Immigration and political participation of foreigners: an analysis of the decision-taking process in sao paulo municipal policy for immigrants

Abstract

The limits to the conceptual and practical legal frameworks regarding immigrants' rights and their effectiveness are challenged by contemporary migration flows. In this sense, the decision taking process concerning Sao Paulo's Municipal Policy to Immigrant People (MPIP) might have changed the perception of the legal limits to the exercise of the right to political participation by immigrants. The collected information derived from (i) document analysis (primary sources) of (a) meetings minutes concerning the PMPI at the Human Rights Municipal Secretary (HRMS), and (b) Brazilian laws related to political participation, and (ii) literature review (secondary sources). In spite of a constitutional prohibition of any political participation rights for immigrants, we identified in Sao Paulo City an initiative which granted to the immigrants a different kind of political participation in PMPI's decision-taking process. Thus, we propose that, triggered by a driver of fostering immigrants' right to the hosting city, the institutional design of such initiative can be regarded as having changed although in an unnoticed way - the conceptual and the practical legal limits to immigrants' political participation in Brazil.