Ricard Zapata-Barrero

Policies and public opinion towards immigrants: the Spanish case

Abstract By tackling negative opinions towards immigration we can create a basis to orientate policies that seek to reduce them. My purpose is to highlight that the analysis of immigration in Spain exemplifies a clear link between policies and public opinion. It is this link that is at the basis of what I will call the ambivalence of Spanish public opinion, when border and integration issues are compared.

The Muhammad cartoons controversy in comparative perspective

When the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose, commissioned the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which were printed on 30 September 2005, he did not imagine in his ‘wildest dreams’, as he wrote later, that the publication would eventually lead to the worst foreign policy crisis in Denmark since the Second World War (Rose 2006: 17). The images were presented in the paper within a frame of concern for free speech, misguided respect for religious feelings, a rising tendency towards self-censorship – and accompanied with the later infamous expression about secular democracy involving citizens being able to stand ‘scorn, mockery and contempt’. The full quote runs like this:

The Spanish Governance of EU borders: Normative Questions

Spain has a relatively short history of immigration compared to other European countries. Entry into the European Community in 1986 forced Spain to draw up the first legislation on immigration in 1985 (LO 5/1985 Ley Orgánica 7/1985 sobre derechos y libertades de los extranjeros en España). After that, four more immigration laws appeared within three years, from 2000 to 2003. Effectively, since 2000 the Spanish government has been in a continuous search for a legal framework to run its immigration policies. The frequent changes in Spain’s immigration law are due mainly to the tendency to link legislation to current immigration flows. This so-called efecto llamada (‘call effect’) was strategically constructed by the former right-wing government of the Partido Popular and its president, Jose Maria Aznar. Although political parties agree on the importance of immigration and that it presents a problem for the Spanish state, they disagree on how exactly to manage immigration flows. One of the main themes on the Spanish political agenda is therefore related to borders and the control of immigration flows. The arrival of undocumented immigrants at the Canary Islands in 2006 is exemplary here. The question of how many people could enter governs policies, rather than the question what could be done once they are in Spain. This explains the results of some public opinion polls on immigration (e.g., Barómetro del CIS, November 2005, study 2625), showing that 59.6 per cent of the Spanish population consider that there are too many immigrants, and that the majority support restrictive policies (84.7 per cent think the best policy is to allow entry only to those who have a labour contract). The most recent barometer (Barómetro del CIS, September 2006, study 2654) demonstrates, for the first time in several years (when the topic ranked between the ninth and the second position), that immigration is the most important concern for Spanish citizens. There is a clear link between a lack of governance and the attitudes of Spanish citizens towards immigrants, as these attitudes are mostly reactive towards

Managing Diversity in Spanish Society: A Practical Approach

This paper examines the main elements of Spanish diversity management and specifically its philosophy. It defends the argument that Spain follows a practical philosophy. ‘Practical philosophy’ refers to a way of managing diversity which is not based on established and preconceived ideas, projected by its own social construction such as French republicanism or British multiculturalism, but rather on questions and answers generated by the practice of governance of diversity. The Spanish practical philosophy is neither universalistic nor closed by rigid theoretical principles. At this point, the problem emerges when this context acts as a restraint for proactive policies, since it is based on an identity, a history and a structure that impede innovation and change. The first section of the paper describes the Spanish diversity management framework, by focusing on the identity, the historical and the structural contexts. The second section, analyses three main policy realms – education, labour market and political rights policy realms – applying the framework discussed in the first section. Finally, I present an outline of the basic elements of the Spanish ‘practical philosophy’ of diversity management.

Interculturalism in the post-multicultural debate: a defence

The main purpose of this article is to formulate a defence of the emerging intercultural policy paradigm for the benefit of those who are still somewhat reluctant to accept its proper place within the current migration-related diversity policy debate. My defence will take two main lines of argumentation:Firstly, I will state that the increasing intensity of the intercultural policy paradigm must be placed in the present-day post-multicultural period, which recognizes the strengths ​​of the multicultural policy paradigm but also the limits to its process for recognizing differences. The role played by the emerging national civic policy paradigm (a renovated version of assimilation), prioritizing duties before rights, will also be considered crucial to better contextualize interculturalism.Secondly, I will try to identify the main distinctive features of interculturalism, which legitimize its proper place within the diversity debate today. Without rejecting rights-based and duties-based policy approaches, interculturalism places more emphasis on a contacts-based policy approach, aimed at fostering communication and relationships among people from different backgrounds, including national citizens. This approach focuses on common bonds rather than differences. It also views diversity as an advantage and a resource, and centres its policy goals on community cohesion and reframing a common public culture that places diversity within rather than outside the so-called Unity. In reviewing the current literature and the origins of the intercultural policy paradigm, I restate its contribution towards resolving current trends in transnationalism, changing identities, superdiversity and the rise of populist anti-immigrant parties. These are issues the old multicultural project has struggled to deal with, which has provoked the current disillusionment. Lastly, I will propose a research avenue to further consolidate interculturalism as a distinctive and legitimate policy approach.

