Making voices count: the political participation of Romanian immigrants in Western Europe

Research on immigrants’ political participation paid little attention to cross-national comparisons between first-generation immigrants coming from one country. To fill this empirical void, this article identifies the determinants of Romanian labour migrants’ political participation in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. It argues and tests the effect of individual orientations, attitudes, social interaction, and resources. The data come from a web survey conducted in the summer of 2013. The empirical results show that, with small country-level variations, the political participation is a function of membership in organisations, a longer period of stay, the size of immigrants’ social network, and education.