Search

This paper analyzes the discourse on migration from the official Twitter accounts of 5 political parties in Spain (PSOE, PP, Podemos, Ciudadanos and Vox), during the so-called «migration crisis» that took place in Ceuta in May 2021. The methodology followed allows us to describe the activity of the different political party accounts, the centrality of the migration issue in them, the topics and discursive strategies contained in the publications and their engagement. The findings of the work carried out point to the existence of a hardening of the political discourse on immigration in the context studied, accompanied by a loss of «political correctness» -characteristic of previous times- to address migration issues, which only alerts us to the normalization of racist hate speech in the network considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens to race when racial vocabulary disappears? This paper leverages a sudden change in the Spanish social science curriculum in the 1990s to empirically trace how the removal of the language of race, and the negation of biological race, changes the ways the books portray human differences. Through the analysis of 82 textbooks from 1975 to 2017, I find that a racial classification system is replaced by one based on cultural categories. Yet, far from moving away from polygenistic beliefs about human nature, culture continues to reproduce the same social hierarchies previously associated with a phenotype. Because the books present culture as a scientifically valid classification system, the use of culture legitimizes and entrenches those same beliefs in racial differences. The findings have implications for our understanding of colourblind ideologies, and for the study of race relations in European contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secularism and the public management of religious diversity have gone hand in hand in public and academic debates in recent decades. Meanwhile, many of the elements related to secularism and the presence of religions in western societies have been conditioned by the migratory phenomenon. At the same time, Spain has been exposed to a relevant qualitative change in its socio-religious composition, evolving from a mainly Catholic society to a less religious and more diverse one, equating to other European societies. Many controversial issues have arisen in recent decades, such as the role of religion in the public life, the relations between religion and the state and the emergence of a more plural society, having a special role the migratory phenomenon. This contribution approaches these issues through analysis of the linkage between migration and religious diversity studies within a secular framework. The paper aims to analyze this reality, focusing on the main research trends in PhD studies in the past 20 years. The article reveals a growing interest in doctoral research from a multidisciplinary perspective in the field of religion and international migration, the contexts in which this research has been carried out, as well as its main themes and methods of approach. The intent is to study the religious phenomenon linked to immigration, because this reflects, at least to a certain extent, the concern for understanding the presence of religion in an increasingly secular society, such as in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of immigration on workplace safety, an understudied outcome in the literature. We use a novel administrative dataset of the universe of workplace accidents reported in Spain from 2003 to 2015 and follow an instrumental variables (IV) strategy based on the distribution of early migrants across provinces. Our results show that the massive inflow of immigrants between 2003 and 2009 reduced the number of workplace accidents by 10,980 for native workers (7% of the overall reduction during that period). This decline in workplace accidents is driven by Spanish-born workers shifting away from manual occupations to occupations involving more interpersonal interactions. Immigrant flows during the economic crisis (2010–2015) had no impact on natives' workplace safety. The scarcity of jobs during that period may have prevented shifts between occupations. Finally, we find no effects of immigration on the workplace safety of immigrants. These results add a previously unexplored dimension to the immigration debate that should be taken into account when evaluating the costs and benefits of migration flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of immigration in Spanish cinema demands to be analysed within the frame of the global accumulation of capital. Fernando León de Aranoa's Amador (2010), engages directly with the immigrant's experience in the neo-liberal transformation of work. In this paper, I argue that this transformation is deeply intertwined with the domestic space. In depicting the home as bound by precariousness, Amador portrays work performed by the immigrant subject as a continuation of domesticity inherited from the nineteenth century that promoted the functionality of the public sphere at the expense of the oppression of women in private. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking Spain as a case study, this paper analyses the institutional production of border apparatus within reception countries, which affect very diverse areas of the daily life of migrants. Hence, rather than as a rigid line dividing the population into included and excluded, the border is approached as a flexible governance mechanism that differentially regulates access to rights. Starting by analysing the formal and informal operation of some of the institutions that manage the process (immigration offices, social services and the healthcare system), an attempt is made to give an account of the norms, requirements, administrative procedures and infra-penal mechanisms that especially affect vulnerable groups, stratifying the recognition of rights and condemning subjects to a legal limbo in which their legitimacy is - at best - blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents new evidence that immigrants have better health than natives upon arrival to their destination. It analyzes a very interesting episode in international migration, namely the exodus of Ecuadorians in the aftermath of the economic collapse in the late 1990s. More than 600,000 Ecuadorians from 1999 to 2005 left their homeland, most relocating in