Interviewees didn't talk much about politics – nor did we interrogate them indiscreetly… they talked much more of their families, of their affections … It would be difficult to guess the electoral returns. Only a few people told us about their political vision – two opposite cases are worth mentioning. A woman told us she sees Correa, and what he's doing in Ecuador, as a danger: ‘They're going towards communism, and of course – I came to work here to get a better future, I don't want to share it with the rest, just equalising everything…’. In contrast, a boy … replied to us: ‘[The situation in Ecuador] did improve. You see, my father lives in the countryside; no government had ever paid attention to him, whereas now they do.’ Most people seemed to attach importance to the vote, but several of them told us they were definitely voting only … so as not to pay a fine when they are back in Ecuador.
Interviewers' field notes, Barcelona, 28 September 2008Introduction
‘Auguri in your research’, Alejandro wrote to one of us from New York, after being asked to join our research project on the transnational attitudes and practices of Ecuadorean emigrant voters in September 2008. But, he insisted, there was no space or sense of politics among Ecuadorean migrants. Rather, ‘the only way you can follow their transnationalism is when the National Soccer Team plays a match. Ecuadoreans do not care about politics. I can tell it for sure. Otherwise, I and thousands of Ecuadoreans would not be in the USA, Spain or Italy.’ Despite feeling ‘frustrated with the politicians of the country’, however, Alejandro himself intended to vote (in contrast to his father and grandfather, who had lived in New York for longer). As a young Ecuadorean social researcher, well settled in the city, he seemed to regard this as a civic duty.
A few months later some unusual posters could be seen in the Madrid metro. Alongside government posters reading ‘Helping you plan for voluntary return’, addressed to unemployed migrants (with Ecuadoreans a major target), were posters of Rafael Correa, who, standing for presidential re-election in Ecuador, was appealing to emigrants to support his ‘citizen revolution’ from afar. Next to huge images of Correa, the posters bore a photograph of the presidential party's leading congressional candidate, Dora Aguirre: a residential care-giver who, soon after winning a congressional seat, claimed she was returning to Ecuador in order to ‘act as a link between migrants and the government’. A political activist even before leaving her country, she was also the leader of a well-known immigrant association within which her nomination had fuelled a vibrant debate, suggesting widespread suspicion of top-down co-optation by la política. Footnote 1
The quotes above exemplify migrants' perceptions and expectations towards a relatively new and understudied phenomenon: the range of discourses and policies whereby their countries of origin ‘court’ them and appeal to their loyalty as national citizens, even while abroad.Footnote 2 Their exercise of external voting rights is, as we will argue, one of the most significant and visible indicators of these emerging diaspora-building processes.Footnote 3
Whether or not Alejandro's contention of Ecuadorean migrants' detachment from politics holds true, and what support Aguirre may give (and receive from) her ‘migrant brothers’, are among the issues to be explored in this article through an original analysis of the Ecuadorean migrant vote in 2008. Specifically, our research questions aim to shed light on the following concerns: what does external voting say of the sentiments and attitudes that voters cultivate toward their homeland, as a state and as a nation? What does their electoral involvement suggest about their patterns of civic and political participation (overseas, and prior to emigration)? And what insights can be drawn from this ephemeral, if symbolically unique transnational practice, as to the broader map of voters' home ties, attachments and relationships?
In order to provide exploratory answers to these questions, we build on the results of a survey implemented on the referendum day for the approval of the new Ecuadorean Constitution in September 2008. The survey took place simultaneously in nine cities in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Chile. In this article, after arguing for the need to understand expatriate voting in the broader framework of external citizenship policies, we take stock of the relevant political developments in Ecuador. We then proceed to analyse the evidence provided by the 572 questionnaires. After describing the demographics of those interviewed, we analyse their forms of social and political participation, their transnational practices and their self-identifications and attitudes towards their homeland. As a conclusion, we critically discuss the prospects for Ecuadorean voters to cultivate cross-border interconnections and for their home country to expand, in turn, its domestic (and democratic) institutional sphere. Overall, our analysis aims to highlight the social and cultural bases, along with the strictly political ones, of the interdependence between emigration states and their expatriates. Our results, however, need to be framed in a heuristic perspective as they build on a specific and statistically non-representative case study.
External voting and the state-led construction of a ‘Fifth Region’ in Ecuador
The right of expatriates to be active members of their homeland's polity by participating in national elections from abroad has been increasingly recognised on an almost worldwide scale.Footnote 4 As far as academic studies are concerned, external voting has gained salience at a theoretical and normative level. This is unsurprising in light of the challenges it raises for the traditional understandings of equality, loyalty and belonging in the political sphere.Footnote 5 Empirically speaking, however, it is still peripheral in the agenda of migration studies.Footnote 6
The available evidence suggests that the symbolic relevance of expatriate voting is often higher than its real political import.Footnote 7 While this holds for the Ecuadorean case also, there is no reason to reduce the significance of external voting to the impact of overseas ballots in strictly electoral terms. As we will argue in this article, emigrants' transnational electoral participation is an extraordinary kaleidoscope on their attitudes, emotions and practices towards their homeland. Ecuador provides a good case study for appreciating the role of external voting in both respects: with regard to state-led ‘reaching out’ strategies, and to emigrants' homeward allegiances and attachments.
