Academic literature on the topic 'Immigrants' political engagement'

Across immigrant-receiving democracies on both sides of the Atlantic, policies of “cultural recognition” (e.g., “multiculturalism”) have become a convenient punching-bag for political elites. Among academics, heated theoretical debates exist over whether such policies foster or hinder immigrants' engagement with their adoptive nation. We provide a novel empirical assessment of this debate from the immigrant perspective. We ask how multicultural and citizenship policies influence immigrants' socio-political engagement with their adoptive nation in three realms: social inclusion, political inclusion, and political engagement. Using a variety of cross-national and single-country surveys, we show that multiculturalism in no case hinders engagement with society and government, and in many cases seems to foster it. Thus, the claim that multiculturalism undermines immigrants' socio-political integration appears largely without foundation.

Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland, like many other immigrants in the world, are reluctant to express their opinions on politics. They do not consider themselves competent enough to have the right to make a judgment in a situation in which they have not taken part and which they cannot view completely on their own. Gradually, immigrants who were born in various countries are becoming increasingly aware of their place in their new society, but they still feel they cannot fully trust their leaders. This article examines the attitude of Russian speakers to the Finnish elections and the ongoing war in Ukraine as presented in media and social media, interviews, and essays. It is not easy to compare whether they are less involved than the young Finns, or it is a generational thing. The conclusion points out the difficulties in adapting to a different political system than in the country of origin and illustrates the spectrum of opinions among the immigrants of the first and second generation who live in Finland and use Russian among other languages in their everyday life. Russian-language media continue to have a significant influence on Russian speakers, even though secondgeneration representatives rely less on these sources of information.

Prior studies have sought to understand how immigrants integrate into U.S. society, focusing on the ways in which local contexts and institutions limit immigrant incorporation. In this study, we consider how interactions among immigrants and U.S.-born within receiving communities contribute to the process of immigrant integration. We emphasize the extent to which immigrants perceive that they are welcome in their social environments and the downstream effects of those perceptions. Drawing on new representative survey data and in-depth interviews with first-generation Mexican and Indian immigrants in the Atlanta and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, we examine what constitutes feeling welcomed and how these perceptions are associated with immigrants’ interest and trust in the U.S.-born and with their civic participation. Our focus on two metropolitan areas with long-standing racialized dynamics, coupled with new waves of immigration, provides insights about the role of welcoming contexts in immigrant integration in the twenty-first century.

Services designed to facilitate immigrant integration and civic-political engagement in the United States are highly privatized compared to those in Canada, where state funding provides the bulk of funding for immigrant needs, leading to a political context in which social welfare for immigrants is thin but opportunities to challenge state policies are perhaps greater. However, the decoupling of federal immigration policies from local integration presents challenges to local actors attempting to influence legislation at the federal level. This article is an exploration of the tensions between local and national organizing for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) in the United States, with a particular focus on the effects of these tensions among local immigrant community organizations in Miami, Florida. The authors present data gathered from the Immigrant Participation and Immigration Reform project, a national effort to increase the civic engagement of individual immigrants, to build the capacity of immigrant organizations in civic engagement, and to build local-to-national relationships for the purposes of passing CIR. The authors compare two levels of engagement: local community organizing and national collaborations. Using ethnographic data from local and regional organizations in Miami, the authors explore the tensions organizers felt between local and national engagement with immigration legislation and how organizers responded to those tensions.

Within a wealth of literature on the subject of the social and political participation of immigrants little has been said about the issue of the mount of immigrants’ engagement in immigrant organizations and its conditions. This paper, based on analysis of CAWI survey of 3500 Polish immigrants describes participations of Poles abroad in Polish immigrant organizations. It also defines three sets of factors determining the amount of engagement. The analysis of empirical data shows that the engagement of Poles abroad in activities of Polish immigrant organizations is limited. Hypotheses concerning factors determining participation in Polish immigrant organizations has been positively verified. Both previous experience of social participation in Poland as well as contemporary experience in country of residence positively influence engagement in Polish immigrant organizations. Also the relation between the country of residence, length of stay, as well as the year of with the level of activity in Polish immigrant organizations emigration has been observed. The participation in those organizations tends also to be influenced by such characteristics of a migrant like: age, size of the locality in which a migrant lives after migration, and type of professional activity. Only two of the assumed variables: size of the origin locality and material situation have not been related to participations of Poles abroad in Polish immigrant organizations.

