Profesora

43

Migrants, Remittances,
and Politics:
Loyalty and Voice after Exit'
KATRINA BURGESS

Eager to be politically engaged in their country of origin, a group of
Mexican migrant leaders from Chicago traveled to Mexico City in April
2010 for two sets of meetings. On the first day, they met with federal
legislators to lobby for institutional and policy changes that would result in
moreeffective outreach by the Mexican government to Mexicans living in
the United States. Over the next two days, they participated in a workshop
with Mexican government officials and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) to discuss how they might better manage and monitor hometown
projects they co-finance with the Mexican government.
The migrant leaders had very different experiences at these twoevents.
In their congressional meetings, they found legislators to be largely uninterested in or resistant to their concerns-a stance they attributed to the
disappointing turn-out by migrant voters in Mexico's hotly contested 2006
elections and the migrants' refusal to adhere to Mexico's norm of deference
to authority. At the workshop, by contrast, they were warmly received by
officials fromthe Ministry of Public Oversight (SFP) and the Institute of
Access to Public Information (IFAI), institutions tasked with setting and

Katrina Burgess is Associate Professor of International PoliticalEconomy at the
Fletcher School at Tufs University. She is author of Parties and Unions in the New
GlobalEconomy andco-editor with Abraham E Lowenthal ofThe California-Mexico
Connection. She haspublished numerous book chapters and articles, includingpieces
in World Politics,South European Politicsand Society, ComparativePoliticalStudies,
and Studies in Comparative InternationalDevelopment. She received a B.A. in
politicalsciencefrom Swarthmore College, an M.A. in international elations om the
r
f
University ofSouthern California,and a Ph.D. in politicsfom Princeton University.VOL.36:1 WINTER
HeinOnline -- 36 Fletcher F. World Aff. 43 2012

2012

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THE FLETCHER FORUM OF WORLD AFFAIRS

enforcing new standards of governance in Mexico's public administration.
Eager to learn more about how the country's freedom of information laws
might enhance their capacity to hold local officials accountable, they organized a follow-up session with IFAI officials in Chicago.2This anecdote offers a glimpse into a phenomenon that is only
beginning to receive systematic attention in the scholarly literature: the
growing-and exceedingly complex-influence that migrants from the
developing world are exerting, intentionally or not, on politics in their
home countries. Such influence is not new, but it has arguably become
broader and deeper in the wake of a convergencebetween out-migration
and democratization in many developing countries. With ten percent of
its population living in the United States,3 Mexico is at the forefront of
this trend, but it is by no means alone. Migrants from new democracies as
diverse as the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, the Philippines, Lebanon,
Cape Verde, and Mali are influencing electoral politics, non-electoral civicengagement, or patterns of governance back home. This article discusses
how this trend has been reinforced by a fundamental restructuring of the
global political economy and suggests an analytical framework for understanding the nature and mechanisms of migrant influence on the quality
of democracy back home.
MIGRATION AND DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMY

Between 1970 and 2010, theestimated number of international
migrants more than doubled from 81 million to 215 million.' Although
this increase has not altered the share of people living outside their countries of origin, which has remained

Between 1970 and 2010,

relatively stable at about three percent

the estimated number of
internationalmigrants

since 1960,1 it has profoundly affected
the relationship between...