Political Participation of Immigrants through Voting and Representation : The Case of Norway

As immigrants are often under-represented in the political arena, in recent years, political participation of immigrants has become one of the most significant issues in many immigrant receiving countries in Europe. Based on secondary data, this paper has examined the political participation of immigrants in Norway through discussions of immigrants’ voting turnouts and representation in Norwegian local and national level elections. The analysis has showed that immigrants had a lower turnout and lower representation rate in both previous Norwegian local and national elections, when compared to native Norwegians. Indeed, voting turnout was significantly low in the case of non-naturalized immigrants with Asian, African, Latin American, and Eastern European backgrounds. For instance, whereas total voting turnouts were 59 percent and 61 percent respectively in the 2003 and 2007 local elections, in the case of immigrants these rates were only 25 percent and 28 percent respectively. On the other hand, in the case of representation, the analysis revealed that though immigrants had some representation in municipalities, at the national level their representation was almost negligible. There have been only 3 immigrant origin representatives in Norwegian Parliamentary history who were directly elected. Therefore, this paper has concluded that immigrants are underrepresented in Norwegian politics, considering the total immigrant population, voters, and their proportionate participation rates