This paper highlights the potential role for applied anthropology in understanding immigrant political agency and contributes to policy perspectives on the evolving phenomenon of immigrant integration. Formal types of participation traditionally used to assess civic engagement, such as voter registration, are inadequate tests of civic engagement (Barreto and Muñoz 2003). Based on a study of the participation of Iranian immigrants in San Diego, in United States civil and political society, I suggest additional forms of participation and discuss their relationship to well-being and policymaking.

How do political rights influence immigrant integration? This study demonstrates that the timing of voting rights extension plays a key role in fostering political incorporation. In Norway, non-citizens are eligible to vote in local elections after three years of residency. Drawing on individual-level registry data and a regression discontinuity design, the study leverages the exogenous timing of elections relative to the start of residency periods to identify the effect of early access to political institutions. It finds that immigrants who received early access were more likely to participate in subsequent electoral contests, with the strongest effects visible among immigrants from dictatorships and weak democracies. It also observes evidence consistent with spillover effects for other aspects of political engagement. These findings suggest that early access to voting rights influences subsequent trajectories of immigrant incorporation, in particular among immigrants from less developed states who may otherwise face high integration barriers.

Little is known about how immigrants participate in politics and whether they transform political engagement in contemporary democracies. This study investigates whether citizenship (as opposed to being foreign-born) affects political and civic engagement beyond the voting booth. It is argued that citizenship should be understood as a resource that enhances participation and helps immigrants overcome socialization experiences that are inauspicious for political engagement. The analysis of the European Social Survey data collected in nineteen European democracies in 2002–03 reveals that citizenship has a positive impact on political participation. Moreover, citizenship is a particularly powerful determinant of un-institutionalized political action among individuals who were socialized in less democratic countries. These findings have important implications for debates over the definition of and access to citizenship in contemporary democracies.

Our article investigates political engagement among youth with and without an immigration background. Tapping to current debates on intergenerational assimilation processes in Europe, we look at differences in levels of political interest between immigrants, children of immigrants and natives. In particular, we argue that such differences are a function of respondents’ identification with the receiving society. We predict that among respondents with an immigrant background higher levels of national identification will be positively correlated with political interest. Among natives, political interest will not depend on levels of national identification. These expectations reflect the ideas of the social identity perspective according to which group identification increases adherence to group norms and adherence to norms is stronger among individuals who suffer from identity uncertainty. We test our model in four European countries: England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, using data from the CILS4EU project. Our findings indicate that interest in the politics of the survey country differs between respondents with and without an immigrant background. Respondents with an immigrant background who also have a strong national identification are more likely to report a political interest than natives. Respondents with an immigrant background who have a low national identification, are less likely to report a political interest than natives. The findings also reveal that political discussions at home and associationism positively predict political interest whereas girls show significantly lower odds to be politically interested.

This study focuses on the level of membership in associations of the migrant population in Spain. Three types of civic engagement are considered: participation in all types of civic associations, in associations for immigrants and in non-immigrant associations. The article investigates whether immigrants coming from countries with higher levels of civic participation are more likely to participate in civic associations and if immigrants who have lived longer in and stayed in closer contact with a home country with a higher level of civic participation are more likely to join civic associations. Data used come from the Spanish National Immigrant Survey (2007) and the World Values Survey (2000, 2005). The results of multilevel logistic regressions show that immigrants who have spent more time in a more participatory context at origin and who are in closer contact with these societies are more likely to get involved in civic associations at destination.

