Career facilitators, springboards, and allies

Extant scholarship demonstrates that citizens of ethnic minority or immigrant backgrounds are less likely to gain elected political office. Demand and supply factors in the recruitment and selection processes converge to produce outcomes that favour stereotypical candidates and hinder the opportunities of other individuals, including those with immigrant ancestry. Although existing research has primarily focused on the entry points to elected office – being nominated as a candidate and gaining election for the first time – a successful career in politics also requires ‘staying’ in office. This chapter examines the factors that foster the careers of politicians of immigrant ancestry by focusing on career facilitators, springboards, and allies. With novel quantitative and qualitative data on the biographies and trajectories of politicians of ethnic or immigrant minority backgrounds in Spain and the United Kingdom, we assess the socioeconomic, demographic, positional and relational drivers of successful political careers.