The migrants’ participation in the elections of their country of origin is a worldwide trend. The literature has mostly focused on Latin America and Europe. Little attention has been paid to African and Asian countries. This paper looks at five Arab countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Lebanon), which have adopted external voting provisions before or after the Arab Spring. It adopts a comparative and diachronic approach, and discusses why and how Arab States have granted voting right to their citizens’ abroad. It explores the relation between migrants’ enfranchisement and political changes. By doing so, it first distinguishes external voting from other policy initiatives aiming to foster the relations between labor sending countries and their migrants. In addition, it suggests that the adoption of external voting rights responds to Arab governments’ pressing need for legitimacy, but that the implementation of such rights challenges existing citizenship conceptions and electoral practices.
