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Managing immigration in Spain: political discourses on migrants’ integration at the central, regional and municipal levels

Belén Fernández Suárez The International Migration Sociology Team (ESOMI) University of A Corunna (Spain) www.esomi.es belenfernandez@udc.es Spain, as a federal State de facto, shares its responsibilities on migrant’s integration at the different governmental levels: central, regional and municipal. In this paper we will analyze the discourse of the main political parties represented in the different administrative bodies. We hypothesize that the closer the government level, there is higher the degree of knowledge and concretion of the proposals and more similarity amongst political parties holding opposed ideologies, both in terms of defining migrants’ integration and the policies that should be set in motion. Namely, ideology becomes less important when defining a normative proposal on migrants’ integration. The methodology consists on more than 30 in-depth interviews with elected representatives of different political parties at the state, regional and municipal level. The fieldwork has been carried out in the four regions holding the highest numbers of foreign population within Spain: Catalonia, Madrid, Andalusia and the Valencian Community. Paper presented at XXII Congress of Political Science, IPSA, Madrid, July 2012 Panel (Code: CS.635): Religion, Identity and Governance

1. Political Discourse on Immigration in Spain

‘Borders are double, ambiguous. Sometimes, they are the bridge to find the other; in other occasions, they become the wall to keep him at a distance. Usually, they are the obsession of placing something or someone on the other side’ (Claudio Magris, 2007)

Discourse analysis allows us to ascertain the importance of messages, this meaning the words stated in significant social constructions (Torfind, 1998). Thus, it becomes important to analyse political discourse on migrants’ integration due to its ability to influence public opinion and, by extension, society as a whole. This is a bidirectional process; since political talk is conditioned too by the way the media address immigration in the Spanish mass communication media, so a certain feedback mechanism is established. Political discourse can promote social change and can also reproduce a certain status quo (Berger and Luckman, 1966; Foucault, 1992; Bourdieu, 1999; Van Dijk, 2003). Individual communication, but also and mainly communication issuing from collective institutions and mass media, contribute to establishing norms of coexistence and social participation, thus reinforcing the institutional consensus upon which a certain society is based; creating, in consequence, a symbolic universe (Berger and Luckman, 1966). Within this conceptual framework, discourse analysis acquires certain significance, and more specifically, the analysis of the dominant political

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discourse, since it establishes its own perspectives on reality, while, at the same time, classifying and defining social problems (Bourdieu, 1999). However, not all political discourses have the same social influence. While the elites’ discourses gain easily their admittance into public domain, other discourses are silenced and constantly excluded (Van Dijk, 2003). In this respect, this research will provide an analysis on how migrants’ integration is conceived by the main political parties in Spain. We will compare the discourse emanating from parties with different and even opposing ideologies, but we will also concentrate on the differences and similarities in the political discourse at the different levels of administration: state, regional and local. We will emphasize the degree of internal coherence of political discourse on immigration in Spain, as well as the factors underlying each discourse. The language used by political representatives has been described as neutral, since it presents the events in an objective manner and tends to highlight its most descriptive features. Notwithstanding, language has a performing ability and can, thus, participate in the construction as well as in the deconstruction of something which is only being named (Gil Araújo, 2007). There have been many academic contributions to this field at an international level, and some subjects appear to be more present: the reflection on racism (Van Dijk, 2003; Wodak and Reisigl, 1999, 2001; Brown 1997), the perspective on immigration stemming from the analysis of mass media discourse (Prieto Ramos, 2004; Van Dijk, 2008), the discourse of political parties, specially those on the extreme right-wing (Bjorgo, 2007; Skenderovic, 2007; Wodak and Van Dijk, 2000); and, finally, the analysis of the public perception of immigration in contemporary societies (Wilkes et al., 2008; Simon and Lynch, 1999). The Spanish literature on political discourse analysis related to immigration has contributed with an important number of researches (Ribas Bisbal, 2000, 2001; Zapata and Van Dijk, 2007; Gil Araújo, 2007; Márquez Lepe, 2007; Zapata, 2008; Zapata et al., 2008). This paper is part of my doctoral thesis, in which I analyse the discourse of the main political parties regarding migrants’ integration in Spain; a country in which foreign population registered a dramatic and intense growth in recent years and, by contrast, political debate has been relatively scarce. Political statements have combined two basic messages: on the one side, the preoccupation for migratory control and, on the other side, the management of coexistence amongst Spaniards and foreigners. However, the speeches on border control are predominant on the discursive production of European institution regarding immigration, to the detriment of debates on accommodation and relations with third countries (González, 2008)1. By contrast, in Spain, the subject of integration is predominant in the parliamentary debates in the period 1996-2008. Nevertheless, its production does never overcome 30% of the discourse on immigration, since other topics, such as accommodation, become more relevant. In this respect, the trend in                                                                                                                1 González (2008) analyzes the discourse of European institutions for the period October 1999-November 2004, and was able to establish that 59% of the total discursive production was related to border control. 2 Méndez (2007) points out that the perception of immigration being one of the main problems of the country, as

