Academic Career

Teaching Experience

Participation rights, reciprocal duties, unequal citizens? Negotiating political citizenship for immigrants and emigrants in Latin America

The extension of voting rights to migrants is a democratic innovation commonly attributed to well-established democracies deeply committed to their principles and challenged by the realities of intense immigration flows. Indeed, the enfranchisement of resident migrants started more than thirty years ago in countries that fit those characteristics. In the present however, more than fifty polities in the world have discussed the extension of the right to vote to resident migrants at different levels, with different restrictions and degrees of conditionality. Among them are six Latin American countries.

This research project addresses the puzzle of why a region under so different conditions -recently established democracies or “democracies with adjectives” and rather migrant-sending- has joined such an innovative trend: How have Latin American politicians justified the introduction of voting rights for migrant non-citizens and confront the potential inequalities introduced -or exacerbated- by differentiated voting rights? What kind of migration and citizenship policies frame such innovative turns?

This project is motivated by the imperative to take the study of political citizenship seriously in Latin America. Political rights are certainly not more urgent than the social and economic rights for migrants, but in the larger political system they underline and legitimize a different treatment of persons: their inclusion or exclusion as decision-makers or as mere subjects. It is fundamental to study how the transformations of political citizenship are justified because it is through the vote and even more fundamentally, through the right to vote, that claims to other rights are backed. Furthermore, research on this topic is key for the study of the interdependence of inequalities not only within the region, but also for the study of linkages at the level of rights and transnational discourses on citizenship that transcend it. The outcome of this project will be a fuller understanding of how global migration relations contest social inequalities or reproduce them depending on the re-negotiations of key citizenship rights that local and national governments undertake in relation to bilateral, regional and global discourses.

Luicy Pedroza: "Policy Framing and Denizen Enfranchisement in Portugal: Why some migrant voters are more equal than others.", Citizenship Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, (forthcoming in 2013).

Luicy Pedroza: "But Don’t Mention Migration! Explaining the 'failed' denizen enfranchisement reforms in Germany", DISC Working Paper No. 15, Central European University Press, Budapest, 2011.

Luicy Pedroza: “Denizen enfranchisement, a piece in the puzzle of democratic but exclusionary citizenship in liberal societies”, in: Fiona Macdonald (ed.), Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship, Oxford, Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010 (forthcoming).

Luicy Pedroza: “Denizen Franchise or Naturalization? A Critical Appraisal of the Options for Migrant Political Integration in Liberal Democracies”, in: Catalina Botez and Kwoh-Jack Tan (Eds.): Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship. Oxford, United Kingdom: Inter-Disciplinary Press, forthcoming (provisional ISBN 978-1-904710-88-2).

Luicy Pedroza: “Larissa Adler-Lomnitz, Rodrigo Salazar Elena e Ilya Adler: Simbolismo y ritual en la política mexicana”, Foro Internacional, 46(4), 2006 (Book review).

Luicy Pedroza: Sobre el origen y desempeño de la tarea de educación cívica del Instituto Federal Electoral (1990-2003), El Colegio de México, México, 2006 (thesis).

Presentations

“The democratizing potential of extending the franchise to resident migrants”, Migration und Demokratie, 12 Internationale Konferenz, Luxemburg, June 14th-16th, 2012.

“Is the extension of voting rights to immigrants deepening democracy or rather deepening discrimination among migrants?”, Migration und Demokratie: Herbsttagung des AK Migrationspolitik in der Deutschen Vereinigung für Politikwissenschaft (DVPW), Freiburg. October 7th-9th, 2011.

“Don’t mention migration!”, Expanding and Restricting the Franchise: How do Liberal Democracies Determine who can Vote?,  EUI Workshop, European University Institute, Florence. May 27th, 2011.

Lecture on "Comparative politics of denizen enfranchisement reforms in democracies with large migrant populations", Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracy Lecture Series, Central European University , Budapest, April 6, 2011.

“Denizen Enfranchisement and the Rise of Flexible Citizenship”, Multilevel Citizenship Conference, York University, Toronto. October 29th, 2010.

“The Differentiated Enfranchisement of Non-Citizen Migrants in Portugal. Why are “all equal, but some more equal than others”?, Fifth ECPR Pan-European Conference, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Porto. June 23rd-26th, 2010.

“Naturalization vis-à-vis local voting rights as forms of political integration of denizens”, 6th CEU Conference in Social Sciences, Central European University, Budapest. April, 16th-18th, 2010.

“Denizen Enfranchisement in Portugal”, European Consortium of Political Science General Conference, Potsdam. October 10th-12th, 2009.

“Migrant Inroads into Citizenship. A Configurative Study of Denizen Enfranchisement across Democracies”. International Studies Association Convention, New York, February 15th-18th, 2009.

“The Creative Destruction of Citizenship: On How Democracies Debate the Enfranchisement of Settled Immigrants and Redefine Citizenship in Doing So”, 4th Global Conference Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship. Salzburg, 31st October-2nd November, 2008.

“Democratic Global Governance Through a Luhmannian Lens”, Arbeitstagung des AK Soziologie der Internationalen Beziehungen der DVPW. Berlin, November, 16th and 17th, 2007.