Political integration in the Global South: What we can learn from Indigenous peoples in Bolivia and Muslim minorities in Guyana and Suriname

The cumulative dissertation consists of three articles that independently add to the field of integration research. Large parts of the scholarship have focused on the integration of (Muslim) immigrants in European socities. By doing so, it has ignored the domestic diversity prevailing in European societies. Some of the findings on Muslim integration in Europe are doubtful, as they employed proxies for „religion“ or did not include relevant control variables. The dissertation contributes new perspectives to the field of integration research by looking at the electoral behaviour of Indigenous peoples as domestic groups in Bolivia, more specifically, it examines the linkages between political parties and the country’s highland and lowland Indigenous peoples as well as collective voting practices in certain Indigenous communities. Besides, it provides findings on Muslim integration from non-European cases, namely Guyana and Suriname, which allow the control of relevant variables that cannot be controlled for in Europe.