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A magnificent atmosphere? Romanian immigration in the political debate of Madrid, Spain
Abstract
Immigration has consistently been one of the most controversial political topics in many European countries over recent years. Much research has consequently focused on highlighting and describing negative views of immigrants which dominate political debate. This has been particularly the case in studies of Spain. Yet such studies rarely examine positive views of immigration or explain the dominance of some views over others. This article offers a distinct contribution by examining the contested framing of Romanian immigration in Madrid's politics. At the same time that Romanian immigration has increased rapidly to form the largest single nationality population in the country and public opinion has registered specific concerns regarding this nationality, political debate has declared a ‘magnificent atmosphere’ of coexistence. The article explores why, highlighting the stability of discursive and institutional structures which emphasise values of democracy, equality and tolerance over potentially discriminatory acts and statements.
... Together with other factors, this generates a dangerous and unsafe situation for the recipient population [5,6,[12][13][14]20,21]. This is translated into a negative perception of UFM, accompanied by feelings of xenophobia and discrimination [1,[22][23][24]. It also explains the feelings of rejection and social exclusion felt by these children [25][26][27]. ...
Spain is one of the countries with the greatest influx of immigrants and, specifically, of unaccompanied foreign minors (UFMs). The educational and social inclusion of unaccompanied foreign minors poses both a challenge and a threat to current policy. Nonetheless, studies linking educational aspects to the phenomenon of the integration of these children are scarce and do not specify the most influential educational tools and strategies. In this sense, a descriptive, quantitative and cross-sectional research study is presented. The aim of this study is to examine whether variables such as age and the use of applications and social networks determine the personal learning environments (PLE) of unaccompanied foreign minors. The sample of the present study was formed by 624 individuals (⇢ = 92.1% (n = 575); ⇡ = 7.9% (n = 49)) aged between 8 and 17 years old. The majority came from Morocco and resided in the cities of Ceuta and Melilla. The “PLE and Social Integration of UFMs” questionnaire was used as the study instrument. Amongst the main findings, significant di↵erences are highlighted in the personal learning environments as a function of age-related psychosocial factors as they pertain to unaccompanied foreign minors. Four factors were seen to exist in relation to the personal learning environments of unaccompanied foreign minors: self-concept of the learning process, planning and management of learning, use of resources and tools, and communication and social interaction. The same trend was observed in the four factors, with older age groups reporting better scores. On the other hand, results show that the use of applications and social networks have a significant and favourable impact on personal learning environment construction.
... In the Madrid region, the migration from Romania, and, in particular, the necessity of eliminating the informal dwelling places of 'nomadic Romanian gypsies', as they are commonly called, has been the subject of lively debate for years. In his analysis of long-term political debates about disadvantaged Romanian migrants in Madrid, McMahon (2016) shows how political discourse has been shaped around these informal dwelling places and their inhabitants, identified as Roma. Initially, the local authorities justified the existence of shanty towns and their subsequent eviction using the language of social inclusion and human rights protection. ...
This book discusses how Europe’s Roma minorities have often been perceived as a threat to majority cultures and societies. Frequently, the Roma have become the target of nationalism, extremism, and racism. At the same time, they have been approached in terms of human rights and become the focus of programs dedicated to inclusion, anti-discrimination, and combatting poverty. This book reflects on this situation from the viewpoint of how the Roma are often ‘securitized,’ understood and perceived as ‘security problems.’ The authors discuss practices of securitization and the ways in which they have been challenged, and they offer an original contribution to debates about security and human rights interventions at a time in which multiple crises both in and of Europe are going hand-in-hand with intensified xenophobia and security rhetoric.
Huub van Baar is Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, and Senior Research Fellow of the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Ana Ivasiuc is Researcher at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany.
Regina Kreide is Professor of Political Theory at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany.
... In the Madrid region, the migration from Romania, and, in particular, the necessity of eliminating the informal dwelling places of 'nomadic Romanian gypsies', as they are commonly called, has been the subject of lively debate for years. In his analysis of long-term political debates about disadvantaged Romanian migrants in Madrid, McMahon (2016) shows how political discourse has been shaped around these informal dwelling places and their inhabitants, identified as Roma. Initially, the local authorities justified the existence of shanty towns and their subsequent eviction using the language of social inclusion and human rights protection. ...
