Mobilising abroad across ethnic lines: Home-country politics and immigrant political engagement in comparative perspective

Scholarship on immigrant political participation has recently examined how immigrants engage in collective action in the receiving society, whereas scholarship focussing on immigrant home-country politics has focused on debating immigrant political engagement vis-a-vis the origin society. What the literature has neglected is how immigrants engage simultaneously in immigrant and home-country politics. This article fills this lacuna through multi-sited fieldwork observations and interviews, showing how the Ecuadorian participants in this study engage in home-country politics in Madrid and New York City through grassroots organisations and why the leaders and members of these organisations reach out to non-ethnically based associations to make demands on the receiving society governments. The engagement of Ecuadorian political parties in the host societies heightens distrust among the participants in this study, inhibiting their organisation at the ethno-national level. As a result, participants find venues for engagement outside of their nationality group.