Electoral Markets on the Move: Essays about the Political Economy of Migration in Latin America

Abstract

How do local politicians in the developing world respond to inflows of migrants into their constituencies? Unlike their counterparts in the developing world, most local politicians in the Global South tend to have very binding budgetary restrictions that constrain the set of possibilities and policies they can enact. With the inflow of new individuals into their municipalities, the question of how to deal with this increased demand for social services becomes key, as does the economic and social integration of migrants. In this dissertation, I draw on research from political inequality, migration, and political economy to understand how local politicians use the arrival of migrants strategically for their own gain. I argue that local politicians try to include or exclude migrant populations within their municipalities through the manipulation of a series of tools. Particularly local spending, regulation, and party platforms or through their choice of political rhetoric. I test this argument by studying three different migratory movements across two Latin American countries. First, focusing on the Brazilian case, I study how historical migration flows from Europeans determine the contemporary geography of support for affirmative action that cues politicians about the types of political regulations they should support. This chapter also shows how the historical choices of migration policy can have effects that expand for decades. Second, I analyze under what circumstances local Colombian politicians include internally displaced people in their informal networks of good distribution and vote-buying. Lastly, focusing on the arrival of millions of Venezuelans into Colombia, I analyze the conditions under which mayoral candidates use xenophobic rhetoric for electoral gain. The empirical sections of this study combine qualitative and quantitative methods with a series of original data collection exercises like surveys, the digitization of historical archives, and social media scrapping along with pre-existing public opinion and administrative data to test the argument. Overall, I find that exposure to European migrant settlements correlates with lower support for affirmative action, that local politicians will only incorporate internal migrants in clientelistic schemes in noncompetitive environments, and that politicians will engage in xenophobic rhetoric as a result of labor market competition between natives and migrants. Understanding these results presents an important step in understanding migrant political, economic, and social incorporation in the Global South.