This chapter analyses the practices of ‘voluntary return’1 directed at EU
migrants and implemented by state social services and private actors in
Madrid and Barcelona. These practices are officially presented as ‘services’ offered to immigrants from Romania, and they are instrumented as benevolent forms of state bureaucracy. Emphasizing the constant state pressure and surveillance enforced on vulnerable Romani migrants, I argue that these voluntary returns do not, as state officials and non-state agents suggest, represent a socially inclusive policy, rather that they are problematic practices of exclusion. Within the logic of humanitarianism, the condition of possibility for these state practices is created by the securitization ofRomani migrants and by the ways in which they are discursively and recurrently denounced as a threat to both society and to themselves.
... While most of the literature on discrimination has focused on non-European immigrants in Europe, there is starting to be a large body of literature focusing on discrimination of Eastern Europeans in Western Europe (Scheibner and Morrison 2009) more generally, and Romanians in Europe (see Fox et al. 2012, Moroşanu and Fox 2013, McMahon 2016, more particularly. This latter point is one also made in Gijsberts and McGinnity (2012)'s paper, but from the perspective of the destination country responses to new migrants. ...
This article analyses from a bottom-up perspective Romanians’ complex emotions surrounding their reasoning for applying for a French or British passport. It illustrates the extent to which interviewees’ fantasies of inclusion in the host countries are thought to be dependent on the political membership of the country of residence. It is argued that British/French naturalisation is perceived as a status enhancer, allowing the interviewees to overcome the marginalisation associated with their Romanian nationality.
Discrimination against minority ethnic groups has often been analyzed through the lenses of institutional action, antiminority rhetoric, and media framing in the countries of residence. However, we know little about how ethnic discrimination is approached in the home countries of these minorities. To address this gap in the literature, our article seeks to explain how Romanian parliamentarians address discrimination against coethnics abroad. We use inductive thematic analysis conducted on all of the parliamentary speeches about the discrimination of coethnics abroad in the Chamber of Deputies between 2008 and 2020. Our results indicate a relatively high degree of descriptive representation and an extensive concern about discrimination of coethnics abroad from parliamentarians across the political spectrum. The speeches about discrimination differ in content relative to the coethnic community of reference.
For a century, scholars have studied immigrant integration in a range of destinations. Yet, the precise role of context in shaping integration outcomes remains poorly understood. Drawing from an analysis of an original database of articles and books in migration studies, I argue that this knowledge gap may be due to two closely related tendencies in the scholarship. First, case selection has relied on criteria such as the immigrant population's size and growth rate that are not clearly connected to integration outcomes. Second, most scholars have studied either heavily urban contexts (with large immigrant populations) or very rural contexts (where the immigrant population is growing rapidly), while much less attention has been given to destinations in-between. To improve the understandings of the role of context in immigrant integration, migration scholars should endeavor to move past population criteria when selecting study sites and to study the full range of contexts where immigrants are settling. To contribute to these efforts, I propose a framework that does not rely on population or newness as criteria for case selection and that focuses, instead, on the components of context that existing research has shown matters for intergenerational mobility. I also introduce a typology of contexts based on possible combinations of four of these components and offer some initial hypotheses of how these context types might affect immigrant integration. The arguments presented here recenter the role of local context in migration studies and contribute to debates about where and how scholars should study context moving forward.
This article explores the concept of “whiteness” going beyond skin colour to look at its socio-economic and cultural components in the case of intra-EU Romanian migration to two different national/local contexts. Romanian migrants face widespread public demonizing and discrimination in Western Europe, with political campaigns against them focusing more on the job market in the case of the UK and the presence of the Roma minority in France. The analysis is based on qualitative research done around 2012–2016, at the height of anti-Romanian migration sentiment in the EU, and specifically on in-depth interviews conducted with 76 participants (migrants and key informants) in London and Paris. Following studies of the racialization of Eastern European migrants in Western Europe, this article exposes how in London, Romanians’ inclusion/exclusion in the white space is experienced mostly in occupational and economic terms, while in Paris ethnicity and other cultural markers gain greater weight.