Spain. Using information from the birth certificate data, the paper compares the birth outcomes of immigrant women in Spain not only to that of natives at destination, but to that of natives in Ecuador and immigrants from other nationalities in Spain. These comparisons suggest that the better health at birth of children born to immigrants from Ecuador partly responds to the selection of healthier women into migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of immigration on the size and quality of public education using a quantitative political economy model that allows for a heterogeneous immigrant population. Our analysis distinguishes between short and long-run effects and accounts for the consequences of naturalization and assimilation. We use the model to analyze Spain's large 2000–2008 immigration wave. We find that immigration led to a 15% increase in public enrollment in the short run, together with a 3% reduction in public education spending and almost a 1 percentage-point increase in the share of native households using private schools. Depending on the eventual degree of assimilation, these trends will be greatly intensified or mitigated once immigrants naturalize and gain the right to vote. Our analysis suggests that assimilation in terms of family size and the value assigned to children's education are the most relevant dimensions quantitatively. We also show that immigration policies that favor one group over another can significantly alter the overall effects of immigration on the schooling system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Much of the literature on immigrants' cash-welfare benefits use has focused on countries with a large tradition of receiving immigrants and with well-established welfare states. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this literature by analyzing differences in cash-welfare benefits receipt between immigrants and natives and their determinants in Spain, a country with a small level of social assistance and a welfare state heavily reliant on conditioned access to pensions; and an unprecedented immigration boom. Design/methodology/approach – Different probit models of social program intake are estimated for immigrants and native-born individuals using pooled cross-sectional data from the 1999 to 2009 Spanish Labor Force Survey (LFS). Findings – Results show that a negative residual welfare gap exists and that it is mainly driven by recently arrived immigrants, whose legal status or insufficient contribution is likely to hamper participation in social programs. In addition, it is found that immigrants with more than five years in the host country are more likely to receive unemployment benefits than natives, consistent with findings in other countries. These findings hold, regardless of immigrants' continent of origin. Research limitations/implications – Return migration related (or not) to an amnesty may be worrisome, as both return migration and under-reporting of immigrants may generate deterministic biases in an analysis. Although the direction of the biases caused by return migration is not always obvious, sensitivity analysis has been undertaken to evaluate the extent of this problem by comparing the population sizes for the different entry cohorts of immigrants at each LFS. While there is some variation in sizes across LFS, no clear pattern is observed that would raise major concerns of return migration (as there are no regular patterns for decreases in cohort sizes). Nonetheless, for this to be a problem, it needs to generate a deterministic bias in any analysis. Analyzing the demographic characteristics of the different cohorts of immigrants at each of the different LFSs only reveals small changes across surveys; in essence, the socio-demographic characteristics of the cohort remain quite stable across surveys, implying that no deterministic bias would emerge in an analysis. Originality/value – The paper highlights the relevance of accounting for cohort of arrival in the host country, especially when welfare benefits are based on workers' contribution. Indeed, failure to account for this would lead to the conclusion that immigrants are less likely to receive unemployment insurance (UI) benefits than natives. However, once cohort of arrival is included as a covariate, this paper finds that the lower UI intake is explained by the most recent immigrants, as their legal status and lower contributions hamper participation in social programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides three interrelated reasons not to confound perceptions of economic group-threat with hostility toward people of foreign origin. Firstly, I argue that expansive notions of prejudice impede analyzing attitudes toward immigration and immigrants with sufficient precision. Secondly, the recent evolution in the Southern Spanish region of Andalusia illustrates divergent trajectories: anti-immigrant sentiment remained subdued despite surging unemployment and perceived conflict-of-interest. Thirdly, various factors are found to contain antiimmigrant sentiment amidst inauspicious economic circumstances and regardless of perceived group-competition. The study shows that attitudes towards immigrants hinge on a complex array of predispositions and perceptions, rather than economic facts and interests per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to analyse immigrant-native wage differentials in Spain. Design/methodology/approach -- The paper exploits the Earnings Structure Survey 2006, which is the first nationally representative sample of both foreign and Spanish employees. Using the Machado-Mata econometric procedure, wage differentials between locals and foreigners are decomposed into the gap related to characteristics and the one due to different returns on endowments (i.e. discrimination). Findings -- The paper finds that, in absolute terms, the latter component grows across the wage distribution, reflecting the existence of a kind of glass ceiling, consistent with the evidence of over-education found in previous research. Originality/value -- The paper for the first time explores earnings differentials between immigrant and Spanish workers using a nationally representative database. In addition, standard errors are computed in order to determine if the gaps are statistically significant, a task not addressed by previous works. Finally, the work is relevant as Spain has become a host country