a native Spaniard. Her migration journey started because she wanted to meet her father’s side of the family and wanted to try her luck after studying an MA in Buenos Aires. She goes back to Mexico to visit her family every two years.

29_{Pedro is a 28 years old PhD student who arrived to Madrid at the end of 2011 with a full scholarship. He}

previously studied in Mexico and worked as a teacher in a rural community. He has no intentions to stay in Spain for longer than his graduate program.

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facilitate for migrants to gain access to opportunities and positions that would be otherwise difficult to obtain. In addition, the relatively low numbers of Mexican migrants in Madrid (and Spain, in general) makes interactions with conationals somewhat less frequent in the respondents’ everyday lives. The high level of educational attainment can produce access to networks that allow some migrants “to avoid the typical migrant job” (Ginieniewicz, 2012:32). Although the respondents made references to other Mexican migrants they knew to be working in blue collar jobs (usually in the staff of Mexican-themed restaurants or bars) respondents referred to their Mexican acquaintances to be involved in mostly white collar within in an international or otherwise mostly Spanish work environment.

Network heterogeneity can also be the result of conscious decisions to build bridges in a new environment. Decisions like these are especially common amongst skilled migrants “motivated and resourced to advance careers and build up personally supportive social capital” (Patuly, 2015:212).

The profile of the respondents seems to match the data presented above on the educational attainment of Mexican migrants in Europe. This group of migrants seems to be more qualified than those in the United States, possibly due to a process of educational selectivity (Takenaka & Pren, 2010)30_{. The respondents also come from urban areas in Mexico, where they can}

gain easier access to formal and higher level schooling (De Wit, Jaramillo, Gacel-Ávila, &

30_{The difference in outcomes for different migrant communities relating to educational selectivity can be}

ascribed to different factors including the distance (on account of the opportunity cost and the resources needed for embarking in the migration journey), the expected reward to skill in the destination country (Grogger & Hanson, 2011) and the existence of long established and widely diffused social networks where education is not as salient (Takenaka & Pren, 2010). Massey (1987) already pointed out that migration becomes a common strategy for low-income and less educated people once the cross-border networks are established and costs are reduced. Probably even more if the migration networks were reinforced or established after targeted recruitment programs -like the Bracero program- are set up. According to testimonials, braceros were selected in such a manner that those regarded as politically inclined, well-spoken or too educated were not chosen for the program due to the perception that they could lead or organize labor demands (Gonzalez, Price, & Salinas, 2010)

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Knight, 2005) that then sets them in a path to access scholarships and grants to pursue their educational projects outside of the country. Of the sixteen respondents, thirteen had postgraduate degrees, most of them having completed the degrees while residing in Spain. I've been thoroughly welcomed, I've gotten many scholarships, I not only have that first MA, the place I worked for gave me [another scholarship], and then another institution also gave me one to study my second masters. I've never felt excluded for being a foreigner, the opposite is true. I'll tell you, I have a really good relationship with the Spanish people on my professional life [Rosa]31

In fact, continuation of studies is the main reason for which the interviewees started their migration projects. The fact that the first context in which these migrants socialized in Madrid was at the Universities might be of high-relevance. Exploratory research on international students has shown that having heterogeneous friendship networks that include host-country natives is related to a general sense of contentment and connectedness (Hendrickson, Rosen, & Aune, 2011), especially when language is not a barrier that can affect intercultural friendships (Kudo & Simkin, 2003). If these networks grow by building bridges (weak ties) with other nationals and extend into the migrants’ working lives, it would help to explain part of the easiness that migrants relate about their experiences in their new context.

The awareness of this educational characteristic seems to help shape the way the Mexican migrants construct the image that they have of themselves. The respondents also referred constantly to what they think to be a singularly good relationship and affinity with the

31_{Rosa is a 34 year old Project Manager for a Madrid-based NGO. She moved to Spain almost nine years ago}

to study a Master’s degree in Communication Studies, and now she just completed her second one. She applied to get the Spanish citizenship on account of time she had already been living in the city. She visits Mexico at least once a year.

Hazlo por los tuyos : transnational citizenship and political participation in the 2012 general elections : the case of the Mexican community in Madrid