Debatten over de integratie van immigranten vervallen vaak in wat academici en politici 'nationale modellen van integratie ' noemen, omdat onderzoekers en beleidsmakers verlangen naar een herkenbare structuur. In Nederland wordt deze symbiose gevoed door het multiculturalisme, iets waarvoor de Nederlandse samenleving lange tijd als exemplarisch werd beschouwd. Toch blijft de integratie van migranten een van de meest urgente zaken voor de sociale en politieke belangen van Nederland. Dit boek zet vraagtekens bij het idee dat er ooit een coherent of consistent Nederlandse model van integratie is geweest. De analyse van het migratie-onderzoek in Nederland en hoe immigratie wordt omlijst en herkaderd via diverse dialogen, biedt een zeer dynamische kijk de invloed hiervan op en de evolutie van het integratiebeleid. Gefocust wordt op het Nederland van de afgelopen drie decennia, maar de bevindingen zijn ook van toepassing op Frankrijk, Duitsland en het Verenigd Koninkrijk, en de zo ontstane inzichten resulteren in universele vragen: Waar gaan de huidige politieke en academische controverses eigenlijk over? Hoe kunnen overheden inspelen op de uitdagingen van onze tijd? En welke bijdrage kunnen sociale wetenschappers hierin leveren?
Justus Uitermark ontwikkelde een nieuwe aanpak om veranderingen in machtsverhoudingen te verklaren en past deze aanpak toe op integratiepolitiek in Nederland. Met een netwerkanalyse van het publieke debat bracht hij verschuivende machtsrelaties in kaart. Aan de hand van 5.500 verwijzingen op de opiniepagina's van NRC Handelsblad, Trouw en De Volkskrant bestudeerde hij de vorming van tegenstellingen en coalities. Het blijkt dat culturalisten (debatdeelnemers die stellen dat onze - verlichte, liberale, Nederlandse - cultuur moet worden beschermd tegen - etnische en Islamitische - minderheidsculturen) hechtere relaties onderhouden en meer achter hun leiders staan dan hun (talrijke, maar gefragmenteerde) tegenstanders. Mede daardoor kon Ayaan Hirsi Ali grote invloed verwerven binnen het debat. Daarnaast onderzocht Uitermark hoe veranderingen in het debat doorwerken in het beleid van Amsterdam en Rotterdam. De resultaten zijn verrassend. In de periode dat Leefbaar Rotterdam de gemeenteraad domineerde (2002-2006) zijn migrantenorganisaties over de hele linie eerder versterkt dan verzwakt. In Amsterdam daarentegen had slechts een klein aantal organisaties invloed en toegang tot subsidies. De verklaring voor deze opmerkelijke verschillen zoekt Uitermark in de institutionele structuur van beide steden; die institutionele structuur blijkt belangrijker dan het discours van het gemeentebestuur.
In this article we examine some discursive aspects of political legitimation by analyzing the speech of the Spanish Secretary of the Interior, Mayor Oreja; on the occasion of a military-style expulsion of a group of African `illegal' migrants from Melilla—the Spanish enclave in Morocco—in the summer of 1996. After a theoretical analysis of legitimation, we study three levels of legitimation: (a) pragmatic: various strategies of the justification of controversial official actions; (b) semantic: the ways a discourse represents its partisan view of the events or properties of actors as `true' or as the `facts'; and (c) sociopolitical: the way official discourse self-legitimates itself as authoritative and delegitimates alternative discourses. For these various aspects of legitimation, several levels of discursive structure (style, grammar, rhetoric, semantic moves, etc.) are examined in some detail.
This article puts forward a number of theoretical considerations relevant for understanding the relationship between immigration policies and the flows and settlement of Moroccan immigrants in Spain. The basic argument is that there is a combination of perceptions and realities that have to be taken into account in any analysis exploring the interface between migrants' plans and their actions and state policies.The structure of this article will include two main parts. In section 1 the main patterns of the Moroccan immigrant group coming to Spain are presented, justifying its selection as a case study. In section 2 the basic results of a set of interviews with main stakeholders and Moroccan immigrants about immigration flows and Spanish policies are introduced. Finally, I will end with some theoretical considerations for further research.
This article reviews the evolution of the Spanish Popular Party (PP) in a decade in which, after 20 years in opposition, it reached national government, ruling Spain from 1996 to 2004, and finally going unexpectedly into opposition. This period is characterized by a lack of fundamental party changes, making the PP a clear example of how, when a party succeeds, internal changes are unlikely.
