Symposium: Political Representation of Immigrants 5 Introduction

As the vast majority of immigrants arrive in their host countries
with severely limited political rights, it is quite natural that their
political representation is usually the last area of interest for migration
scholars. So many obstacles meet immigrants in their inclusion
into host country politics that they are naturally studied
first: access to citizenship, voting rights, electoral registration and
turnout, acquisition of new civic and political identities
and partisanship, non-electoral forms of engagement
and organization. It is thus the last frontier to turn to immigrants
as full political actors seeking to enter the proverbial
corridors of power: becoming candidates and
winning elections; and even further down the line to
their actions as legislators and the broader meaning of
their presence. Research on this issue is therefore
newer, scarcer, but growing fast, and increasingly moving
on from the mere accounting and description to deep and critical theoretical engagement
with related literatures and slowly developing its own vocabulary of theory and empirical
inquiry. This symposium showcases the main areas of growth, controversy and the
future directions of travel for this promising area