only a few years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration is a key subject to understand Spaniard opinion about public security. With the aim to study the link between the fear policies and immigration through the arguments of the political dimension of fear and the theory of setting agenda, this paper analyzes how media (El País and El Mundo) and political parties (parliament sessional diary) frame migration from 2000 to 2003 in Spain, a period when the coverage of migration was massive in national newspapers and the politic attention. The origin and the element that determined the narrative construction of migration related to public security explains why public opinion in Spain does not question the link between migration and crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La población magrebí ha sido uno de los colectivos inmigrantes más numerosos en el territorio español desde finales del siglo XX, lo que ha motivado que posea una notable representación en sus medios de comunicación. Por ello, este trabajo ha tenido como objetivo examinar el tratamiento de las informaciones publicadas sobre la población magrebí y los aspectos teóricos del binomio framing-mundo araboislámico en los periódicos de tirada nacional y regional en España durante la crisis. Para llevar a cabo el estudio, se empleó una metodología mixta basada en el análisis de contenido cuantitativo y cualitativo. El análisis concluye que el frame más habitual es el de interés humano, aunque se ofrezca una representación negativa de este colectivo, un hecho que puede derivar en actitudes y discursos críticos con lo araboislámico. The Maghreb population has been one of the largest groups of immigrants in Spain since the end of the 20th century. This has led to a noteworthy representation in the Spanish media. By focusing on national and regional newspapers during the economic crisis in Spain, the paper aims at examining the treatment of the Maghreb population and certain theoretical aspects of binomial framing of the Arab-Islamic world. A mixed methodology based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of content was used to carry out this study. The analysis concludes that the most common frame is human interest, although a negative representation of this group is offered, a fact that may lead to critical discourse and attitudes towards the Arab-Islamic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to debate the dynamics existing between users of and trainers in a home care course for illegal immigrants in Barcelona. The analysis of these dynamics reveals the ambivalence of the help and support devices used by immigrants. These devices expose distant and top-down social positions (Spanish citizen /immigrant-foreigner), as well as alliances between users and trainers based on their shared identification as "employees" vis-à-vis the "lady of the house". Our analysis also reveals the importance of care work for the reproduction of life and also the lack of social recognition, low pay and poor legal coverage this type of job gets in the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International migratory movements tend to produce the reality of divided families that are located in at least two different places. The literature on divided or transnational families and family reunification movements has shown how the socio-demographic determinants in origin and the socio-economic and institutional factors in destination drive these processes. Assuming that migratory movements are the result to a large extent of specifically familial dynamics and strategies, in this paper we are interested in exploring whether other elements associated to the country of origin and to the relationship between country of origin and country of destination have a discernible influence on the family results of migration and, specifically, on the separation and subsequent reunification of the immigrant families. This complex set of elements builds on the playing field where migratory decisions are taken. The Spanish case, characterized by a sudden explosion of international immigration between 2000 and 2007 and significant numbers of Latin American migrants arriving during these years, is a particularly suitable scenario to investigate this phenomenon. The empirical analysis will be mainly based on the National Immigrant Survey of Spain (2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain has one of the highest levels of early school leaving and educational failure of the European Union. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the anatomy of early school leaving in Spain and its characteristics. In order to do so, in the first part we discuss the measurement problems related with this concept and the evolution of drop-out rates in Spain. We argue that the published figures of early school leaving slightly underestimate the phenomenon, and discuss the impact of the increase in immigration rates on the level of educational failure and its very unequal distribution in terms of gender. In a second part, using data from the Labour Force Surveys of 2000 and 2007, we explore the factors behind educational failure by means of a logistic regression. The results of this model confirm the explanatory power of social reproduction hypotheses, but also show that there are important aspects of the patterns and recent evolution of early school leaving which cannot be explained by a single theoretical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse how female migrants fare in the Spanish labour market, a country that has experienced impressive immigration flows during the last decade. Particularly, we explore the differential access to employment and the earning gap faced by this group, considering the interaction between two potential sources of disadvantage for migrant women: gender and migrant condition. Our findings suggest that migrant women do face this double disadvantage. In both cases, we find an economically significant gap, at least for migrants from developing countries. Regarding the former, the larger unemployment rate of female migrants is not explained by observable characteristics. In the case of earnings differential, although human capital endowments play a relevant role, both the unexplained earnings penalty associated with gender and migrant status slightly rise across the distribution of wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has its