The object of this thesis are local conflicts in Verona and Modena, two northern Italian cities. In particular it analyses two specific cases relating to the management of phone centres, that is to say shops that offer phone and Internet services. These shops are mainly managed by residents of immigrant origins and their customers are mainly of immigrant origins too. The thesis points to a paradox: while, on the one side, the conflicts have contributed to an excessive politicisation of the issue of phone centres, on the other they have opened up spaces for phone centre-owners to speak up their voice. The conflicts under analysis are very specific in nature. Yet, they provide with a relevant example of politics’ dynamics in the context of the wider debate on urban safety and relating conflicts. The Italian sociological literature on local conflicts has been mostly focusing on residents’ narratives and on the causes that lead to the emergence of conflicts themselves. In this context, immigrants have been often identified as the ultimate cause for the emergence and development of conflicts. They have been treated as objects of policies rather than subjects of politics, particularly in the context of urban safety policies. It has been all too often been taken for granted that the politicisation of the securitarian frame goes hand in hand with the abolition of any democratic space for political engagement. Yet, these type of narratives, which have spread both in public opinion and within the academia, are very dangerous. Most importantly, they carry with them the risk of promoting the same power asymmetries they promise to overcome, by adopting a strictly structural reading. In this sense, the scope of this thesis was both academic and political in nature. It has been precisely that of questioning similar narratives. The scope was not that of ‘nobilising’ marginal actors, such as immigrants, but rather that of analysing contentious dynamics. Two were my initial research questions: on the one side I wanted to understand whether political forms of engagement, and in particular unconventional ones that falls outside institutional channels, could be investigated through the analysis of urban conflicts and the answer to it is clearly yes. On the other, I wanted to find out the conditions for the emergence of these forms of non conventional engagement. In other words, I wanted to find out under what circumstances they can emerge and what methodological approach could best help me seize them. Urban theory has been very attentive to interactions and dynamics between groups. Since the work of the Chicago school and of political scientists Piven and Cloward, well beyond a normative interpretation of what can be held as a ‘just’ city, urban theory has taught us that weak and marginal individuals tend to undertake contentious forms of action. My work is set within this tradition. As it generally happens in the field of political engagement, Italian scholars have first focused on immigrants’ conventional actions, which have been recently explored. Now the time is ripe to look at unconventional actions and this work wishes to give a contribution in this direction. In order to do this I set off to carry out a comparative study of two northern Italian cities, Verona and Modena, with the main idea of confronting their respective contentious dynamics in light of diverging political subcultures and opposing approaches to immigrants and urban safety. By doing so I could revisit the prevailing interpretation on immigrants’ engagement, that is to say the theoretical stance known as ‘political opportunity structure’ elaborated by structural scholars Tilly and Tarrow. In general it is evident that this model can explain only in part the scenario observed in the two cities. The introduction of forms of repression by police forces and the absence of allies in the conflict in both contexts, for example, suggest that the structural hypothesis holds true. Nonetheless, in spite of diverging political subcultures and a different level of openness towards phone centre-owners by institutional actors, it is clear that the latter have engaged in actions that are very much similar. To conduct my research I have used various techniques, including participant observation in phone centres, at phone centre-owners’ meeting and protests; semi-structured interviews to various actors, such as phone centre-owners and customers, policy makers and police officers, residents, shopkeepers and representatives of neighbourhood committees and other relevant actors somehow involved in the respective cases of conflicts. In addition, I have carried out a systematic press review of local newspapers, an analysis of policy documents and the proceedings of regional and local council meetings, with attention on politics dynamics. What should be stressed is that I privileged an ethnographic approach, by adopting a pragmatically sensitive stance, which is characterised by an overarching attention for a world in transformation, whereby public action is observed as ‘politics in action’, with a prevailing attention on processes rather than outcomes. Pragmatic sociology has allowed me to question the narratives described above. This has required different tools of analysis than those used to investigate power relationships alone. It pushes towards a sociology of action in which discourses can be analysed to reconstruct the critical competence of actors to produce arguments that are acceptable for others. Along this line, my attention shifted from the external limited that undoubtedly influence actors’ action to their capacity to move from one ‘regime of engagement’ (Thévenot and Boltanski 2006) to another which points to the fact there exists a plurality of forms of engagement. The authors also underline that all these forms of engagement are equally relevant with respect to public action as they all potentially contribute to opening up to a public arena. They also underline that the passage from one to the other is not automatic and does not necessarily represent an automatic response to power asymmetries. To conclude, this thesis tells us something about the res publica in Verona and Modena: it emerges that, regardless of their diverging political subcultures, what is truly different between them is the modality of raising consensus. Moreover, in both cities, the need for broader political inclusion is evident, as much as that of actively including marginal actors in mainstream governance. Protests on the side of owners certainly represent important actions in the measure in which they questioned an established order. Highlighting them has been crucial in order to prevent the risk of promoting exclusionary narratives that produce power asymmetries instead of investigating them, thus giving for granted that immigrants are marginal and hence passive political actors. Unfortunately, these actions did not prove sufficient to support a lasting change. The latter is rather a matter of establishing a new political settlement with durable relationships becoming an integral part of a system of governance. It is interesting to notice, for example, that the legislative experiment on the regulation of phone centres, as (semi)public spaces, carried with it the potential of promoting forms of institutional innovation and of creating spaces for marginal actors to speak up. However, the conflict was rather exasperated, with the main aim of building up consensus among voters, particularly in coincidence with the electoral period. Additionally, the debate was reabsorbed in a technical confrontation and the conflict very much politicised as a consequence. The case of phone centres has been apparently used as a picklock to legitimise similar interventions of spatial control, not only with respect to the immigrant population but also with Italian residents and in particular youngsters.