The article analyzes the work of the women Rumanian immigrants, like irregular wor-
kers in the domestic service of the Community of Madrid, (CAM) insisting on the
care of elderly. It ties two very present tendencies in the Spanish society of beginnings
of the 21st century: on the one hand, the marked aging of the population and on the
other side, immigration, foreign manpower needed in the domestic sector and taken
care of people majors. It jointly analyzes the context of the immigration of the Ruma-
nian woman considering his departure situation and professional trajectory; it is in-
vestigated in the labour situation and the valuation that the immigrants in relation to
the work carried out in the Spanish addresses realise; finally it is taken care of the
perspective of future of this sector in the market of Spanish work
We explain support for extreme right parties (ERPs) in Western Europe through the analysis of individual-level characteristics and national-level contextual variables. Using Eurobarometer Surveys for 1988, 1994, 1997, and 2000 and standard aggregate indicators, we employ appropriate regression models to analyze the probability of voting for an ERP over time and across the seven EU countries with significant ERPs as well as the EU 15. Confirming studies using different or less comprehensive data sets, we find that the bulk of support for ERPs comes from young, less-educated males who harbor anti-immigrant attitudes and are dissatisfied with the political system. However, our findings diverge from previous literature in several instances. We find that individual attitudes, specifically anti-immigrant sentiment and political disaffection, are better predictors of intentions of voting for ERPs than are more traditional socioeconomic characteristics such as manual occupational status, personal unemployment, or national unemployment levels.Comparative European Politics (2005) 3, 261288. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cep.6110063
In this article an empirically oriented conceptualization of frames is developed, using the issue of asylum and illegal immigration in the Belgian press as a test case. The methodological focus of this study is on the question of how these frames can be detected in the coverage. How can they be defined independently of the researcher’s perspective, knowing that the naming of frames in itself already involves a kind of framing? Two frames are reconstructed and deductively ‘measured’ by a content analysis: on the one hand, ‘asylum-seekers are innocent victims’ and, on the other hand, ‘asylum-seekers are intruders’. In the second phase, this article examines to what extent eight Belgian newspapers used these two frames to cover the issue of asylum. A homogeneity analysis by means of HOMALS is introduced in the framing research. It turns out to be a fruitful way to establish the frames in the news more precisely. The construction of indices made it possible to explore the evolution of the use of frames over time. Surprisingly, the Christmas mood was a factor that caused a frame-shift and it even led to a media hype.
Social movements contain structures of beliefs and values that guide critical action and aid activists' understandings. These are worthy of interrogation, not least because they contain points of articulation with ideational formations found in both mainstream politics and academia. They offer an alternative view of society, economy and polity that is grounded in protagonists' experience and struggle. However, the ideational content of social movements is often obscured by a focus on particular, immediate goals; by their orientation to certain forms of action; and by the mediated, simplified nature of their communication. Additionally, recent social movements display a tendency to coalition action, bringing a diverse set of political understandings in concert on highly specific campaigns. This conceptual article seeks an approach to identifying the messages within social movements that remains sensitive to their complexity, dynamism and heterogeneity. Through a critique of the concept of ‘interpretative frames’ as developed in social movement studies, I describe the novel concept ‘orientational frame’. In contrast to social movement scholars' tendency to focus on instrumental claim-making by movement organizations, I emphasize deeply held, relatively stable sets of ideas that allow activists to justify contentious political action. Through an engagement with Michael Freeden's morphological approach to understanding ideologies I attempt to draw frame analysis away from the positivistic attempt to delineate general processes into a hermeneutic endeavour more suitable to understanding the richly detailed, context dependent ideas of particular social movements.
Given how central the immigration issue has been for the new radical right-wing parties in Western Europe, many have turned to immigration-related factors in trying to explain their emergence and electoral mobilisation. This research has convincingly shown that immigration scepticism (i.e., wanting to reduce immigration) is among the principal factors for predicting who will vote for a radical right-wing party. However, earlier studies have often uncritically equated immigration scepticism with xenophobia or even racism. By using data from the first round of the European Social Survey (2003) involving six West European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway), this article differentiates between immigration scepticism and xenophobic attitudes. The analyses strongly indicate that xenophobic attitudes are a far less significant factor than immigration scepticism for predicting who will vote for the new radical right. Moreover, this article analyses the extent to which anti-immigration frames employed by radical right-wing parties resonate with attitudes held by supporting voters, and to what extent they make a difference for people's decision to vote for the radical right. The analyses indicate that frames linking immigration to criminality and social unrest are particularly effective for mobilising voter support for the radical right. Finally, the article criticises earlier research that explained radical right-wing voting with reference to ethnic competition theory. In contrast to much of the earlier research that used macro-level measures and comparisons, this study uses (self-reported) individual-level data on the degree of ethnic heterogeneity of people's area of residence. Hypotheses derived from ethnic competition theory receive less support than expected, which indicates that earlier research may have overestimated the significance of these factors.
