Policy framing and denizen enfranchisement in Portugal: why some migrant voters are more equal than others

The enfranchisement of non-citizens across different democracies has been mostly approached at with macro-explanations that propose national traditions of citizenship or transnational influences as remote causes, leading researchers to explain variation through some fuzzy balancing of the two. This article joins the more recent literature focusing on the meso-level, particularly on political discourses on denizen enfranchisement, to examine the deviating case of Portugal, based both on strict reciprocity and on differentiating clauses that divide non-citizen migrants into different universes of voters and non-voters. Such a case allows theoretical refinement of process-based and discursive approaches on denizen enfranchisement and shows that it succeeded in Portugal when parliamentarians framed it as a symbolically generous but practically restricted move that promised prestige gains vis-à-vis Europe and Portuguese emigrants.