A transnational network of more than 50 million people, the Chinese diaspora stretches its reach across the globe. As part of their immigrant journeys, many Chinese immigrants have achieved political leadership in their adopted home countries despite monumental barriers. This thesis examines the political attainment of Chinese immigrants by uncovering how institutional factors such as political power sharing between ethnic groups, citizenship acquisition law, and discrimination law affect their pursuit of public office. I first establish a database of 265 politicians I define as Chinese immigrants, whose various levels of political attainment I then use as the dependent variable. Through empirical analysis, this thesis finds that politicians of Chinese descent attain lower levels of political office when institutional discrimination has targeted Chinese immigrants. In contrast, this thesis reveals that politicians of Chinese descent attain higher levels of political office when political power is shared amongst ethnic groups and when citizenship acquisition laws are exclusionary. While the last result is seemingly counterintuitive, the negative relationship between the inclusiveness of citizenship and political attainment can be explained by the intrinsic role exclusionary citizenship acquisition laws play in naturalizing citizens who are deemed to be integrated and electable.

This thesis answers the question how and why do individuals specialise in different types of political participation? By examining the degree to which individuals concentrate their political activities within one type of political participation, or spread them out across many. This thesis complements previous research on rates of political participation; and adapts and extends existing theories of political participation to explain differences in the degree of specialisation between different groups in society and between countries. Using data from the European Social Survey, covering as many as 21 European countries, and applying a range of different statistical methods, I distinguish four types of political participation: voting, conventional and unconventional political participation and consumer politics. I show that in countries with higher levels of socio-economic development, more democratic experience, and an increased presence of mobilising agents, the degree to which individuals concentrate their political activities within one type of political participation is higher, regardless of the accessibility and responsiveness of their political institutions. This is partly due to the fact that these countries have a higher educated population and that higher educated individuals specialise more. Specialisation also varies along the lines of other socio-demographic divisions, such as those based on gender. Moreover, I show that in contexts in which political issues are salient, such as during an election year, individuals are more likely to engage in non-electoral types of political participation if they also vote. This implies that specialisation is reduced during times of country-wide political mobilisation. The final finding of my thesis is that non-Western immigrants tend to concentrate their political activities less within one type of political participation than the majority population in Western Europe. Western immigrants specialise quite differently, suggesting differences in the way in which they are mobilised. As well as providing an important contribution to the study of political participation, these findings are relevant to discussions regarding citizen engagement and representation.