During the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s immigration in Spain raised keen interest in relatively restrictive circles (the administration, associations, academia, etc.), who shared the opinion that “Spain was experiencing a demographic transformation, turning from a country of emigration into a country of immigration”. As we enter the 21st century it is witnessing another important qualitative change. the issue is no longer a matter of administrative and “technical” concern, but political parties and society in general have begun to take it seriously. At the beginning of this decade then, this topic has become a “cuestión de Estado” (Raison d'État).
A general overview based on relevant events over the period 1999–2001 shows us how immigration has definitively entered the social and political agenda. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of this migration dynamic through a case study: the riots that took place in a market-gardening town in southeast Spain, El Ejido, in February 2000. Of all social events, El Ejido is the one that has played a pivotal role in framing the political and social debate, since it synthesises the main issues reflecting the Spanish management of immigration. These events have been the subject of many articles and books offering different and controversial interpretations. With El Ejido, Spain “discovered” immigration and began to undertake the formulation of its immigration issue. This is why it is worth focusing on this case study. The main questions I will pose are: what can we learn form the Spanish context? How can the contextual analysis of the El Ejido case study contribute to the debate on multicultural citizenship in Europe? My reasoning will move from the analysis of the particular context to subsequent theoretical reflections. In the concluding remarks I will summarize the main arguments challenging Spanish management of immigration two years after El Ejido.
At a time when immigration and ethnic relations issues are hotly disputed across Europe, and challenged by minorities and xenophobes, the explicit aim of this collection is to present substantive cross-national contributions on this new quality of contentious politics. That European countries have dealt with the integration of minorities in different ways, often bound up in conceptions of nationhood and citizenship traditions, indicates that research will benefit from more systematic cross-national comparisons. Secondly, the new contentiousness of immigration and ethnic relations politics points to a need for more systematic linkages between policy analyses and the public conflicts that are mobilized by xenophobic, minority, and anti-racist movements. Thirdly, although the topics of the extreme right and ethnic minorities have been largely dealt with as distinct fields, a greater cross-thematic conceptualisation is necessary The book divides into four parts. In the first, authors offer conceptual approaches to migration and ethnic relations politics drawing strongly on cross-national observations. Parts two and three are empirical analyses based on a method of systematic cross-national comparison. Whereas the institutionalised aspects of immigration and ethnic relations politics are the topic of part two, the third focuses more on the public contentious dimensions. Finally, in light of the important claims that nation-states are no longer the significant framework of reference for politics in a globalizing world, the contributions to part four address the emergence of the transnational level of political authority and its implications for national and sub-national politics, and challenges by social movements.
Spain and Italy have recently become countries of large-scale immigration. This provocative book explores immigration law and the immigrant experience in these southern European nations, and exposes the tension between the temporary and contingent legal status of most immigrants, and the government emphasis on integration. This book reveals that while law and the rhetoric of policymakers stress the urgency of integration, not only are they failing in that effort, but law itself plays a role in that failure. In addressing this paradox, the author combines theoretical insights and extensive data from myriad sources collected over more than a decade to demonstrate the connections among immigrants' role as cheap labor - carefully inscribed in law - and their social exclusion, criminalization, and racialization. Extrapolating from this economics of alterité, this book engages more general questions of citizenship, belonging, race and community in this global era.