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Spain is opposed to what happens at the EU level (Sánchez Montijano, 2008). We will present in this paper the evolution of political discourse from the institution which is nearest to citizens (municipalities) to regional and state representatives. Notwithstanding, political and parliamentary discourses on immigration in Spain are influenced by a global political environment in which the restrictive opinions on immigration are predominant, as it is the case in the U.S., with the augmentation of resources assigned to the U.S.-Mexican border (Cornelius and Salehyan, 2007). In the European context, the influence of extreme-right parties has caused a displacement of the traditional right- and left-wing parties towards more restrictive stances on border control, thus positioning this issue in the political and media agenda (Thränhardt, 1995). Language has a strong importance in the political domain, since public policies have an intrinsically argumentative nature. Political decisions are expressed through language. Thus, a successful communication of the rationale behind each policy is fundamental for its further social legitimization. Besides, language involves moral and emotional implications for defining realities once they are presented and reproduce in mass media (Majone, 1992; Lakoff, 2007). In this respect, political discourse in immigration is perceived as a policy itself, since it can trigger certain effects on the people; this has been called ‘the policy of discourse’ (Zapata, 2008). The accession of immigration into the public debate in Spain is more intense at the beginning of this new century due the following reasons: the consensus break regarding the passing of the Act 4/2000, the irruption of immigration in the electoral confrontation in 2000 due to the insistence of the conservative party; and, finally, the inrush of immigration in the governmental agenda. Thus, immigration becomes one of the main preoccupations of the government since the year 2000. This is also reflected on the opinion polls on the main problems of Spanish society, carried out by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), in which immigration appeared as one of the most worrying problems up until the economic crisis 2 (Delgado,2007). In Spain, the process of discourse-building on immigration is emergent and we can acknowledge the predominance of defensive arguments, that is, those who perceive immigration as a problem that must be solved or as reality to which we must react. As Lakoff (2002) points out, the communicational success of conservative parties consists in structuring the topics around some basic and deeply-rooted values. The American linguist posits the existence of a strong relationship between the ideological orientation of policies (conservative or progressive) and the vision these ideologies have on family and family moral (Lakoff, 2006).

                                                                                                               2 Méndez (2007) points out that the perception of immigration being one of the main problems of the country, as expressed in the opinion polls of the CIS, has grown since its first record in the list of “social problems” in September 2000. The author suggests that this phenomenon is due to the presence of immigration in mass media. This highlights the existing feedback amongst events, media and surveys.

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Conservative parties have succeeded in imposing their interpretative framework on migratory reality in Spain. The key ideas of their discourse at the state level are somehow similar to those expressed by conservative parties in other countries: law enforcement for punishing irregular migration, the protection of borders, the inexistence of social and economic resources for all, and a nativistic expression linked to the loss of national identity and the need of its safeguard, thus putting obstacles to migrants’ integration (Lakoff, 2006). These political premises receive constant feedback from mass media which, broadly speaking, conceptualize immigration in terms of otherness, thus promoting the transmission of negative cultural representations that stigmatize the immigrants by reinforcing social stereotypes (Nash, 2005). This feedback process amongst mass media and political discourses can be evidenced in the influence of the press in the formulation of parliamentary questions and in the discourse-building of the members of the Parliament (Fernández Suárez, 2011). A key feature defining the exchange of opinions on immigration between political actors is the existence of a consensus on the terms used and language of policies, which is named ‘public theory on the integration of immigration’ (Favell, 2000). These discourses and this language, shared by the main political parties, enable the process of building a social image of immigration, but are also able to define the host society (Gil Araújo, 2007). We are talking, finally, of what Claudio Magris conceives as the ‘obsession for placing someone or something on the other side’, which appears as the perennial dichotomy of a positive ‘we’ and a negative ‘they’ (Sayad, 1991; Van Dijk, 2003). This perspective on immigration is frequently encompassed by ethnic metaphors, in which the name designing the community addresses a myth of ancestral roots, and where the ethnic tie is created reconstructing a shared history; the cultural elements of this community are evidenced by its daily behaviour and attitudes and the immigrant is adhered to a whole identity (Lurbe, 2008). These features of the political discourse on immigration are recurring in Spain. However, political actors place themselves in a heterogeneous continuum of positions alternating between a defensive-paternalistic discourse and a utilitarian-humanistic one3. This effort for ascribing discourses to one of these two opposed views does not deny the existence of nuances in the positioning of each actor, depending on the role represented in each institution as opposition or government.