What is the political significance of affiliation with voluntary associations for people with and without foreign backgrounds in Sweden? Does associational affiliation offer an opportunity to influence the political decision-making process for those otherwise disfavoured in terms of political resources? Or does it rather aggravate the political marginalisation of people with foreign backgrounds? This thesis is based on two large-scale surveys that have been designed explicitly to deal with questions of this sort. It is shown that there are substantial differences in associational affiliation between people with and without foreign backgrounds. Interestingly, these differences are strongly correlated with patterns of ethnification and ethnic discrimination in Swedish society. Individuals who have migrated to Sweden from Western Europe and North America participate in voluntary associations to the same extent as native Swedes. In contrast, the levels of associational affiliation are consistently lower among people who have migrated to Sweden from other parts of the world, even controlling for age, education, occupation and other potentially important factors. The study supports the widely held notion that there is a positive causal relation between associational affiliation and political participation. However, this seems to be true only with regard to certain forms of political participation and only seldom to such an extent that differences in associational affiliation can be said to strongly affect the relative levels of political engagement of people with and without foreign backgrounds. In particular, the observed differences in associational affiliation seem to have little to do with the often debated marginalisation of immigrants in the electoral arena.
Etnisk organisering och politisk integration i storstaden

Immigrant incorporation in the United States has been a topic of concern and debate since the founding of the nation. Scholars have studied many aspects of the phenomenon, including economic, political, social, and spatial. The most influential paradigm of immigrant incorporation in the US has been, and continues to be, assimilation, and the most important place in and scale at which incorporation occurs is the neighborhood. This dissertation captures both of these integral aspects of immigrant incorporation through its consideration of three dimensions of assimilation – identity, trust, and civic engagement – among Latin American immigrants and American-born Latinos in Little Havana, a predominantly immigrant neighborhood in Miami, Florida. Data discussed in the dissertation were gathered through surveys and interviews as part of a National Science Foundation-funded study carried out in 2005-2006. The combination of quantitative and qualitative data allows for a nuanced understanding of how immigrant incorporation is occurring locally during the first decade of the twentieth century. Findings reveal that overall Latin American immigrants and their American-born offspring appear to be becoming American with regard to their ethnic and racial identities quickly, evidenced through the salience and active employment of panethnic labels, while at the same time they are actively reshaping the identificational structure. The Latino population, however, is not monolithic and is cleaved by diversity within the group, including country of origin and socioeconomic status. These same factors impede group cohesion in terms of trust and its correlate, community. Nevertheless, the historically dominant ancestry group in Little Havana – Cubans – has been able to reach notable levels of trust and build and conserve a more solid sense of community than non-Cuban residents. With respect to civic engagement, neighborhood residents generally participate at rates lower than the overall US population and ethnic subpopulations. This is not the case for political engagement, however, where self-reported voting registration and turnout in Little Havana surpasses that of most benchmarked populations. The empirical evidence presented in this dissertation on the case of Latinos in Little Havana challenges the ways that identity, trust, and civic engagement are conceptualized and theorized, especially among immigrants to the US.

