Premigratory political experiences with autocracy and violence and immigrants’ willingness to vote

Introduction In this paper, we examine how premigratory experiences shape the willingness of immigrants to engage with the political system of the host country. Methods Using the Immigrant Citizens’ Survey, a study of over 6600 immigrants in six European countries, and building upon previous work we test whether an immigrant who comes from an authoritarian country and/or a country that has experienced significant civil conflict, will affect the extent to which they are willing to politically engage in the politics of their host country. Results However, we find that whether an immigrant respondent came from a democracy or an extremely repressive regime at the time of their departure from the home country had no discernible effect on the willingness to vote in an election in the host country. We find that immigrants whose home country was embroiled in major civil conflicts at the time of their departure from the country are significantly more likely to express a willingness to politically engage in the politics of the host country, and this finding is robust across multiple model specifications. Conclusions This suggests that immigrants who hail from conflict countries are more likely to engage politically than immigrants from countries that have less conflict.