The emergence of emigrants as relevant political actors in Ecuador has been a novelty introduced by the Correa government, against the predominantly neutral or indifferent attitude of past administrations. Along with a range of new dedicated policy provisions, the reframing of expatriates as a ‘Fifth Region’ – a collective meta-geographical entity, supposedly on an equal footing with the four territorial regions of the country – has been a key marker of the public discourse of President Rafael Correa, in office since 2007.Footnote 8 This stance has ushered in a new understanding of the unprecedented wave of emigration from the country in the late 1990s: less as an active, if uncoordinated strategy aimed at achieving better conditions overseas, than as a sort of ‘massive expulsion’ for which past (mis)governments should be blamed.Footnote 9 Against this background, the Ecuadorean state itself would have an obligation to enable migrants to exercise their citizenship rights from afar, the tacit assumption being that their belonging and loyalty to the Ecuadorean nation is still intact in the meantime. While several strategic interests – related principally to incentivising remittances – underlie this discursive agenda across a range of countries of emigration, issues such as national pride and the reappraisal of past government (mis)deeds are also important in the Ecuadorean case.Footnote 10 In fact, the Fifth Region discourse builds on a far older symbolic repertoire underlying the relations between Latin American countries and their ‘diasporas’.Footnote 11 Nevertheless, external voting has provided in Ecuador and elsewhere a privileged venue in which to display this relationship – and, as we will show, a promising site for exploring emigrants' reactions to the homeland discourses towards them, as well as to the attendant opportunities for their political participation.
External voting and emigrant policy-building in Ecuador: potential and limitations
Although our research involved only the 2008 constitutional referendum, a broader review of Ecuadoreans' electoral participation from abroad is helpful for understanding their potential connectedness to domestic political life. Over a period of less than three years, Ecuadorean emigrants participated in absentee ballots six times: the 2006 presidential elections (first ballot and run-off); the 2007 elections for representatives in the new Constitutional Assembly; the referendum in 2008; the 2009 presidential and congressional elections; and then polls to appoint Ecuadorean members of the Andean Parliament (Parlamento Andino). This growing scope for emigrant involvement is a manifestation of the accelerated political change that has marked Ecuador in the last few years, under a ‘permanent campaign’ climate.Footnote 12 The expatriates' franchise, formally acknowledged by the 1998 Constitution (also the result of pressures from emigrant organisations in the United States), was first exercised eight years later. Its remit was then expanded under the new 2008 Constitution.
In quantitative terms, membership of the electoral register of Ecuadorean expatriates has gradually increased from about 143,000 registered voters in 2006 to some 185,000 in 2008. The total number of potential electors abroad could be estimated, however, at a minimum of 1.5 million.Footnote 13 The increase in registered voters has arguably been due less to a strengthened emigrant concern with current affairs at home than to state-led ‘outreach’ initiatives. Indeed, reaching out to the emigrant vote has required significant changes in the state's institutional structure. Most consulates have attempted to promote electoral registration, including in cities with no permanent consular presence. Overall, procedures for voter enrolment (empadronamiento) have taken place worldwide in nearly 80 cities. Appreciable efforts have also been made by the ministry dedicated to migrant affairs, the Secretaría Nacional del Migrante (National Secretariat for Migrants, SENAMI), and by the main migrant associations overseas.Footnote 14
Nonetheless, the increase in consular registration has not been matched with a consistently upward trend in turnout.Footnote 15 Consequently, while about 15 per cent of all people born in Ecuador live outside the country, sending home remittances that comprise 5.4 per cent of Ecuadorean GDP, emigrant votes have never amounted to more than 1.5 per cent of all the votes cast.Footnote 16 Put differently, despite the efforts of the Ecuadorean state to enlarge the scope for expatriate participation, actual voters have been a small share of those registered in the consular lists, and a tiny fraction of the potential constituency overseas.Footnote 17 One could argue that, if emigrant access to the electoral register were really facilitated (and if more pervasive campaigning were developed), the number of registered and voting expatriates would likely increase. Nevertheless, we find it important to note that the process has been driven by the homeland state's political agenda, much more than by migrants' claims and active involvement. The latter have grown, so far, at an understandably slower and uneven pace.Footnote 18
We will not enter here into the details of emigrant voters' distribution by country of residence.Footnote 19 We should note, however, that the distribution of Ecuadoreans overseas is far from homogeneous.Footnote 20 Spain, the United States and Italy account for approximately 85 per cent of emigrants and for an even higher share (88.5 per cent) of those registered as voters overseas. Significantly, voter turnout in the countries of the ‘new’ Ecuadorean migration that originated in the late 1990s, such as Spain and Italy, has been much higher than in the United States, where Ecuadorean immigration had started some 30 years earlier.Footnote 21 The exercise of voter rights has induced political competition, although in practice nearly all the seats have been won by the political party of Rafael Correa. Although the party (which self-defines as a movement) celebrated primary elections in Ecuador, this was not the case abroad, where candidates were selected in a top-down process. Transnational policy-building has thus emerged, but it is one for which the command levers are firmly held in Ecuador. The selection of emigrant political candidates – which has been a source of ambivalence and tensions for migrant associations – still seems inadequate in terms of representation, agenda-setting, communication and accountability to emigrant voters.Footnote 22
