This paper seeks to understand the politics of emigrants' home country engagements, with a particular focus on experiences in the United States. Long-distance emigrant politics, I argue, reflects the paradox of migration, which while inherently entailing mobility, is impelled by the unequal, territorial containment of resources, a feature of social life that both gives the migrants new found leverage over states and peoples left behindandconstrains their capacity to maintain cross-border

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... ions. As I will show, the processes by which international migrations extend political ties across states collide with those that progressively bring migrants into the polities of the states on which they have converged; consequently, over the long term, the pursuit of emigrant politics turns into immigrant politics, embedding the former foreigners in the political life of the country where they actually reside. Abstract This paper seeks to understand the politics of emigrants' home country engagements, with a particular focus on experiences in the United States. Long-distance emigrant politics, I argue, reflects the paradox of migration, which while inherently entailing mobility, is impelled by the unequal, territorial containment of resources, a feature of social life that both gives the migrants new found leverage over states and peoples left behind and constrains their capacity to maintain cross-border connections. As I will show, the processes by which international migrations extend political ties across states collide with those that progressively bring migrants into the polities of the states on which they have converged; consequently, over the long term, the pursuit of emigrant politics turns into immigrant politics, embedding the former foreigners in the political life of the country where they actually reside. Though international migration is an inherently political phenomenon, the study of migrants' political behaviour is only now moving from the field's periphery to its center. This scholarship mainly focuses on receiving societies and hence, immigrant politics. Its key questions concern the means and mechanisms by which aliens engage in political activity and possibly acquire citizenship; foreigners learn the rules of a new national political situation; and foreign-born, naturalized citizens gain political incorporation and acceptance. Echoing the longstanding interest in the retention of cultural beliefs or practices imported from the society of origin, students of immigrant politics have sought to understand the impact of political