ABSTRACT
As more countries extend voting rights to citizens residing abroad, diaspora communities play a growing role in home country politics. International party activity shows parties seek support from citizens residing abroad despite low turnout and often restrictive rules regarding overseas campaigning. However, party diaspora outreach efforts are not uniform: In Mexico, the historic opposition parties, PAN and PRD, have seen relatively greater levels of overall diaspora engagement, with a greater frequency and more community focus of diaspora visits, while the formerly hegemonic PRI has been virtually inactive. The case of Mexico illustrates how this variation is shaped by the partisan skew of the diaspora community, itself a product of historical legacies of migration and state policy, and in turn reinforcing policies that constrain party activity abroad. This chapter tests how attitudes and outreach activity to the diaspora vary among Mexico’s three principal historic parties, and offers a new theory on how partisan diaspora outreach varies across parties, in which two factors – a skewed diaspora electorate, and a restrictive overseas electoral regime – reinforce one another, resulting in differing diaspora outreach activities and strategies across parties.