                                                                                                               3 We must mention here the notable contribution of Ricard Zapata (2007, 2008), a Pioneer in this field in Spain. He proposes a classification of discourses on immigration varying amongst the reactive and the proactive one.

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2. Authority in the field of migrants’ integration in the Spanish state: dismantling the Matryoshka

Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made borders! How many clouds float past them with impunity;

how much desert sand shifts from one land to another; how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil

in provocative hops! (…) Only what is human can truly be foreign.

The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind. (Wisława Szymborska, Psalm, poem).

The decision to analyze the political discourse on integration at three administrative levels (state, regional and local) is due to the fact that these public administrations share the authority in this political arena. The Spain’s Constitution declares, in its article 149.1.2, the exclusive authority of the State in the management of ‘citizenship, immigration, emigration and asylum rights’. The Spanish state is responsible for the regulation of foreigners’ rights. The Statutes of Autonomy of Catalonia4 and Andalusia5, the most important legal regulations in both regions developing their regional responsibilities, and making part of the constitutional regulations, have appropriated the management of initial work permits and left to the state the charge of delivering residence permits, and have also included amongst their responsibilities the development of integration policies. Montilla Martos and Rodríguez Candela (2011) highlight that the judgment of the Constitutional Court on the Statute of Catalonia allows all regions in Spain to claim their right to be in charge of delivering initial work permits to foreigners; a responsibility which is by now restricted to Catalonia and Andalusia and only exerted by Catalonian public administration. The article 148.1.20 of the Spain’s Constitution establishes that social assistance is a responsibility of Autonomous Communities. Thus, the Statutes of Autonomy of each region claim this responsibility. However, the law regulating the political responsibilities of municipalities, this is the Local Government Regulatory Law 7/1985, establishes, in its article 25.1,                                                                                                                4 The Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (Fundamental Law 6/2005 of the 19th July), passed in 2006 though public referendum and ratified with certain modifications by the Constitutional Court, indicates, in the article 138.1, that the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalonia’s regional authority) has the authority ‘to accept immigrants, thus including social and health assistance and orientation’; as well as the ‘development of integration policies for immigrants’, ‘the design of the necessary measures in order to achieve social and economic integration of immigrants ant their social participation’. Besides, the article 138.2 establishes that the Generalitat has ‘full authority to deliver work permits to foreigners whose work relation is established in Catalonia’. The exercise of this premise depends upon coordination with the state, responsible for establishing the conditions for entry and residence of foreigners. Regional administration will be in charge of the ‘handling and decision on initial work permits’. The Statute of Autonomy also refers to the management of dock and airport facilities, which would be the responsibility of the Generalitat upon negotiation with the state in order to transfer authority. 5 The Statute of Autonomy of Andalusia (Fundamental Law 2/2007 of the 19th March), passed in 2007, determines, in chapter III, article 37.9, that one of the guiding principles of public policies will be the ‘economic, social and cultural integration of immigrants’. Furthermore, the article 62.1 defines the Andalusia Autonomous Community has the responsibility for delivering ‘work permits to foreigners whose work relation is established in Andalusia, in coordination with the state’s responsibility for establishing the conditions of entry and residence, and according to the rest of the state’s regulation. This responsibility includes the handling and decision on the appeals lodged, as well as the enforcement of penalty regulations and inspections’. The article 62.2 of such Statute posits that the Autonomous Community will take part in the state’s decisions on immigration having a particular impact for this region and, specifically, on the establishment of the yearly foreign workers quota.    