Circular Temporary Labour Migration: Reassessing Established Public Policies

Circular Temporary Labour Migration (CTLM) is being promoted as an innovative and viable way of regulating the flow of labour migrants. Based on a specific empirical case study, we identify an unexpected outcome of CTLM programmes: the emergence of a new empirical migrant category, the circular labour migrant, which is as yet theoretically unnamed and lacks recognition by public institutions. We argue that, to date, there have been two historical phases of circular labour migration: one with total deregulation and another with partial regulation, involving private actors supported by public institutions. In a developed welfare state context, it would be normatively pertinent to expect a step towards a third phase, involving the institutionalization of this new trend in mobility by the formulation of a public policy. Current legal, political, social, and economic frameworks have to be reassessed in order to recognise the category of the circular labour migrant.

Theorizing the ‘local turn’ in a multi-level governance framework of analysis: a case study in immigrant policies

This Special Issue speaks to the emergent literature on the role of local governments in the context of broader multi-level governance (MLG) networks (Bache and Flinders, 2004; Hooghe and Marks, 2001; Peters and Pierre, 2001; Piattoni, 2010; Stephenson, 2013). Although often applied to European Union (EU) national-state relations or to federal states, we believe that MLG can also be used as a framework of analysis for relations between local, regional, national and EU governments in a broader sense. Furthermore, much of the MLG literature is currently considering specific policy areas, such as environment, climate change, social cohesion and higher education. Instead, we will focus on a policy topic that is currently challenging MLG in Europe in a profound way: immigrant policies. In particular, we consider the linkages between MLG and the growing importance of local governance in the area of immigrant policies. Although often strongly framed in the context of national models of integration, recent studies direct attention to the local – mainly city – level, which has become increasingly prominent and entrepreneurial in the field of migrant integration. In this respect, we will speak of a ‘local turn’ that we will attempt to make sense of from an MLG perspective. This Special Issue argues that although there is a growing interest in the local governance of migrant integration, very little work has been done on the implications of this turn for the MLG of migrant integration (see, for instance, the seminal

Interculturalism in Cities

Cities are increasingly recognized as new players in diversity studies, and many of them are showing evidence of an intercultural shi . As an emerging concept and policy, interculturalism is becoming the most pragmatic answer to concrete concerns in cities. Within this framework, this book covers two major concerns: how to conceptualize and how to implement intercultural policies. rough the use of theoretical and comparative case studies, the current most prominent contributors in the eld examine an area that multicultural policies have missed in the past: interaction between people from di erent cultures and national backgrounds. By compiling the recent research in Europe and elsewhere this book concludes that interculturalism is becoming both an attractive and e cient new paradigm for diversity management.

Multilevel Governance of Immigration in Multinational States: ‘Who Governs?’ Reconsidered

This chapter constructs a theoretical framework for approaching both the impact of multilevel governance on immigration policies and the impact of immigration policies on multilevel governance. While the question could be applied to almost all federal regimes, we focus on multinational states. Within the emerging debate connecting multilevel governance and immigration policies, we propose a heuristic model; that is, an interpretative framework containing a set of concepts and categories that can help to map the nexus between multilevel governance and immigration policy. This mapping task aims to suggest a research programme that is theoretically grounded and empirically viable. To accomplish its interpretative function, this heuristic model has to meet three main methodological conditions: first, it must be comprehensive enough to encompass the variety of perspectives within this nexus; second, it must be integrative in the sense that it takes into account all of the steps in the governance and policy processes; and third, it should provide a toolkit for empirical comparison.

Catalunya, terra d’acollida: Stateless Nationalist Party Discourses on Immigration in Catalonia

In 1987, the Generalitat1 launched the institutional campaign’ som sis Milions’ (We are six million). It was aimed at expressing the idea that there are no differences between being born in Catalonia or being an immigrant (El Pais, 2009). Today Catalonia has more than 7.5 million inhabitants and most of this increase is due to the arrival of immigrants from third world countries. Even if migration is not a new phenomenon in Catalonia, the diversity of origins and the rapid pace at which it has taken place during the last decades are new (Franco-Guillen, 2011). Furthermore, the management of immigration coincides with the rise of sub-state nationalist movements seeking to advance self-government and their own nation-building projects (Whithol de Wenden and Zapata-Barrero, 2011). This has been acknowledged by the different governments that have ruled the Generalitat since the beginning of the migratory process. Efforts have been made to manage what has been mostly described as ‘a challenge’. From public policies to cross-sectional plans, including a National Agreement on Immigration (PNI, 2008) and a Law for the reception of immigrants, we can say that immigration has been monitored by the Catalan government since its very inception (for an overview see, Zapata-Barrero, 2012a). Furthermore, an awareness that certain discourses on immigration can lead to racist and xenophobic attitudes and thus threaten social cohesion has been present in many debates in the Catalan political arena.