The idea that the political context sets the parameters within which political participation and mobilization occur is quite common among students of social movements and contentious politics (see Eisinger, 1973; Kriesi et al., 1995; McAdam, 1999; Tarrow, 1998; Tilly, 1978). This holds as well for the political activities carried out by migrants’ organizations (Bloemraad, 2006; Vermeulen, 2006). However, previous work has stressed the impact of the institutionalized political system, largely overlooking more cultural and symbolic contextual aspects. In addition, previous work has looked at the role of political opportunities for explaining collective action, focusing much less on how they influence individual participation and behaviour (but see Leighley, 2001; Morales, 2009). This chapter engages with the systematic analysis of a set of ‘opportunity structures’, ranging from institutional opportunities to discursive opportunities, for the political participation of migrants at the individual level. To what extent does the political context influence individual participation? If there is an impact, how can we disentangle the institutional from the discursive aspects of that context? What are the implications in terms of policy-making?
The UK Independence Party (UKIP) is the most significant new party in British politics for a generation. In recent years UKIP and their charismatic leader Nigel Farage have captivated British politics, media and voters. Yet both the party and the roots of its support remain poorly understood. Where has this political revolt come from? Who is supporting them, and why? How are UKIP attempting to win over voters? And how far can their insurgency against the main parties go? Drawing on a wealth of new data – from surveys of UKIP voters to extensive interviews with party insiders – in this book prominent political scientists Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin put UKIP's revolt under the microscope and show how many conventional wisdoms about the party and the radical right are wrong. Along the way they provide unprecedented insight into this new revolt, and deliver some crucial messages for those with an interest in the state of British politics, the radical right in Europe and political behaviour more generally.
This case study of immigration law in Spain examines the contradiction between the rhetoric of immigration politics stressing immigrant integration and the reality of immigrant exclusion and marginalization. Drawing from a variety of secondary sources, government documents, and interviews, I show how Spanish policies regularly "irregularize" Third World immigrants. Further, I argue that this legal construction of illegality consigns these immigrants to the margins of the economy where they provide what policymakers appreciatively call "flexibility" to the post-Fordist Spanish economy. Finally, I discuss the ways in which racial "otherness," exclusion, and economic function are mutually constituted, and the role of law in that process.
This article examines the changing dynamics of electoral competition around an increasingly salient issue in Spanish politics: immigration. We argue that, although the issue is close to a ‘valence’ one in terms of the views of the electorate, the behaviour of the three main state-wide parties – analysed with data from party manifestos for the 1993–2011 period and of electoral campaign rhetoric between 2000 and 2011 – departs from the expectations of issue ownership competition. The result for the Spanish mainstream has therefore been a recurring ambivalence between adopting clear spatial positions on the issue and playing the competence card.
A collection of innovative essays representing the most recent developments in poetry as discourse, the discourse of power, and discourse of psychiatry and psychosis. The essays in this volume deal with questions of interpretation of poetry, psychoanalysis, and political theory. All are presented here as appropriate objects of discourse studies which go beyond conventional analysis.
How do we account for the reinforcement of identity particularisms despite transnational integration? This paper addresses the question by comparing two ethnolinguistic groups, Silesians and Kashubs in Poland. It is argued that in order to obtain state protection and tools to develop and survive, ethnic entrepreneurs adjust to institutions and discourses. Census politics, state laws' elaboration, transnational institutions represent openings to which groups adjust by reframing identity claims. In doing so, they re-imagine and reinforce their communities. Following Rogers Brubaker, group-making is presented as an eventful process where ethnic elites invest identity categories with groupness by taking advantage of opportunity windows at hand. Further, tracing changing political opportunities, strategic adjustments and groups' boomerang effect bid, the paper embeds identity groups within the social movement literature.
This work provides an analysis of the structure and transformations of the official political debate over immigration control within the Italian political elite over the last three decades. Through a close historical reading of the Italian political scene based primarily on parliamentary debates, this article charts the key policy frames articulated in different periods of Italian immigration history in relation to the nature of the immigration control problem (cognitive dimension) and the suggested policy solutions (normative dimension). Moreover, it highlights the various factors – from party competition and political ideologies to the pressure of interest groups, the characteristics of national political institutions and the normative pressure from Europe and European institutions – that have influenced immigration policy frames and have interacted with them in shaping policy goals.
This article examines media and political asylum discourse in Luxembourg between 1993 and 2000. A frame analysis of media
and political asylum discourses and a headline analysis of news coverage of the refugee and asylum question were implemented
to that effect. The results show that media and political actors in Luxembourg used four frames to refer to the refugee and
asylum question: administrative, genuineness, human dignity, and return home. Overall, the framing of asylum discourse in Luxembourg was shown to reflect a restrictive undercurrent—relating to the prevention
of the asylum systems of member states of the European Union—identified in European asylum discourse. The article concludes
by noting that the framing of media and political asylum discourse in Luxembourg was affected by national, international and
supranational concerns relating to the regulation of asylum.