Studying External Voting and its Social Milieus: The Research in Action
On 28 September 2008, Ecuadorean expatriates in 42 countries were called to participate in a constitutional referendum on an equal footing with the rest of their co-nationals – provided they had earlier registered in consular lists, travelling then to the cities which hosted the ballots (that is, those with larger Ecuadorean overseas ‘colonies’). The new Constitution bill had just been passed by a Constitutional Assembly convened in Montecristi (coastal Ecuador) and including, for the first time, a number of emigrant-elected representatives.Footnote 23 Ecuadorean external voting resulted in broad support for the new Constitution: the mean percentage of emigrants approving the bill was 60.6 per cent, or slightly less than the level of support in their homeland (63.9 per cent).Footnote 24
On the day, as some 46,100 Ecuadoreans cast their votes all over the world, 24 researchers attempted to administer an exploratory questionnaire to them, just as they were leaving the polling stations, in Europe (Italy, Spain and Britain) and America (the United States, Mexico, Chile and Argentina).Footnote 25 Significant differences existed, of course, between the national contexts of immigrant settlement and the average profile of the Ecuadorean population in each location.Footnote 26 Nonetheless, their simultaneous participation in overseas ballots provided common ground for us to explore their emigration patterns along with their transnational ties and, to an extent, their incorporation into society overseas. In total, 572 individual questionnaires were conducted and then analysed through SPSS, with the support of the interviewers' fieldwork accounts.Footnote 27 We also built, methodologically speaking, on our past research on the topic.Footnote 28
Any quantitative analysis is prone to the risk of decontextualising the knowledge it generates from the social relationships, and the physical and social setting, underlying (and obviously shaping) the collection of the data. In our case this risk encompassed two obvious dimensions. First, the fieldwork resulted in a myriad of random micro-encounters with a very diverse group of Ecuadoreans, all of whom shared the conditions of living and voting abroad. Hence, our brief interviews could never do justice to the complexity of their life experiences. Second, the electoral venues involved much more than an occasion to vote – they were also a peculiar setting for migrants to negotiate and expand their social capital, as well as for claiming public recognition.Footnote 29 Put differently, the elections resulted in an opportunity for migrants to gather in a public space, to make (or recover) acquaintances, and to tap an improvised but rich ‘ethnic market’, including vendors of food, representatives of remittance, travel or housing agencies and the like. The social and cultural milieu surrounding Ecuadorean voters, within a generally festive atmosphere, provided a striking commonality across countries of settlement such as Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. To that extent, as we will argue, the enactment of overseas elections can be understood as a temporary reproduction of an Ecuadorean ‘transnational village’, in which different ways of understanding one's Ecuadoreanness are displayed and negotiated.Footnote 30 Judging from a range of micro-indicators – for example, voters' ways of dressing and talking, their patterns of consumption and their homeland-related attitudes – at stake were different conceptions and representations of what it means to be Ecuadoreans far from Ecuador.
In technical terms, the sample from our fieldwork is a convenient, exploratory one. It cannot be assumed to be fully representative of all emigrant voters – what is more, the latter are far from representative of all Ecuadoreans abroad. Rather, the survey closely resembles an exit poll, with all of the attendant challenges and limitations.Footnote 31 Every interviewer attempted to select potential respondents on a random basis (in spite of the absence of any control list), by excluding more than one member of the same household and by contacting interviewees at regular intervals. The rejection rates were relatively low (between 20 and 25 per cent), especially in light of the highly fluid and unstructured context, as well as the chaotic environments surrounding the electoral stations. Judging from the fieldwork reports of the research teams, rejections were not significantly biased in any direction. Defensiveness, lack of concern or simple haste were the more frequent reactions of non-respondents.Footnote 32 As a result of these constraints, our survey has ultimately selected a range of respondents that, while non-representative of all co-nationals abroad, can be assumed to have a stronger transnational orientation than all Ecuadoreans generally.
In addition to the study of electoral participation, the questionnaire allowed us to revisit some core theoretical claims of the transnational perspective. The questionnaire was based on three complementary levels of analysis: a descriptive one, involving respondents' demographics, as well as their reported patterns of structural integration and transnational participation; a normative one, related to the values and ideals informing emigrant self-representations and, more specifically, the grounds for their electoral participation; and a cognitive one, concerning people's perceptions and expectations towards their kin, the receiving societies and, above all, their homeland.Footnote 33
Voters' Demographics and their Reasons for Electoral Participation
It is useful to provide a brief profile of respondents to our survey. First, there is a gender balance for all countries in which the questionnaire was applied, with the significant exception of the United States. Second, emigrant voters from Ecuador are, on average, younger than the native populations. Their mean age is about 40 everywhere, apart from the United States, where the average age is closer to 50. This generational difference may reflect the earlier settlement of Ecuadoreans in the United States compared with Europe.Footnote 34 Ecuadorean voters in other Latin American countries have a much shorter length of stay. This is no surprise, since this smaller emigration flow has increased only recently after the visa introduction (2003) that reduced EU-directed migration from Ecuador. Importantly, the average length of stay of the voters we interviewed – at about eight years – is relatively low.
