Titre du Projet
Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Belgium.
Research Team
- Université Catholique de Louvain: Steven M. Van Hauwaert, Pierre Baudewyns, Silvia Erzeel, Chloé Janssen
- Université Libre de Bruxelles: Jean-Benoît Pilet
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel: Karen Celis
- Trinity College Dublin: Constantine Boussalis
Site web
http://pathways.eu/
Contact
Steven Van Hauwaert
Description
BE-PATHWAYS is an innovative and comparative inter-university collaboration of a team of junior and senior scholars examining the political representation of citizens of immigrant origin in Belgium. It is part of an international PATHWAYS consortium (http://pathways.eu/), which analyses the political representation of citizens of immigrant origin in seven additional European democracies (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the UK).
The principal goal of this particular project is twofold. On one hand, the project seeks to advance the knowledge and scholarship of the descriptive representation of citizens of immigrant origin (CIO) in Belgium's legislative assemblies, at the regional (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) and national levels. On the other hand, and as part of its innovative nature, the project seeks to analyse the parliamentary activities of representatives of immigrant origin (substantive representation). We seek to advance the study of democratic representation of CIOs in a number of ways. Most notably, we intend,
• To provide tightly defined - hitherto unavailable - comparative data on the descriptive and substantive representation of CIOs in Belgium (currently data are often restricted to issues such as citizenship, e.g., Eurostat 2011).
• To provide comparative data on important institutional and socio-demographic contextual variables alongside different institutional levels in Belgium.
• To offer innovative explanations of cross-national, cross-regional, cross-level and diachronic variations in descriptive and substantive representation by building on a flexible analytical framework, which allows for the incorporation of a variety of theoretical approaches (e.g. social capital, path dependency, rational choice).
• To integrate our data with other research efforts in the field, most notably the PATHWAYS and IDEA projects.
Data collection and methodology
Our research design combines a systematic approach to data collection on two levels of government, national and regional. The inclusion of the regional level is of particular importance, as this is where immigrants can more easily build capacity to win political office and where barriers to get elected should be easier to overcome. The data collection includes primary and secondary sources of information and will be organised in the following way :
• National level: We will collect information on (1) the descriptive representation of CIOs for all elections since 1991, and (2) on particular legislative activities (substantive representation) of minority and comparable non-CIO parliamentarians in the last completed legislative term (2010).
• Regional level: We will collect information on descriptive representation for the last completed legislative term (2009). Given the generally large number of regional assemblies throughout Europe, the variability of access to sources and the lack of general research on representation at this level, this will still be a major advance and will allow comparisons between Belgian regions, across European regions, or even between the national level and the regional level.
For both tiers and all time points, we collect data on :
• The context of political representation: including information on (1) the socio-demographic context, from official statistics and surveys; (2) the role of political parties as gatekeepers, through the analysis of party rules and documents and, where necessary, additional elite interviews; and (3) the institutional setting, through the collation of indicators from secondary sources.
• The patterns of migrant and anti-migrant mobilisation including information on (1) public opinion, mostly through the analysis of existing surveys (e.g., on racism, xenophobia and the political orientation of voters); (2) the political mobilisation of immigrant minorities, through the analysis of surveys and other secondary sources; and (3) the mobilisation of anti-immigrant groups, by compiling existing data on their electoral support and political positions (e.g., through secondary analysis of the CMP).
Publications
o Working papers :
Erzeel, S, Baudewyns, P. & Van Hauwaert S. M. “Ethnicity and preferential voting in Belgium: Modelling gender inequalities". Working Paper
van der Wardt, M., Sobolewska, M., English, P., & Van Hauwaert, S. M. "How do parties respond to the immigration policy mood?” Working Paper
Pilet, J., Van Hauwaert, S. M., Janssen, C., & Baudewyns, P. The role of ballot structure and candidates in the representation of citizens of immigrant origins. Working Paper
Sobolewska, M., van der Wardt, M., Van Hauwaert, S. M., & Chambers, M. Becoming critical actors or hunkering down? How are immigrant-origin politicians responding to the raising anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe?. Working Paper
Van Hauwaert, S. M., & English, P. When factors collide: Opposing anti-immigrant and economic hypotheses when explaining electoral behaviour. Working Paper
English, P., & Van Hauwaert, S. M. Changing anti-immigrant public moods: Acceptances and contact. Working PaperVan Hauwaert, S. M. & Cinalli, M. “Welfare and citizenship for new Europeans: The political integration of immigrants and their descendants in Western Europe”. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference
, Montréal, Canada, August 26-29, 2015.
o Chapters :
Ramiro, L., Geese, L., Guerra, S., Van Hauwaert, S. M., Kristen, D., Schacht, D., Sobolewska, M., & Wüst, A. (forthcoming). Actors, processes and structures: The measurement of the drivers of CIO representation. In L. Morales and T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Europe (chapter 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Van Hauwaert, S. M., Janssen, C., Pilet, J., Celis, K., Baudewyns, P., & Erzeel, S. (forthcoming). The political representation of CIOs across Europe: Belgium. In L. Morales and T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Europe (chapter 4). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cinalli, M., Chabanet, D., Van Hauwaert, S. M., & Sanhueza, C. (forthcoming). The political representation of CIOs across Europe: France. In L. Morales and T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Europe (chapter 5). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sobolewska, M., English, P., Morales, L., van der Wardt, & Van Hauwaert, S. M. (forthcoming). Mobilisation, counter-mobilisation and access to power: Does descriptive representation follow the anti-immigration mood?. In L. Morales and T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Understanding the patterns of political representation of citizens of immigrant origin in Europe (chapter 4). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kristen, C., Schacht, D., Dandoy, R. & Baudewyns, P. (forthcoming), Regional differences in immigrants’ descriptive representation. In L. Morales and T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Understanding the patterns of political representation of citizens of immigrant origin in Europe (chapter 5). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geese, L., Janssen, C., Sanhueza Petrarca, C. & Schacht, D. (forthcoming), Descriptive representation of constituency interests: the role of institutional variables and district composition. In L. Morales and T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Understanding the patterns of political representation of citizens of immigrant origin in Europe (chapter 6). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baudewyns, P., Janssen, C., Geese, L., Sanhueza Petrarca, C. & Schacht, D. (forthcoming), Matching candidate nominations, ethnic voting and ethnic representation. In L. Morales and T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Understanding the patterns of political representation of citizens of immigrant origin in Europe (chapter 7). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Saalfeld, T., Geese L. & Pilet, J-B. (forthcoming), Internal Legislative Constraints: When Do MPs of Immigrant Origin Get To Speak on the Floor of the Chamber – and What Do They Get to Speak About?. In L. Morales and T. Saalfeld (Eds.), Understanding the patterns of political representation of citizens of immigrant origin in Europe (chapter 9). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cinalli, M., Chabanet, D., & Van Hauwaert, S. M. Economic deprivation and resilience during the economic crisis in France. Working Chapter