origins in my doctoral dissertation, submitted to the University of Barcelona in 2011. As a part of the investigation's theoretical framework, it explores the sociopolitical and symbolic context through which, since the mid-80s in Spain, the migration from non-EU countries has become a focus of intervention and public debate mediated by metaphors of otherness and negative differentiation. The paper explores three interrelated issues: (i) the dynamics of labor migration in Europe since the post-war period until the 1973 oil crisis; (ii) the political, administrative and legal dynamics that began to emerge in the Spanish context thereafter, designed to regulate immigration, and (iii) the set of representations and discursive strategies around non-EU immigration and immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration has become a social phenomenon with increasing importance in Spain. For that reason, media has put special focus on this issue, not only in news, but also in fiction products for television and cinema. In 2000s immigration topic appears quite often in plots and characters of serials and films. Moreover, immigrants' communities have become a new target for television programs and channels. In this paper, we will review the research that has been done about this topic and will make a catalogue of this kind of film and television works. The purpose is to find out the reasons that possibly explain this phenomenon. Those can be a mix of commercial interests, issues of the political agenda or the reflection of a social fact. Hence, we will identify the audiovisual works related to immigration, then we will classify them according to different criteria, and finally, we will raise some conclusions about the causes of this recent development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern societies, the media have a role in the social construction of reality. The negative representation of the Spanish media that make immigration, strongly influences the perception of it as a problem. In this speech, have practically no fitted for the cultural and economic contribution of the phenomenon, although sometimes it does specify their rejection of racism and discrimination, is insufficient to predominantly an avalanche of conflicting events. Try to illustrate what is said through the analysis of journalistic accounts from newspapers such as ABC and El País. Finally, this paper is a reflection on the role of the media as key factors for social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration has become one of the most important challenges in Europe. Spain has experienced one of the major growths in the number of immigrants in the last years. Work is a central issue in the immigration phenomenon, and workers' well-being and organizational practices are particularly sensitive to culture. This paper analyses the relationship between acculturative strategies and a specific work-related response: emotional exhaustion, the main dimension of burnout syndrome. Three thousand and eighty six workers (47.9% immigrants, 52.8% nationals) took part in the study. Acculturative strategies, emotional exhaustion, and demographic variables were assessed with a self-administrated questionnaire. Descriptive, reliability and analysis of variance analyses were performed. Results show that immigrants have a tendency to choose integration as their acculturative strategy at work, while host nationals mainly choose separation and integration. Adding to this, national workers with more adaptive strategies report higher levels of emotional exhaustion. We conclude that the effort to understand the other group may increase the risk of developing emotional exhaustion. Finally, we present the limitations of the study and further research lines about the relationship between work and immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of North African Muslim immigrants in Europe grows, questions of cultural assimilation have moved to the forefront of discussion. Treated as the quintessential Other, Maghribines' long-term presence in France prompted a 2004 ban on religious symbols in public schools; it went without saying that the hijab was the primary target of this restriction. Politicians and public figures in Britain have called Muslim women's veiling practices antithetical to democratic citizenship, while Dutch conservatives have promised a ban on veiling in all public places (Anon 2006a, 2006b; Morris 2006). Spain, however, has developed a more ambivalent cultural and ideological relationship with the Muslim world and with North Africa in particular. Approximately 10% of all immigrants to Spain are from the Maghrib, and about 90% of those are from Morocco (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica). The proximity of Spain has made it an appealing entry point to the rest of Europe, as well as an accessible destination for work. This paper argues that Moroccans' vulnerability in Spain must be understood in terms of the unique ties between the two nations, as well as the specific brand of modern liberalism that has developed in Spain since 1975, the start of that nation's democracy. Key to Spanish liberalism is the defense of women's freedom, which finds voice in teleological narratives of liberation and self-actualisation. Concern over Moroccan women's subjugation to Islam and to male relatives has crystallised in discussions around the hijab, in particular. In this article, I analyse media coverage of hijab controversies in Spain, drawing also on my own fieldwork with Moroccan women and Spanish social service providers in Madrid. I argue for careful consideration of North African othering as a foil for Spanish discourses of progress and modernity - themselves historically situated and contestable variations upon wider European ideologies of liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent publication of National Immigration Survey lets to carry a wide study about the main characteristics of foreign population settled in Spain. This data source contains information referred to family structures and households. The principal thesis of this paper is to show how the rising transnational mobility produces a new frame in familiar relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, metaresearch is proposed as a tool for review and analysis of scientific publications. This concept refers to the need to critically evaluate and reflect what and