Table 1. Key Demographic Characteristics of Respondents (Valid Cases: from 516 to 572)
Notes: Last column displays significant differences in relevant variables. Only one response allowed.
* Mean: 39.4 years old.
** Mean: 8.1 years abroad.
Third, our sample reveals an above-average level of education when compared with estimated education attainment of migrants and the Ecuadorean population overall.Footnote 35 One in four respondents held a university degree, which suggests a strong (if well-known) correlation between emigrants' education and their concern with homeland politics.Footnote 36 To the extent that education may approximate human capital, the gap between the voters' human capital and their patterns of employment overseas is striking. Analysis of voters' employment confirms the centrality of the construction sector – which suffered an especially severe impact during the 2008–9 recession – and of personal services, whether in relation to in-house or institutional care settings.Footnote 37 Significant differences emerge in the weight of these occupational sectors between the United States and Europe, as well as between men and women.
Personal Understandings of the External Vote
Data on voter patterns of electoral participation, along with the meanings and expectations underlying it, are provided by Table 2. It is worth highlighting that about 70 per cent of respondents reported having voted from abroad at least once in the past. Although external voting was introduced just two years before our survey, only a relatively small fraction of respondents perceived it as a new and unprecedented practice. To this extent, Ecuadorean migrants' electoral participation can be regarded as an established phenomenon.
Table 2. Key Attributes of Respondents' Electoral Involvement (Valid Cases: 501 to 572)
Notes: Last column displays significant differences in relevant variables. Only one response allowed.
As to the reported motivations of voting choices, two main considerations emerge from the data. First is a conviction about the relevance of the vote, expressed by 38.8 per cent respondents, as a part of a perception of the external vote as a fundamental citizen right, whatever the electoral stake (33.9 per cent).Footnote 38 Second, less emphasis is put in explicit terms on migrant voting as an obligation (as voting is compulsory in Ecuador – hence migrants' fear of being forced to pay a fine once back home) or as the ultimate sign of patriotism and national belonging (although the salience of symbols of ‘home’ was conspicuous to every interviewer). Overall, broadly patriotic, civic or nostalgic motivations seem to matter more as underlying reasons for voting than a specific interest in the constitutional referendum or a strong identification with the new presidential agenda.
Whatever their motivations, how did voters acquire information about the elections? The picture that emerges from the data is highly differentiated and fragmented. Interestingly, interviewees rely both on their personal contacts and on more public or institutionalised sources; on interlocutors both in Ecuador itself and, to a greater extent, in the country of settlement; and on information both received through personal interaction and mediated by virtual (or cross-border) communication. Four different communication channels turn out to be relevant: consulates overseas (but not emigrants' representatives in the Constitutional Assembly); relatives or acquaintances in the context of immigration; family members left behind; and traditional media channels (TV and radio). The incidence of TV and radio use is higher than host population averages in the United States and Spain, where a massive presence of Ecuadorean (and broadly Latino) migrants has allowed for an ethnic economy to develop in the field of communication. Less prominent is the use, apparently a gendered one, of the internet.Footnote 39
A mixed picture emerges of voters' perceptions of political changes in Ecuador. As Table 2 shows, respondents are roughly divided as to positive (‘improved’) and negative opinions (‘same’ or ‘worse’) about political developments at ‘home’. Remarkably, one interviewee out of four shared a more problematic view that undermines the rationale of the question itself: living far away from home makes it difficult to grasp Ecuadorean domestic politics, let alone assess them. The presence of this minority, even within a self-selected population of ‘homeward-oriented’ subjects, calls for a more nuanced reading of migrants’ interconnectedness with their homeland and its political institutions than a superficial understanding of transnationalism would have it. To be sure, this intriguing combination of participation and detachment, both in cognitive and emotional terms, has to do with the deeply rooted Ecuadorean disenchantment for la política. This is related, in turn, to the long-term instability of the political institutions in the country.Footnote 40 Altogether, while most voters seem to perceive absentee ballots as a tool for impinging on Ecuadorean politics – rather than considering this ‘only’ as a citizen right – a relevant minority displays a more critical or disenchanted stance.
The firmly ‘nation-centred’ orientation of Ecuadorean voters should also be noted. For most interviewees, participating in presidential elections matters much more than voting for candidates in ‘home’ municipalities (which, in any event, is not provided by the current Ecuadorean regulation of the external vote). This finding is consistent with the predominant emphasis on national symbols and identifications rather than on local or ethnicity-based one that we were able to observe across the electoral settings. Significantly, overseas elections themselves could be understood as an institutionalised display of homeland attachment – that is, a state-driven ritual whereby Ecuadorean citizens are enabled to exercise, from afar, ‘the evocative language and [the] powerful iconography of patriotism’.Footnote 41
From Electoral to Civic Participation
Migrants' political participation, however, should not necessarily be framed only in strictly electoral terms, even if it is explored in the context of an electoral event.Footnote 42 Much empirical literature has recently argued for a close connection between migrants' political engagement and their involvement in civic organisations – the latter often being conducive to other forms of participation in the public sphere.Footnote 43 With a view to understanding the civic background of migrants' external voting, then, we explored their membership of a range of civic associations, whether overseas or related to their lives in Ecuador. We also approached their involvement in collective initiatives related to politics, unionism, migrants' sociability or solidarity with those ‘left behind’ (Table 3).
