RAPID: Return Migrants, Violent Electoral Politics and Electoral Integrity

Electoral violence before, during, and after elections is common in middle-income democracies that produce large numbers of international migrants who retain social, political, and economic ties with those countries from abroad. This project addresses whether return migrants can strengthen electoral integrity and competition in countries at risk of electoral violence by examining candidates who run for mayor in Mexico after living as immigrants in the United States.

Mexican mayoral candidates and their family members face significant risks of being murdered or violently attacked; yet, as many as 30 percent of elected mayors previously lived in the US. The project examines whether return-migrant candidates have access to resources and capacities that enhance resilience against violence and the ability to accommodate violent actors, advancing knowledge relevant to policies on migration management and the reduction of electoral violence's negative repercussions on democratic competition and electoral integrity.

To examine return migrants in the context of violent elections, this project surveys a national sample of approximately 1,100 mayoral candidates during the two months leading up to Mexico's 2021 election. Respondents are drawn from a list of 2,100 candidates developed using a stratified sampling design that involves a random selection from each Mexican state's official candidate registry with an oversampling from municipalities with higher migration.

Survey questions address personal migration experiences and access to migration-driven resources and capacities, including cross-border networks, migration-generated wealth, experiences with crime and criminal justice in the United States, and facilities for crossing the US-Mexico border. Candidates are also asked about other factors that influence candidates' choices to run for office, such as political socialization within Mexico, party affiliation, personal attributes, and socio-economic status.

The survey data are merged with publicly available municipal-level data for analysis. As the first large-n survey in the world that examines candidates' migration experiences extensively, the project provides methodological lessons for future surveys in other countries affected by migration to the US and electoral violence, including El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.