Overseas Voting Isn’t the Only Way Migration Affects Democracy

The new report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), The Global State of Democracy 2025: Democracy on the Move, highlights the impact of migration on democracy, focusing on the role that overseas citizens might play in maintaining democracy at home, and noting how overseas citizens can play a key role in safeguarding democracy.

While the report highlights the changes and challenges to overseas voting, it misses important ways in which migrants might affect democracy in their home country. In particular, the exit of citizens may change politics at home; overseas citizens participate in and remit nonelectoral forms of democracy promotion; and overseas citizens send back money in the form of remittances that may also affect politics.

First, we know that migrants are not a random subset of the population. Those who leave are often very different than those who stay—emigrants tend to be more educated, wealthier, and more motivated both in their career and to participate in their community than their compatriots. They also tend to be more progressive in their views about democracy and social issues; for example, research has shown that intra-European Union migrants from former-Eastern Bloc states are much more supportive of democracy and democratic values than those who stay home. Their exit has allowed illiberal parties in places like Poland and Hungary to gain more power. For example, scholars have found that for each percent of the voting population that migrates, support for far-right parties in Eastern Europe increases by 3.5–6.5 percent, suggesting that the exit of these voters affects the preferences of those who stay as well.

Migrants also are also generally unhappy with the government of their home state. Forced migrants are often fleeing a government that is unwilling or unable to protect them, and even economic migrants are leaving because the economy was not good enough to allow them to stay home. For example, many of those who sought to leave East Germany in the 1980s were noted by the government to be opposition supporters. More recently, scholars have found that less than 1 percent Venezuelan migrants in Colombia support the current dictator, Nicolás Maduro. If these individuals had stayed in their home country, they might have been supporters of the opposition and helped to push for democratic change or supported more pro-democracy parties.

While the exit of migrants might lead to greater support for autocrats, their time abroad in democracies can create more support for democratic values and parties. Democracy needs not only voting, but also active participation in civil society groups, unions, community meetings, and protests. Migrants who move from autocracies to democracies learn about these forms of civic participation. In many democracies, immigrants can participate in community meetings and protests. They can join civil society groups and unions, which teach them how to organize. Research shows that these activities help increase migrants’ support for democracy and that migrants remit those norms home through what scholars call social remittances. These norms, skills, and values help create a constituency for democracy at home.

Finally, migrants also send money home, which could affect politics. On the one hand, support for national governments is often based on pocketbook concerns. Remittances have been shown to increase support for incumbent governments as people feel wealthier because of these monetary transfers. On the other hand, we know that to participate in politics often takes money: individuals need free time to go to rallies or meet with politicians and politicians often seek out wealthy constituents for their support. Remittances can free the families who receive them to participate in politics and support opposition parties.

While the exit of a group of people that are wealthier, more educated, and more inclined to support democracy than the average citizen can give authoritarians a more favorable population, the norms, skills, value, and money that migrants both send back and return home with can provide a strong basis for democratic reform. Indeed, scholarship has shown that increased migration to democracies helps spread democratic values and can lead states to transition to democracy.

To ensure the global spread of democracy, we may need more, not less, migration.

Margaret Peters is a professor in the Department of Political Science at UCLA.

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