Table 3. Characteristics of Respondents' Forms of Civic Participation (Valid Cases: from 561 to 572)
Notes: Last column displays significant differences in relevant variables. Only one response allowed.
* Those belonging to one association at least (N=152) report the following ethnic patterns of membership: associations including only Ecuadorians, 32.9 per cent; associations including both Ecuadorians and citizens of the country of settlement, 28.3 per cent; associations including Latino and other immigrants, 26.3 per cent; associations including mostly native citizens, 12.5 per cent.
At first sight, Ecuadorean voters' membership in civil society associations is a relatively limited phenomenon. As we reached this point in the interviews, the most common reaction of our respondents was simply a leap into the next section, whether with a hand gesture suggesting a lack of concern or with a sigh – as if associations were an unaffordable luxury in light of their daily concerns with livelihood. No associational form, among those proposed to interviewees, enjoys participation rates higher than 6–7 per cent: the list includes trade unions, religious organisations, leisure associations and political groups.Footnote 44 The exception is membership associations involved with migrancy, for which the participation rate is one out of four voters. Some of these associations, including in relation to churches or sport clubs, may simply mean a weekly informal gathering. As to the associational composition, no predominant ethnic pattern emerges – although membership of immigrant-only associations far exceeds that of associations involving native citizens (see note below Table 3).Footnote 45
Once these figures are compared with those concerning Ecuador, two more remarks can be made. First, the average rate of involvement in associations overseas is systematically lower than that observed for the same subjects before they left Ecuador (with the exception of trade unions). To that extent, harder life conditions in immigration seem to hinder civic participation, especially in the early migration stages or under critical economic circumstances, such as the current ones on a worldwide scale. In this context, however, it is especially striking that our data show an under-representation of associational memberships in the Spanish sub-sample (including about 200 interviewees in Madrid and Barcelona). While the structure of opportunity in that country may be one explanation, respondents in Spain report significantly lower rates of civic participation even considering their past lives in Ecuador.
Second, however, once the broader patterns of participation of Ecuadorean citizens are taken into account, a different picture comes into view. Despite a public discourse and drive from the president toward a sort of ‘politicisation of everyday life’, as evident by the holding of seven elections (six open to absentee ballots) in two and a half years, surveys in Ecuador point to very low levels of concern or involvement with politics. According to recent estimates, membership of political parties in Ecuador is at 7.7 per cent, of trade unions at 6.7 per cent and of neighbourhood committees at 6.7 per cent.Footnote 46 To put it another way, emigrant voters' rates of civic participation are, on average, no lower than those of their non-migrant co-nationals in Ecuador, and higher than those of Ecuadorean migrants in general.
Homeland-Addressed Relationships and Practices
It was our contention in designing the survey that voters' political and civic transnationalism was to be appreciated in its interfaces with other forms and channels of cross-border participation (Table 4). We will now outline some key points in this respect, to be then theoretically revisited in light of the rest of our analysis at the end of this article.
Table 4. Characteristics of Respondents' Transnational Relationships and Practices in Other Life Realms (Valid Cases: from 554 to 572)
Notes: Last column displays significant differences in relevant variables. Multiple responses allowed for first question, only one response allowed for all other questions.
An obvious but significant fact lies in the transnational scale of most Ecuadorean voters' family lives.Footnote 47 This is manifest in the high reported incidence of children and, to a lesser extent, spouses left behind.Footnote 48 The persistence of family-based transnational relationships may account for the exclusive identification with Ecuador as one's home, which applies to one respondent out of two. This tends however to decrease the more time is spent overseas, ranging from 57.5 per cent for the newest immigrants (four years or less) to 35.1 per cent for those with more than a decade abroad. Remarkably, a primary identification of home with the country of settlement has, instead, a systematically low score, irrespective of the time span spent there. It is rather the relative weight of the ‘Both’ option which tends to increase in correlation with the length of stay away from Ecuador. Overall, the salience of this twofold, simultaneous identification – which is reported by one respondent out of three – indicates a surprising degree of attachment to the society of reception, for such a recent immigrant flow.
Whatever the voters' personal constructions of home, remittance to relatives is by far the most widespread transnational social practice. One interviewee out of two reports sending money to Ecuador on a monthly basis, while only a small number of respondents (about 15 per cent) do not remit at all. If analysed in light of the length of stay abroad, the evolution of remittances seems to follow a peculiar curve, somewhat reflecting migrants' typical life cycle overseas: a relatively low rate among the newly arrived (0–4 years abroad, with monthly remittance rates of 41.4 per cent), then rising in the 5–10 years abroad group (54.7 per cent on average), and dropping for those with over ten years abroad (24.7 per cent on average). When collective remittances are analysed – that is, money sent for philanthropic or public utility initiatives in the community of origin – the rates are lower.Footnote 49 Collective remittances occur on an occasional basis among about 15 per cent of interviewees, with lower rates in the case of Spain. Significantly, no emigrant donations at all have been reported in favour of Ecuadorean political parties or movements. This makes the Ecuadorean case distinct from others reported in Latin America where emigrants' contribution has apparently been documented.Footnote 50
A further indicator of the Ecuadorean voters' strong attachment to their homeland, and of their homeward-bound future life projects, has to do with their holding of property in Ecuador. The expectation of buying a house of their own has been satisfied, or is being met, by almost half of those who did not own a house before leaving. The figure is slightly lower for those who would like to buy a house but have been unable to do so thus far. Whether accomplished or not, the project of a new ‘migrant house’ back home testifies once again to a remarkable point: generally speaking, the biographical centrality of the homeland is here to stay, whatever one's intended future life course.
