Pathways

Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of citizens of Immigrant Origin in Seven European Democracies

Principal investigators

• Dr Manlio Cinalli (SciencesPo)
• Professor Laura Morales (Leicester)
• Professor Thomas Saalfeld (Bamberg)
• Professor Jean Tillie (Netherlands)

UK team

• Professor Laura Morales (PI)

University of Leicester sub-team

• Dr Simona Guerra (Co-Investigator)
• Dr Luis Ramiro (Co-Investigator)
• Dr Emmanuel Sigalas (External Researcher Collaborator)
• Angeliki Konstantinidou (Researcher)
• Dr Daniela Vintila (Researcher)
• Siresa Lopez (Researcher)

University of Manchester sub-team

• Professor Ed Fieldhouse (Co-Investigator)
• Dr Maria Sobolewska (Co-Investigator)
• Patrick English (ESRC PhD student)
• Anthony Chambers (ESRC PhD student)

Project brief

PATHWAYS is an international co-operative and comparative project led by four universities: the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), the University of Bamberg (Germany), the University of Leicester (United Kingdom) and SciencesPo (France).

Over the past decades, the ethnic diversity within European societies has increased radically and immigration is one of the most important challenges facing Europe today. Our project develops a study of the descriptive and substantive political representation of citizens of immigrant origin in the legislative assemblies of seven European countries: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom.

The UK team is funded by an ESRC grant (ref. ES/L016664/1) and is in charge of the British, Greek, Italian and Spanish case studies. The team based in Leicester undertakes the south European study, and the team based at Manchester focuses on the British Case.

The project Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Seven European Democracies is a three-year project funded by the research councils of Britain (ESRC), France (ANR), Germany (DFG) and the Netherlands (NWO) since 2014. It has been joined in 2015 by a Belgian sister project funded by UCLouvain, ULB and VUB universities and the Fund of Scientific Research (FNRS). The project studies the political representation of citizens of immigrant origin and its social, political and institutional context in eight European democracies: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The study covers the period from 1990 to the most recent complete national legislatures. It will also include data on the most recent legislative terms of regional assemblies.

At the project’s mid-point, the Pathways research team are delighted to present some preliminary findings relating to the most recent two complete legislative terms in each of the countries studied. Although we are continuing to collect data, we are already in a position to share, and discuss, some first, fascinating findings.

The University of Leicester and the Political Studies Association are pleased to invite interested members of the public  to attend the event. The workshop is designed to provide information to a more general audience and academics. It will provide a more detailed overview of the preliminary results and an opportunity for discussion.