27 Empirical evidence on migration background, religion and gender In this dissertation I refer to the term minority when I discuss people who belong to groups that are minoritized by being both a numeric minority and/or part of a discriminated group1 encompassing French, German and Dutch citizens with a migration background, Muslims and women. The studies on Muslims in politics are very limited, as most empirical studies on representation focus mostly on women but also ethnic minorities, with a particular interest in exploring whether (and how) descriptive representation leads to substantive representation (Lowande et al., 2019; Saalfeld and Bischof, 2013; Sobolewska et al., 2018). Besides overlooking the plight of Muslims in politics, this also leaves the question of whether descriptive and/or substantive representation leads to symbolic representation largely unaddressed (Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler, 2005; Verge and Pastor, 2018) and the existing scant literature focusses almost exclusively on symbolic representation of women, not ethnic/racial and religious minorities. To answer who prefers politicians with whom they share the same religion, migration background and/or gender and why we need to build on studies on in-group voting spanning religion and migration background, as well as gender. In the following section, I first discuss how voters and politicians sharing the same migration background influences voting, then religion, and lastly, gender. Migration background In this dissertation, I use the term migration background to denote individuals who were born in a different country, or who have one or both parents born in a different country. In France, Germany and the Netherlands, this term is commonly used to delineate ethnoracial differences (Elrick and Schwartzman, 2015), while terms such as race, ethnorace or ethnicity are more often used in the context of the United States (US). In the US, there is much experimental evidence for in-group voting (Burge et al., 2020; Kaslovsky et al., 2021; Lerman and Sadin, 2016; Philpot and Walton, 2007). This applies to both Black US Americans preferring Black politicians over their white counterparts (Stout and Le, 2017; Tate, 2003) and Asian and Latinx Americans alike (Schildkraut, 2013). A majority of highly engaged black voters stated ‘race’ as the most important reason to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries (Sullivan and Johnson, 2008: 59) and in-group voting increased after a number of public figures made ‘racially insensitive comments’, pointing to the importance of racial solidarity (2008: 60) as a driver of voting choice in addition to using race as a heuristic for the candidates’ policy positions (2008: 61). Moreover, descriptive representation leads to increased perceptions of legitimacy of the government (Ostfeld and Mutz, 2021) as well as turnout rates of ‘co-ethnics’ (Geese, 2020; Miller and Chaturvedi, 2018; 1 FRA: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2017) Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EU-MIDIS II): Main Results. DOI: 10.2811/902610.
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