Taking Stock of One's Emigrant Life: Self-Identification, Sociability and Constructions of Ecuador
In order to investigate the voters' self-understandings of their life courses abroad, along lines of increasing reflexivity, we have elicited views on issues of national identification, the perceived success of the migrant experience, the distribution and composition of friendships, and assistance networks (see Table 5).
Table 5. Respondents' Sense of Belonging, and Representations of their Migrant Experience and of their Helping and Sociability Networks (Valid Cases: from 508 to 555)
Notes: Last column displays significant differences in relevant variables. Multiple responses allowed for ‘In case of need’ question, only one response allowed for all other questions.
In looking at responses, the first point to stand out is people's self-framing as Ecuadoreans. Four out of five respondents depicted themselves as Ecuadoreans only, as opposed to accepting identification, however partial, with any other national category and regardless of length of stay overseas. Nevertheless, while feeling Ecuadorean is a predominant identity marker, the data indicate that life experience abroad is much more complicated. Voters' answers suggest that only one respondent out of three feels altogether satisfied about their immigration experience. A satisfied attitude is positively associated, first, with respondents' education – on average, the most educated have a rate twice that of the least educated – and second, with being resident in Latin America, where respondents were relatively more satisfied than if resident elsewhere. Geopolitical proximity to the homeland, and perhaps a higher share of skilled migrants in the Latin America-related emigrant flow (compared with different areas of destination), may account for this difference.Footnote 51
An attempt was also made to map the potential sources of help on which emigrant voters could rely, in their own perceptions, under critical circumstances. Apart from the central position attributed to family members, two issues deserve further comment. First, despite the emotional attachment to Ecuador, the potential contribution of co-nationals abroad is perceived as greater, in practical terms, than that of the Ecuadoreans left behind. Indeed, a frequent (and bitterly ironic) remark of respondents was that they were ‘naturally’ expected to be the ones to help the rest. A reversal of roles in migrant/non-migrant relationships would make little sense, despite the overexposure to vulnerability in a number of countries resulting from the current recession circumstances.Footnote 52
Second, the states where respondents are settled are perceived as relatively more reliable, at least in case of severe necessity, than Ecuador itself. Whether this is a marker of integration overseas or of persisting scepticism about the state at ‘home’, a key fact remains that only a minority of interviewees (ranging between 20 and 30 per cent) expect to encounter any form of support outside of the family. A picture of perceived isolation and limited reciprocity, therefore, applies to most respondents regardless of their social characteristics or country of residence. Such a fragmented relational background raises further questions about the predominant location and ethnic composition of friendship networks (if any). As Table 5 shows, a sort of ‘friendship endogamy’ – that is, a privileged reference to co-nationals only – holds for over 40 per cent of interviewees. Friendship relationships prior to emigration (25.8 per cent), however, seem to be perceived as sounder, or more authentic, than those developed between co-nationals abroad (16.8 per cent). One respondent out of three puts the emphasis on friends – no matter their backgrounds – while 15 per cent of respondents report a more sceptical and disillusioned view in this respect.
A significant influence on the perceived distribution of non-family ‘significant others’ is exerted, once again, by the length of time spent overseas. Remarkably, however, this variable is not associated to any greater emphasis on friendship ties with the native populations. Reliance on the latter as ‘best friends’ is reported very infrequently (7.3 per cent). Nor is length of stay associated to a lesser emphasis on friendship ties with co-nationals; rather, it seems that as an Ecuadorean gets settled abroad, the perceived salience of the ethnic boundary tends to blur, whatever one's persisting self-representation along ethnic or national lines.Footnote 53 Greater salience is hence attributed to friends, irrespective of their national background.
Finally, in terms of ‘taking stock’, we turn to Ecuadorean engagement with the idea of homeland. The literature suggests that Ecuadoreans express a pervasive nostalgia for their homeland, although the concept of ‘homesickness’ would benefit from some greater deconstruction.Footnote 54 A fuller understanding of the issue would require, in principle, more attention to migrants' emotional attachments – and to the ways in which they express them – than a questionnaire can allow. Even so, voters' attitudes are quite telling. As Table 6 highlights, nostalgia is a matter of attachment to family members left behind, a feeling more deeply held than to any other aspect of earlier life in Ecuador. Both an emphasis on homesickness and on its predominant connection to family life back home are documented across our sample, whatever the interaction between ‘agency’ (that is, migrants' characteristics and initiative) and ‘structure’ (the external context they cope with).