how people research as a fundamental strategy of scientific progress. Our interest is situated in the field of the biomedicine and the study of health-illness-care process in foreign immigrants. The objective is to analyse how scientifically relevant questions about this population are selected, constructed and broached. Specifically, we aim to evaluate how ethnocentric/ethnicist and andocentric/sexist biases affect this process and its results. We analyse from a cultural diversity and gender perspective the scientific articles on immigration published from 1984 to 2006 indexed in the Spanish Medical Index-CSIC. In the majority of the articles, the definition of the sanitary and academic significant questions responds to ethnocentric and androcentric visions that strengthen social stereotypes and inequalities. Furthermore, they involve limitations of scientific rigour and validity, with consequences in the sanitary practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morocco and Spain share a history of mutual recognition and estrangement dating back centuries. Today, this relationship faces re-interpretation in an age of post-colonial migration, economic disparity, and ambiguous nationalities. The nebulous 'space between two coasts' is an important site of this re-negotiation, one that draws upon cultural links of the past in order to understand the present. Cuentos de las dos orillas [Tales of two shores], a bilingual Arabic-Spanish edition of eight short stories by both Moroccan and Spanish authors created in 1999, employs this cultural legacy in order to re-interpret the Hispano-Moroccan relationship as experienced on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar. The stories engage in an intertwined dialogue, each providing a window into how notions of 'Spanishness' and 'Moroccanness' are dependent upon one another. The author proposes that the result of this cooperative compilation is a 'traslado' (translation/transfer) of cultural memory, thus defining the exchange between Morocco and Spain as one of circularity. By analysing the stories 'Morir lo mas lejos posible' [To die as far as possible] by Antonio Alamo, 'El safor' [The safor] by El Astillero, and 'Diario de un emigrante clandestino' [Diary of a clandestine immigrant] by Rachid Nini, this paper traces the ways in which the narratives both rupture and perpetuate the sociopolitical and mythical relationship between Spain and Morocco via the themes of brotherhood, the performance of identity, and departure and return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an approximation to the labor market effects of immigrants in Spain, a country where labor market institutions and immigration policy exhibit some peculiarities, during the second half of the 1990s, the period in which immigration flows accelerated. By using alternative data sets, we estimate both the impact of legal and total immigration flows on the employment rates and wages of native workers, accounting for the possible occupational and geographical mobility of immigrants and native-born workers. Using different samples and estimation procedures, we have not found a significant negative effect of immigration on either the employment rates or wages of native workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, Spain has become a major immigration country with the associated economical, labour, cultural impact and its implications. This paper departs from a consideration of the complexity and multi-dimensionality of this phenomenon. A review is made of literature regarding the connexion between acculturation strategies deployed by the immigrants and social values —a key component of work fit and work meaning. Acculturation strategies in this exploratory study are based on Berry's Model. These strategies identify which work aspects are awarded more importance and to what extent cultures from both the country of origin and the host country influence the attribution of value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a discourse analysis of the Civic Ordinance of Barcelona, adopted by the City Hall of Barcelona- Spain in January of 2006, in order to typify and manage behaviour in the public spaces of the city. The textual corpus we used for this analysis is the Ordinance project in its two versions. The Discourse Analysis methodology used in this study has been proposed by different authors in this field (Martín Rojo, 2001; Parker, 1992; Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Van Dijk, 2003; Wetherell, 2001). Results point to the emergence of two kinds of discourses inside the text, as well as the strategies from which both discourses allow the construction of citizens' identities as a new way of governability in the spaces of contemporary European cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the consequences of international migration and the permanent settlement of immigrants in southern EU countries is the growing number of inter-country marriages and the formation of transnational families. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this article examines patterns of endogamy and exogamy (i.e. marriage within/outside a particular group or category) among African immigrants in Catalonia, focusing on bi-national Senegalese– and Gambian–Spanish couples. Socio-demographic profiles, transnationality, the dynamics of cultural change or retention, and the formation of transcultural identities are explored. The evidence presented suggests that social-class factors are more important than cultural origins in patterns of endogamy and exogamy, in the dynamics of living together and in the bringing-up of children of mixed unions. Such a conclusion negates culturalists’ explanations of endogamy and exogamy while, at the same time, emphasising the role of social actors as active subjects in these processes. I further argue that mixed couples and their offspring deal—to a greater or lesser extent—with multiple localisations and cultural backgrounds (i.e. here and there), rather than experiencing a ‘clash between two cultures’. Therefore, it would be a mistake to pretend that multicultural links do not exist and that they cannot be revitalised and functional. The paper starts and ends by addressing the complexities of processes of interculturalism, resisting an interpretation of hybridity and segregation as contradictory or exclusive realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]