Belonging in modern societies: Are citizens abroad still considered a part of the polity by resident citizens?

While migration research has focused largely on attitudes toward immigrants, we know less about how citizens view emigrants, in particular their access to their “citizen rights”. This paper examines the extent to which resident citizens regard those who have left as still belonging to the national polity, and what conditions can lead to their disenfranchisement. Drawing on a preregistered survey experiment fielded in Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States in late 2024, we test criteria drawn from both legal statute (e.g., length of residency abroad) and transnational scholarship (e.g., interest in home-country politics, social ties) to understand boundaries around belonging to the national polity. We further consider whether two additional types of emigrants: those born abroad to emigrants and dual nationals are penalized. We find that markers of connection to the home country—recency of departure, intention to return, and prior political participation—are associated with resident citizens’ willingness to maintain co-citizens’ national voting rights, whereas emigrants’ ascriptive characteristics matter less, and emigrants born abroad are penalized relative to those who left themselves.

Alyssa M. Taylor is a research fellow in the Department of Inequality, Transformation and Conflict. She completed her PhD at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, University of Lausanne, where her dissertation examined how citizens define and erect boundaries around “belonging” and inclusion, specifically, which conditions citizens deem necessary for immigrants to gain rights such as voting rights and social benefits. Using multi-country public opinion surveys, she showed that citizens construct membership around the concept of conditional inclusion and examined how integration policy and citizens’ underlying (political) worldviews shape support for immigrants’ political and social inclusion.

Before joining the MPI, she worked as a research associate at the University of Mannheim, teaching on international migration and integration. Prior to her PhD, Alyssa received her BA in Political Science from Ohio State University and her MA from University of Mannheim. She also spent several years as Managing Editor of the American Political Science Review.

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