Table 6. Respondents' Representations and Expectations of their Homeland (Valid Cases: from 538 to 558)
Notes: Last column displays significant differences in relevant variables. Only one response allowed.
Given these premises, keeping in contact with the homeland is generally recognised as an inherent moral duty for migrants, whatever the distance from Ecuador in space and time. When it comes to the potential channels mediating this contact, however, a less univocal picture emerges. Our sample is equally divided between subjects who are predominantly informed through interpersonal networks, and those who rely more on information and communications technology (ICT) and mass media (although the two options are obviously not at odds with each other). Among the former, relevant information on Ecuador is mostly circulated by relatives left behind (40.3 per cent). Of the latter, access to relevant information via ICT and mass media is dependent on migrants' education and on the ethnic media supply.
The future prospects for Ecuador itself, however uncertain, are regarded by most respondents as the watershed for their own future life projects. In an apparent contradiction, their disillusionment towards homeland politics coexists with an abstract if pervasive wish to return. Of relevance here is the concept of ambivalence as stressed by Sayad.Footnote 55 Migrants' expectations for a ‘near’ return home, as plenty of case studies show, typically exceed the actual rates of return migration.Footnote 56 Even so, it is striking to find that the share of respondents expecting to be back for good within five years is even higher than that of those who plan to stay overseas. In either case no significant association exists with the country of settlement, the length of stay abroad or the age of the interviewees. Just slightly less relevant, nevertheless, is the perceived impossibility of foreseeing one's future life trajectory, even within a relatively short period. This is a particularly eloquent indicator of uncertainty, given the ‘emotional tug’ of the homeland for most interviewees.
External Voting as a Critical Window on Migrant Transnationalism
Within the recent literature on political transnationalism, diaspora-building and state-led transnationalism, external voting has been relatively under-researched as a distinctive topic.Footnote 57 After all, despite its strong symbolic power, electoral participation from afar is not the only or even necessarily the main channel through which expatriates can impact on the homeland polity and emigration states can in turn cultivate strong connections with them.Footnote 58 Ironically, external voting may be less important for its direct political outcomes than for the variety of cross-border ties, from above and below, that it brings together. Carrying out empirical research on the topic has provided an opportunity to delve into the reach and distribution of voters' homeward connections. What, then, does voter transnationalism actually amount to, judged from the voters' reported social practices and attitudes?
Importantly, the answer to this question need not be reduced to the simple centrality of the voters' homeland as a source of belonging, identification and future life projects. Our results, indeed, suggest caution about the intensity, extensity and significance of external voters' transnational relationships. As soon as one delves into their constructions of Ecuador as a distant patria, a mixed and diverse range of representations, expectations and ties emerges – possibly questioning the appropriateness of transnationalism as a single conceptual category.Footnote 59 The first point, then, is to underscore that the bulk of voters' cross-border ties, interests and relationships do not have a lot to do with Ecuador per se. Instead, connections are constrained to a limited set of significant others left behind, whose boundaries are typically negotiated along kinship lines. It is often family that serves as the primary mediator of flows of information, emotional attachments and aspirations that connect Ecuadorean voters with their homeland. Second, despite their retention of home-addressed attitudes and feelings, their ‘actually existing’ social practices – that is, the transnational ties they do enact with some frequency and intensity – are much more limited, fragmented and costly (remittances, as a moral duty embedded in transnational familial relationships, being a case in point). Once again, moreover, such ties are mostly family-bound. Third, while the homeland may maintain a strong attractive power as an elicitor of nostalgia and belonging, it is also there as a reminder of past failures, of pervasive corruption, of very dubious life prospects – all perceptions that emerge from the voters' responses.
None of these remarks, admittedly, is really new, at least for the most critical and reflexive analyses of mainstream transnationalism.Footnote 60 What they do suggest about the 2008 Ecuadorean external vote is, however, quite telling: even among the self-selected minority of real voters, interest in Ecuadorean politics is less salient than their willingness to express a sentimental national identification. Despite the unprecedented efforts of their homeland government to build a vigorous external constituency, expatriates' reactions seem diverse, emotionally mixed and irreducible to (hence, of limited relevance for) the realm of party politics. Assuming political transnationalism as a phenomenon in itself, to be neatly distinguished from a variety of other cross-border ties (often more significant for those involved), thus turns out to be an elusive, possibly illusory effort. At a grassroots, everyday-life level, transnational ties prove to be multifaceted or fragmented, and less sustained than is often depicted in the most celebratory versions of the transnational narrative.
The very label ‘political’, when it comes to external voting, should not be assumed as coextensive with the party politics field. Reclaiming and reproducing the (territorially based) nation, rather than cultivating (or even enlarging) the diaspora as a cohesive political constituency, is likely to be the real core of external voting, as our transnational survey suggests. While the literature on the topic has been generally driven by the categories of external citizenship and diaspora-building, a focus on the contentious reproduction of a nation, under circumstances of massive emigration, may provide a promising way ahead for research on state-led transnationalism, in the political sphere and beyond.
