Gherghina, S., Tap, P. & Soare, S. (2022) More than voters: Parliamentary debates about emigrants in a new democracy, Ethnicities 22(3), pp. 487-506

There is much research about how migrants engage with politics in their home countries
and about how state institutions facilitate this involvement. Yet, we know little about how
members of Parliament refer to, and debate, issues related to communities of emigrants.
The ways in which legislators give voice to and represent the de-territorialized demos has
broad implications for the functioning of contemporary democracies. This article analyzes
the ways in which the Romanian parliamentarians refer to emigrants. We focus on the
parliamentary speeches from the plenary sessions in the Chamber of Deputies in the two
most recent terms in office (2012–2016 and 2016–2020). The study includes 239
parliamentary speeches and uses thematic analysis. Our results identify an ambivalent
attitude toward emigrants that transcends political divides. The Romanian legislators
express concerns related to the representation of emigrants and their needs and see them
as a valuable pool of economic and electoral support.