Student Number : 0506739P - MA research report - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Humanities
In this study, the positive correlation between social capital and economic performance as well as between social capital and political engagement, documented in the vibrant social capital literature, is revisited with focus on the experience of Congolese immigrants in Central Johannesburg. The core research question aims at establishing whether Congolese immigrants with higher stock of social capital turn out to be better economic performers and more politically engaged agents. The investigation has used both quantitative and qualitative methods. The major data collection instrument has been a survey questionnaire that has reached a relatively representative sample of 100 Congolese immigrants living in Yeoville, Berea, Hillbrow, Parktown, and Braamfontein. Informal interviews, direct observation, and previous literature has provided more qualitative information that has helped to account for statistical trends. While the Congolese immigrant community displays vibrant associational life and intensive social interactions, the predominance of religious associations, the scarcity of socio-economic organisations and the prevalence of bonding ties affect Congolese immigrants’ ability to benefit from their general high capacity to interact with others. The study has also found that voluntary associations may just have symbolic value as they do not represent support structures on which members rely to handle their daily challenges. Instead, family members and fellow Congolese friends constitute the most important social support. As for the correlation between social capital and economic performance, the model has been found valid but its explanatory power weak. Social capital can only partly account for Congolese immigrants’ economic performance. Its impact on their level of political engagement is equally weak. Social capital’s weak influence on Congolese level of political engagement has to do with the apolitical tendency of most religious associations, individuals’ lack of English proficiency, and poverty. South Africa institutional constraints to immigrants’ socio-economic integration, disempowering features of Congolese associations, individuals’ marginal position within networks and the general absence of resources have also been singled out as major justification of Congolese immigrants’ social capital powerlessness. This study contributes to the existing social capital debate at least in three respects. Firstly, it shows that measuring individuals’ social capital on the basis of associational life can be misleading. In some communities, voluntary associations may not be the most important source of social capital. Secondly, Congolese immigrants’ social capital powerlessness illustrates that social capital productivity is function not only of social interactions but also of broad institutional context. Thirdly, political engagement does not just follow from associations’ attendance. An apolitical association such as Jehovah witness church or an association attended mainly by undereducated people may still build organisational skills, but insulate participants from the political community.

This chapter explores the demographic shifts that took place between 2000 and 2012, which saw the composition of immigrants in the United States change greatly. Despite growing in number over the last three decades, immigrants have participated in politics at lower levels than other U.S. citizens. This chapter examines the gap in immigrant voting with the help of important findings from political behavior and political sociology research. This literature shows how varied immigrant politics are in the United States and also suggests why nonprofit engagement in elections should draw more attention. The chapter also examines how political institutions, especially nonprofit organizations, have advanced and sometimes slowed immigrant voting.

This chapter articulates a new model of electoral engagement for immigrant-serving nonprofits. In the political and financial landscape leading up to the 2012 election, nonprofits faced opportunities and barriers to engaging in electoral politics. The chapter uses the reflective electoral representation theory to identify several factors associated with the level of nonprofit engagement in electioneering, and the electoral venue choice theory to argue that a different set of political factors will be involved in which venue (local, state, or national) an immigrant-serving nonprofit focuses its work. In particular, the chapter focuses on the cases of the MinKwon Center for Community Action in New York, Korean American Community Center of Princeton (KCCP) in New Jersey, Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment (AFIRE) in Illinois, and Latino Advocacy Coalition (LAC) in North Carolina.

This chapter presents a historical view of black opinion on immigration. In particular, it looks at the colonization movement of the nineteenth century and the ways in which blacks employed the concept of immigration as a way to escape racial oppression. In fact, blacks applied the term immigrant to their community and seriously considered leaving the United States, with some relocating to Canada and Liberia, for example. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate blacks’ long-term engagement with the issue of immigration as part of their political tradition. Using primary documents, the chapter helps to demonstrate the depth and range of ways in which blacks have viewed immigration over time.