The papers in this special issue of JEMS illustrate how the field of citizenship studies is moving towards a much more systematic comparative approach. They also indicate that the gap between political and legal branches might be narrowing. This brief concluding contribution reflects on a perspective that goes beyond the currently dominant framework, without replacing it. For both comparative and normative purposes, we need to study not merely the citizenship traditions, laws and policies of states considered separately, but rather as part of intertwined citizenship constellations.
A B S T R A C T ! In this article an empirically oriented conceptualization of frames is developed, using the issue of asylum and illegal immigration in the Belgian press as a test case. The methodological focus of this study is on the question of how these frames can be detected in the coverage. How can they be defined independently of the researcher's perspective, knowing that the naming of frames in itself already involves a kind of framing? Two frames are reconstructed and deductively 'measured' by a content analysis: on the one hand, 'asylum-seekers are innocent victims' and, on the other hand, 'asylum-seekers are intruders'. In the second phase, this article examines to what extent eight Belgian newspapers used these two frames to cover the issue of asylum. A homogeneity analysis by means of HOMALS is introduced in the framing research. It turns out to be a fruitful way to establish the frames in the news more precisely. The construction of indices made it possible to explore the evolution of the use of frames over time. Surprisingly, the Christmas mood was a factor that caused a frame-shift and it even led to a media hype. !
This contribution analyses immigration policy during the five years of centre-right government in Italy 2001–06 led by Silvio Berlusconi and his Forza Italia party. It analyses the immigration discourse of the four main centre-right parties and the negotiations surrounding the landmark Bossi–Fini immigration law. It shows that, despite harsh and illiberal rhetoric, there were unprecedented increases in Italy's legally resident foreign population between 2001 and 2006. This contribution demonstrates how, why and when party system and governmental variables intervened in the relationship between policy ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ to generate outcomes that did not correspond with some of the harsher contributions to public debate, particularly those by the regional-populist Lega Nord party. Beyond the specificities of the Italian case, this contribution shows that apparent contradictions, paradoxes and ambiguities can actually be functional elements of immigration politics (and of thorny social and political issues, more generally) and that supposed policy failings need to be related to the political processes that generate them and to the pay-offs to political actors that occur within these processes, that may not be negative.
In this book, the way racism is reproduced through everyday talk is analyzed. . . . Thus, the first step must be a clarification of the cognitive dimensions of racism. . . . Second, we analyze how ethnic prejudice becomes manifest in discourse. . . . Therefore, we also examine how discourse about ethnic minority groups is monitored by interaction strategies (e.g., those of positive self-presentation and persuasion), as well as by social goals, norms, and values. . . . Fourth, we analyze how prejudiced discourse is understood, evaluated, and represented by in-group recipients who participate in such talk. . . . Additional interview data have also been collected in Southern California, especially with the aim of finding out whether the results of the research in Amsterdam not only hold for the Netherlands or Western Europe but are also relevant in the United States. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
What is the effect of democratic competition on the power of elites to frame public opinion? We address this issue first by defining the range of competitive contexts that might surround any debate over a policy issue. We then offer a theory that predicts how audiences, messages, and competitive environments interact to influence the magnitude of framing effects. These hypotheses are tested using experimental data gathered on the opinions of adults and college students toward two policy issues—the management of urban growth and the right of an extremist group to conduct a rally. Our results indicate that framing effects depend more heavily on the qualities of frames than on their frequency of dissemination and that competition alters but does not eliminate the influence of framing. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for the study of public opinion and democratic political debate.
All the historical moments in which the Basque debate reached political protagonism in contemporary Spain coincided with political contexts of institutional democratisation. The debate on patriotism in the Basque Country is connected with a uniform narrative regarding the Basques and their moral distance from the Spanish nation: the ‘Basque problem’. This narrative has fostered a confrontational discourse between Spanish and Basque nationalism. It has also promoted recourse to specific stereotypical images of the Basques, which bind ethnicity to collective identity. Such representations reveal that the invention of the Basque country as a uniform ethnic collective had much more to do with the internal contradictions of Spanish national identity – and later of Basque identity – than with the existence of a secular conflict between Basques and Spaniards. The Basque case shows that every ‘ethnic conflict’ requires adequate contextualisation in order to avoid simplifying its origins and past pathways to make it conform to present uses.
