Title  Electoral Political Participation among Portuguese Emigrants in France in Portuguese Legislative Elections
Author  Sara Isabel Gaspar Aparício
Advisors Pedro Miguel Cardoso Lourenço and Bruno Daniel Ferreira da Costa 
Year 2026 
Institution  University of Beira Interior
Degree  Masters
Area  Political Science 
Keywords  Electoral Participation; External Voting; Portuguese Emigration; Involuntary Abstention; External Suffrage; Political Transnationalism; France
URI 

Abstract 

This dissertation examines the electoral participation of Portuguese emigrants in France in the Portuguese legislative elections, adopting a mixed-methods approach that combines secondary data from the Ministério da Administração Interna (SGMAI), a questionnaire survey applied to a sample of emigrants in France (N=39), and interviews with important informants (N=9), including academic researchers, members of parliament elected by the European circle, and consular officials. The study departs from an empirical paradox: a large community with active transnational ties and voting rights since 1976 presents an abstention rate systematically above 70%. The findings show that this abstention does not stem primarily from political apathy or disengagement, but from a combination of logical, informational, and political-symbolic constraints that operate cumulatively. In particular, the data revel the existence of involuntary abstention, produced by failures in postal system and procedural information deficits, which existing aggregate data do not allow to distinguish from voluntary non-participation. This investigation contributes to the literature on external voting by demonstrating that emigrants’ electoral participation depends not only on individual predispositions, but on the institutional design of the electoral system and the state’s capacity to reduce the effective cost of voting.