Political Participation, Mobilisation and Representation of Immigrants and Their Offspring in Europe

This paper provides a qualitative overview of the state-of-the art on issues related to immigrants' political participation, mobilisation and representation, and also presents some research perspectives to be explored in the future. It is divided into seven parts. The first part addresses conceptual and defi nition issues. The second presents and discusses the thesis of political quiescence of immigrants. Part three part focuses on the explanations of the various forms of immigrant political participation. The fourth part presents a typology of the various forms of immigrant political participation in the country of settlement. Part fi ve specifi cally discusses the issue of transnational political participation. The sixth identifi es gaps in the literature to which new research perspectives might correspond. The concluding policy-oriented part addresses the issue of how to evaluate and assess the political participation of immigrants and their offspring in the country of residence