The logic of transnational capital and the ongoing European imperative of ‘competition’ have created unofficial economies, seemingly exceptional situations in which the state is left to grapple with the problem of essential but ‘illegal’ labour in spaces in which it is no longer unambiguously sovereign. This article discusses Romanian labourers working informally, and often temporarily, in an agricultural area characterized by intensive plastic greenhouse production in Almería province, Spain. Informal employment is arranged through personal contacts and connections, advertisements, or anonymously in the plaza, the public square. Wages are often negotiated through the person of a Romanian intermediary, who organizes workers into teams, contracts with Spanish growers, and retains a significant proportion of the total pay. It is argued here that although technically outside of state jurisdiction, some of this ‘illegal’ economic activity embodies normalized, unexceptional features of the ‘official’ labour market. These include the general reliability of obtaining work with predictable wages and some opportunity for occupational and economic mobility within the sector for a limited number of people, as well as work‐related hierarchies, a racialized division of the area's labour force, and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production in the interests of prolonging the provision of flexible and cheap migrant labour with the complicity of the state.
Résumé
La logique du capital transnational et l'impératif européen de « concurrence » ont donné naissance à des économies non officielles, situations apparemment exceptionnelles dans lesquelles l'État doit résoudre le problème d'une main‐d'œuvre indispensable mais « illégale » dans des espaces où il n'est plus entièrement souverain. L'auteur décrit ici le travail informel et souvent temporaire de Roumains dans une région agricole de la province d'Almería, en Espagne, caractérisée par une production intensive sous serres en plastique. Les embauches informelles s'organisent par contacts personnels et relations, par petites annonces, ou de façon anonyme sur les places de village. Les salaires sont souvent négociés par un intermédiaire roumain qui organise aussi les équipes d'ouvriers, sous‐traite avec les cultivateurs espagnols et se réserve une part conséquente de la paie. Bien qu'elle échappe techniquement à la juridiction de l'État, une partie de cette activitééconomique « illégale » reprend des caractéristiques normalisées et ordinaires du marché du travail « officiel » : fiabilité d'un travail rémunéré de façon prévisible, possibilité de mobilité professionnelle et économique dans le secteur pour un nombre limité de personnes, hiérarchisation du travail, division racialisée de la main‐d'œuvre dans la région, reproduction des relations capitalistes de production en vue de prolonger la fourniture de main‐d'œuvre migrante flexible et bon marché, avec la complicité des pouvoirs publics.
The elections to the European Parliament (EP) held in June 2009 marked a breakthrough for the extreme right British National Party (BNP), while in other European states extreme right parties (ERPs) similarly made gains. However, the attitudinal drivers of support for the BNP and ERPs more generally remain under-researched. This article draws on unique data that allow unprecedented insight into the attitudinal profile of ERP voters in Britain – an often neglected case in the wider literature. A series of possible motivational drivers of extreme right support are separated out: racial prejudice, anti-immigrant sentiment, protest against political elites, Euroscepticism, homophobia and Islamophobia. It is found that BNP support in the 2009 EP elections was motivationally diverse, with racist hostility, xenophobia and protest voting all contributing significantly to BNP voting. The analysis suggests that the BNP, which has long been a party stigmatised by associations with racism and violent extremism, made a key breakthrough in 2009. While racist motivations remain the strongest driver of support for the party, it has also begun to win over a broader coalition of anti-immigrant and anti-elite voters.
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.
From the introduction: THE Spanish general election of 14 March 2004, which took place only three days after the Madrid bombings on the 11 March, produced a change of government that opinion surveys had not predicted. It is easy to assume, therefore, that the change of government from the right-wing Popular Party (PP), which had governed Spain for the previous eight years, to the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) was a direct result of the terrorist bombings which left 192 dead and over 1,500 injured. While the terrorist bombings undoubtedly influenced the general election, this article argues that a more detailed reading of the last four years of the Spanish political context shows that the change of government was not simply a result of the ‘four days that changed Spain’.2 The Madrid bombings acted as a catalyst for change, but the desire for change had built up gradually, following the PP’s second ...
