Participation of migrants in European cities: patterns of civic and political engagement

This paper tries to discuss the differential impact of the opportunities for civic and political integration associated to new and old destinations of migration. It explores the factors affecting engagement in ethnic, native and pan-immigrant organizations as well as immigrants’ political engagement in mainstream and immigrant-related activities in nine European cities including both new and old destinations: Budapest, Barcelona, Geneva, Lyon, London, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm and Zurich. Theoretically, it draws on the literature that has discussed the role of the degree of openness of political contexts on immigrant integration, and on the political behaviorist scholarship with a specific reference to studies applied to migration focusing on the importance for immigrant-background individuals to get organized in order to be better represented and to mobilize in the political sphere. Our results show that the contextual effect of new and old destinations changes depending on the type of civic and political engagement studied. In particular, the type of destination mainly significantly affects engagement in pan-immigrant organizations. On the one hand, this is likely to have negative effects on the mobilizing impact of organizations on political engagement of migrants, as migrants are eventually going to have less resources for mobilization derived from pan-immigrant organizations. On the other hand, it shows that migrants, with the exclusion of pan-immigrant organizational engagement, have equally important organizational and political resources at their disposal in new and old destinations. However, as mentioned, this does not mean that other contextual characteristics may not be significant in shaping migrants’ opportunities to participate in the civic and political sphere, in line with prior research arguing that the context of policies and legislation that afford migrants with varying individual and group rights actually matters for their political inclusion.