January 2019
Article
Economic Journal

Increasing the Electoral Participation of Immigrants: Experimental Evidence from France

By: Vincent Pons and Guillaume Liegey

Format:Print

Abstract

Improving the political participation of immigrants could advance their interests and foster their integration into receiving countries. In this study, 23,800 citizens were randomly assigned to receive visits from political activists during the lead-up to the 2010 French regional elections. Treatment increased the turnout of immigrants without having any statistically significant effect on non-immigrants, while turnout was roughly equal in the control group. A postelectoral survey reveals that immigrants initially had less political information, which could explain the heterogeneous impact. Although the effect decays over subsequent elections, our findings suggest that voter outreach efforts can successfully increase immigrants' political participation, even when they do not specifically target their communities and concerns.

Keywords

Electoral Behavior; Immigrants; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; France

Citation

Pons, Vincent, and Guillaume Liegey. "Increasing the Electoral Participation of Immigrants: Experimental Evidence from France." Economic Journal 129, no. 617 (January 2019): 481–508. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-094, February 2016.)