Conclusion
One might argue that the circumstances underlying our fieldwork – we interviewed participants in a referendum rather than in ordinary elections – and our exploratory approach undermine our findings, yet the significance of the massive approval of the 2008 Constitution can hardly be questioned.Footnote 61 Moreover, the simultaneity of our survey across various national settings highlighted significant differences as to the public salience of Ecuadorean politics-related symbols and slogans. Ecuadorean party political issues, and referendum-related claims, had high visibility in Madrid and Barcelona – Spain being the main destination of recent emigration from Ecuador – and were much less apparent in Italy and elsewhere.Footnote 62 To that extent, the electoral settings proved significant in themselves, even apart from the original data collected in each of them.
Our study focused on a self-selected minority of Ecuadoreans, whose home-oriented attitudes and practices have provided a rich terrain for empirical analysis. Even for this minority, patriotism, national identification and the reassertion of national belonging – resulting in a collective celebration of Ecuadoreanness, whatever the ways to express and practice it – matter more than strictly politics-related motivations.Footnote 63 External elections can be appreciated, therefore, as a key site to publicly (re)assert ‘the nation’, even while living far away from its geographical boundaries.Footnote 64 Importantly, the national symbols of Ecuador – such as the national flag and its colours – were much more widespread and visible than any party politics-related symbols across the electoral venues where the fieldwork was undertaken.
The three research questions outlined at the beginning of this article could be answered as follows, allowing the caveat of a non-representative case study. First, electoral participation from abroad displays, even within the minority of real voters, a deeply ambivalent attitude towards the homeland, whereby nostalgia and patriotic identification go hand in hand with suspicion and disenchantment about Ecuadorean politics and the future prospects of the country. Second, judging from our data, Ecuadorean emigrant voters can be appreciated as a minority with significantly higher civic commitment than their non-migrant, and non-voter, counterparts. Third, the ‘map’ of voters' transnational ties and relationships turns out to be diverse and stratified. These amount to a variety of cross-border tracks – rather than fully-fledged fields – which share two basic commonalities.Footnote 65 There is a prevalence of home-oriented affective, emotional and moral projections, over empirically detectable social practices; and a richer texture of cross-border ties within the family life domain as opposed to generally looser and more intermittent ties with the public sphere of the home society.
Our fieldwork results suggest that fragmentation and ambivalence are the terms best suited to describe voters' emerging transnational profile, the reach of their cross-border ties, the orientation of their future life projects and their construction of Ecuador as a real place rather than a source of nostalgia or expressive identification. In a ‘transnational track’ optic, then, their homeland attachment can be helpfully deconstructed at a variety of levels, from intimate kinship ties to broader and generally more superficial forms of affiliation and identification. Such levels, which correspond to more or less significant references and interlocutors for migrants' transnational practices, need not overlap – they may even conflict – with each other. They are simultaneously (if ephemerally) elicited, however, by events with a strong evocative power such as national elections from abroad.
Even so, neither the weak influence of emigrants' votes on Ecuadorean domestic politics, nor the isomorphism between the electoral trends overseas and in the homeland, can tell the whole story of the political significance of external voting. At a minimum, the exercise of Ecuadorean emigrant voting rights has already produced two major political effects. First is a gradual process of selection and empowerment of migrant leaders, with an increasing potential and scope to act on behalf of their constituencies – although the common ground within the latter is limited, despite the ‘Fifth Region’ rhetoric. Second is the legitimate development, within the main contexts of settlement, of an unprecedented political space for debate, re-evocation, communal identification and search for visibility, potentially addressed both to the homeland institutions and those overseas.
On two key issues, our study has highlighted the need for more empirical research. On the one hand, the role and the potential involvement of migrant associations – once external voting results in migrants' right to be elected – is far from obvious or univocal. Our data suggest that associations by themselves are not necessarily an effective channel for immigrant democratic participation and representation. Overseas associations may be a unique resource for migrants' political co-optation, rather than pushing for the recognition of their political rights, or they may act as an oppositional force unwilling to make compromises with the homeland política or be co-opted by it. On the other hand, although emigrants' political participation has been institutionally acknowledged in the new Ecuadorean Constitution, it is still unclear whether it relies on a broadly patriotic attachment or also on a distinctive identification with the political agenda of a political leader or party. The charismatic leadership of president Correa, whose term has overlapped with the rhetorical emergence of the ‘Fifth Region’, makes it even harder to differentiate between these levels. Yet, the distinction – external voting as a matter of patriotism or of party political involvement – remains important and challenging.
Ultimately, there is no straightforward answer to the question of whether emigrant voting builds democracy or reproduces Ecuadoreanness. While the latter stance is substantiated by our study, the former should not be taken for granted – as the early researchers on political transnationalism tend to recognise by now.Footnote 66 By way of provocation, one may even wonder on what factual grounds – leaving a normative approach aside – external voting should be more than a device to reinforce expatriates' connectedness by enabling the civic celebration of a significant trait of their earlier lives. At the same time, there is no necessary contradiction between the diverse agendas that drive states' appeals to emigrants, and those emigrants' increasing participation in homeland political life.Footnote 67 Whether this may ever involve a full symmetry between the rates of (and the grounds for) participation of resident citizens and of their emigrant counterparts is a question that calls for further comparative research.