In the 2010s, “sanctuary” has become a key term for immigrant rights advocates who seek to protect and empower immigrants regardless of their legal status and for restrictionists who condemn policies that treat the undocumented as members of US communities. Yet sanctuary has an earlier history, dating back to the medieval custom of granting church refuge to fugitives. During the 1980s, US congregations declared themselves sanctuaries for Salvadorans and Guatemalans fleeing political violence, death squads and civil war in Central America. Drawing on ethnographic engagement with the 1980s movement and over three decades of engaged research within Central American immigrant communities in the United States, this contribution describes the conditions that led Central Americans to seek asylum in the United States, sanctuary practices developed during the 1980s, and the connections between those events and current Central American migration and advocacy. The 1980s movement laid the groundwork for today’s struggles, yet fueled hierarchies of deservingness by distinguishing political refugees from economic immigrants. Current solidarity work can avoid such divisions by transcending borders, creating alternatives to state-based categories of membership, and building communities of practice. Through transnational work, sanctuary activism can counter the histories of exclusion that underlie racialized divisions between citizens and noncitizens.

This chapter focuses on the representation of Japan and the Japanese in American popular song and musical theater from 1860 to 1930. The representation of African Americans and of European immigrants in American popular song has received much attention. Comparatively little work has been undertaken on Tin Pan Alley’s engagement with Asians and Asian Americans. Through style and content analysis, the author identifies particular features that served as “Japanese” markers in the music, lyrics, and cover art of these songs. Musical interest in Japanese subjects directly reflected developments in political history and in American conceptions of race. The impact of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, and of the Russo-Japanese War is identified. The chapter is based on a collection of some 375 pieces with Japanese subjects–including parlor songs, show tunes, and piano dances and novelty pieces–that were published between 1890 and 1930 in the U.S.

This chapter is a reflection on the author's work in the context of trauma-focused qualitative research entitled “Risk and protective factors for the mental health consequences of childhood political trauma (Argentina 1976-1983) among adult Jewish Argentinian immigrants to Israel.” By examining the author's emotional reactions during the process of the data collection and analysis of her doctoral study, the author will explore the challenges that she faced, as well as the solutions she employed (both the effective and ineffective). More specifically, using the lens of the psychoanalytical term “countertransference”, she will discuss the manifestations of her positionality as a qualitative researcher and its impact on her engagement with her study. The author will elaborate on different strategies that she used for her study, and propose qualitative researchers to use “countertransference” as a way to understand and address the complexity of a researcher's positionality in narrative research.

Most refugees and other migrants have limited opportunities to participate in politics to inform and influence the policies that affect them daily; they have limited voting rights and generally lack effective alternative forms of representation such as consultative bodies (Solano & Huddleston, 2020a, p. 33). Political participation is ‘absent (or almost absent) from integration strategies’ in Eastern European countries, while refugees and other migrants in Western Europe do enjoy significant local voting rights, stronger consultative bodies, more funding for immigrant organisations and greater support from mainstream organisations (Solano & Huddleston, 2020a, p. 33).This rapid review seeks to find out what lessons have been learned about political inclusion of refugees, particularly in European countries.In general, there appears to be limited evidence about the effectiveness of attempts to support the political participation of migrants/refugees. ‘The engagement of refugees and asylum-seekers in the political activities of their host countries is highly understudied’ (Jacobi, 2021, p. 3) and ‘the effects that integration policies have on immigrants’ representation remains an under-explored field’ (Petrarca, 2015, p. 9). The evidence that is available often comes from sources that cover the entire population or ethnic minorities without specifically targeting refugees or migrants, are biased towards samples of immigrants who are long-established in the host country and may not be representative of immigrant populations, or focus only on voting behaviour and neglect other forms of political participation (Bilodeau, 2016, pp. 30–31). Statistical data on refugees and integration policy areas and indicators is often weak or absent (Hopkins, 2013, pp. 9, 28–32, 60). Data may not distinguish clearly among refugees and other types of migrants by immigration status, origin country, or length of stay in the host country; may not allow correlating data collected during different time periods with policies in place during those periods and preceding periods; and may fail to collect a range of relevant migrant-specific social and demographic characteristics (Bilgili et al., 2015, pp. 22–23; Hopkins, 2013, p. 28).