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that each municipality ‘can develop any kind of activities and promote any type of public services contributing to fulfil the needs and aspirations of the community of neighbours’. In this article is, then, stated that municipalities will be in charge of developing social services and promoting social integration. Who is finally responsible for migrants’ integration policies? It is practically a shared responsibility amongst all public administrations. The emergence and further development of integration policies was closely related to the regional departments of social welfare and to social services at the local level. Regional and local responsibilities in the integration of the immigrant population have, then, never been explicitly reflected in any Spanish regulation (Camós, 2007). How has this blurred responsibility been cleared up? The development of foreigners’ regulations has awarded legitimacy to the various administrations involved. The 2004 regulation6 has made certain advances, since it established that Autonomous Communities will be responsible of verifying the correct social integration of irregular immigrants. Those irregular immigrants, who have been living in Spain for at least 3 years, and who have a work offer can apply for the regularization of their administrative situation by means of the legal figure of the so-called ‘arraigo social’ (‘social ties’)7. The law regulating the status of aliens in Spain, in the article 2.ter, states that all public powers ‘will promote full integration of foreigners in the Spanish society’ and that ‘public administrations will incorporate the objective of integrating migrants within the host society; thus promoting economic, social, cultural and political participation’. This legal text reinforces the need for ‘cooperation and coordination of the actions carried out by the state administration, as well as regional and local administrations, by means of approving integration plans’. The Fundamental Law 2/2009 regulating the status of aliens and its further development in the Royal Decree 447/2011 highlight the role of Autonomous Communities in the management of migration, or, occasionally, the role of municipalities. This law points out that Autonomous Communities are the responsible of preparing a report on the integration efforts made by immigrants in order to renew their temporary residence and work permit. These efforts consist mainly in the participation in educational courses, specifically those dealing with the acquisition of the language and culture of the host society. This current law, as well as the previous Fundamental Law 4/2000 on the status of foreigners, delegates to Autonomous Communities the responsibility of preparing the report on the adequacy of migrants’ housing needed in order to apply for family reunification. At the same time, regional authorities can derivate this responsibility to the department of Social Services of each municipality. This co-responsibility between public administrations in the field of migrants’ integration has been strengthened since the year 2000 up until now. Despite the complexity inherent to the management and coordination of the migratory

                                                                                                               6 Royal Decree 2393/2004 of the 30th December developing the content of the Fundamental Law 4/2011 of the 1st January on the Rights and Freedom of Foreigners. 7 The legal figure of ‘arraigo social’ is currently in force under the Fundamental Law 2/2009, in its article 68.3.

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phenomenon in Spain, this topic has not been a cause of conflict in the distribution of responsibilities between the different levels of administration (Miret i Sierra, 2009). Which have been the guiding principles for integration policies at the state level? Broadly speaking, since the Socialist Party (PSOE by its Spanish acronym) won the general elections in 2004, there has been a broader influence of the European Commission and the European Council on the design of integration policies. These two supranational bodies, altogether with Member States, have passed in 2004 a document on ‘Common Basic Principles for Immigrants’ Integration’8, where they stress that a successful integration policy will imply the ‘engagement of local, regional and state institutions; which are the institutions the immigrants interact with’. This document defines integration as a dynamic and bidirectional process of mutual-adjustment of all immigrants and residents of the EU Member States. These principles stress issues such as an adequate integration in the labour market, the need of knowing the language/s and culture/s of the host society and the importance of a suitable integration and an advancement in the educational system in order to assure the accommodation of migrants and its descendants. The text asks for ensuring equality in the access to goods and services, and considers important to promote frequent interaction and intercultural dialogue amongst foreigners and autochthones. It considers necessary to stimulate religious freedom and to facilitate the cult of the various religions and cultures. At the same time, it highlights the importance of the participation of immigrants in the democratic system and stresses that the design of integration policies must be comprehensive and cross-sectional and must consider measures for assessing their success or failure. In this research we would like to present the differences existing in the political discourses regarding the definition of integration, as it is considered in the technical documents for the management of integration in Spain9. Thus, the definition of integration is a question that was always asked to the representatives of the political parties in the different levels of administration. 3. Research methodology: profiles and analysis The empirical evidence for this paper comes from the fieldwork carried out in 2010 and 2011 in 4 Spanish regions: Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia and the Valencia Community. These Autonomous Communities have been chosen because they concentrate two thirds of the total population of foreigners living in Spain (according to the 2012 data of the population register –Padrón Municipal de Habitantes, 1st January 2012, Spanish Statistical Institute, INE). This represents 3,8 millions of foreigners out of a total of 5,7 millions. The demographic criterion is not the only one; we must also consider that these four

                                                                                                               8 The Council of Ministers of Justice and Home Affaire held in Brussels, the 19th November 2004. 9 This definition is presented in the Plan Estratégico de Ciudadanía e Integración (Strategic Plan on Citizenship and Integration, PECI by its Spanish acronym) and was passed in 2005 by the socialist government presided by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. This plan was valid for the period 2006-2009 and was followed by a second plan (whose validity expires at the end of 2013) continuing the spirit of the first one.

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regions have developed their own integration policies and have a certain political tradition in this area. We have chosen the technique of in-depth interviews because we wanted to analyze the political discourse on migrants’ integration policies. Access to interviewees was complicated due to the agenda problems of political representatives. This particularity will have constituted an obstacle if we wanted to use other research techniques that could enrich or complement our in-depth interviews, as it could be a survey or focus groups among politicians of different political parties. We have analysed a total of 53 in-depth interviews to political representatives in public institutions, as well as in organisational posts. The distribution of the interviewees in the three administrative levels considered implies 11 interviews at the state level, 26 at the regional level and 16 interviews to politicians working at the local level. We count 11 interviews to political representatives present in the Spanish Parliament. Within Madrid region we have made 8 interviews: 3 to regional representatives and 5 to local representatives. In Catalonia we have made 19 interviews to 13 political representatives at the regional level and 6 to local politicians. We had to increment the number of interviewees in this region because the system of political parties is more complex, so we wanted to cover the diversity of positions and perspectives. In the Valencia Community we have interviewed 9 politicians: 5 at the regional level and 4 at the level of municipalities. Finally, in Andalusia we made 6 interviews; 5 to regional politicians and one to a local politician. Figure 1: Classification of the interviews made to political representatives at the

three levels of administration (state, regional, local) by political party.

Regional Local Regional Local Regional Local Regional LocalPOPULAR PARTY 2 1 0 1 1 3 2 1 2SOCIALIST PARY 5 3 0 1 2 0 1 1 1IU-IPC-VERDS 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 2NATIONALIST PARTY 2 0 0 8 2 1 0 0 0OTHERS 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0SUB-TOTAL 11TOTAL

STATE

853 INTERVIEWS (11 STATE, 26 REGIONAL AND 16 LOCAL)

19 96

ANDALUSIA CATALONIA VALENCIA COM. MADRID

Source: Own elaboration.

The technique used do analyze the qualitative data was critical discourse analysis, since it is a critical perspective that allows us to extract a very rich content from discourse. Also, this perspective is well-known in studies of power, ideology and domination.

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4. Discourse analysis on the integration of immigrants in Spain

“Con el destierro y el exilio fuimos desuñados, destroncados, destripados – we were jerked out by the roots, truncated, disembowelled, dispossessed, and separated from our identity and our history.” (Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza, 2ª ed., Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, 1999.)

Spanish immigration policies have been far different from those of other European countries who had established ‘integration contracts’ for foreigners (Carrera, 2006). These contracts implied that migrants should compulsory ‘integrate’ in order to have access to benefits and services from the host state. This restrictive and assimilation-prone trend, widespread across Europe, received support from the discourses of certain political parties in Spain. The conservative party in power in the regional government of the Valencia Community was the first one trying to enact these integration contracts at the regional level. Their efforts concluded in the adoption of the Fundamental Law 2/2009, where the requirement to perform ‘integration efforts’ was established for migrants willing to renew their temporary residence and work permits. The first official definition of integration at the state level was expressed in the first Strategic Plan on Citizenship and Integration (PECI, 2007-2010)10, passed by the Council of Ministers the 16th February 2007. It sustains that integration is a ‘bidirectional and dynamic process of mutual adjustment amongst all immigrants and residents of the Member States’ where integration ‘implies the respect of the basic values of the European Union’ (PECI, 2007). The main ideas underlying this concept of integration are the following: a) integration is a dynamic social process, one that requires continuous reproduction and renovation, rather that a situation of a certain moment; b) integration requires a mutual and bidirectional adaptation effort on the part of the immigration population, but also on the host society; and, c) the context where this effort should be made is demarcated by the basic values of the European Union (PECI, 2007). The Strategic Plan on Citizenship and Integration (2011-2014), approved by the Council of Ministers the 23rd September 2011, assumes this definition of integration and specifies four guiding principles for the plan: 1) the principle of equality and non-discrimination; 2) the principle of citizenship; 3) the principle of inclusion, and, 4) the principle of interculturalism as a mechanism for positive interaction and respect for cultural diversity amongst people having different origins and cultures (PECI, 2011). This Plan states that interculturalism as an integration model needs to be a shared goal, based on consensus. The need for this consensus is not only addressed to the different levels of public administration, but also to society as a whole. In the fist PECI, the word ‘interculturalism’ and its derivates appeared on 47 occasions; whereas in this second Plan it is mentioned 128 times.                                                                                                                10 The full text of the Strategic Plan on Citizenship and Integration (PECI, 2007-2010) can be accessed through the following link: http://extranjeros.empleo.gob.es/es/IntegracionRetorno/Plan_estrategico/pdf/PECIDEF180407.pdf

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Is interculturalism a shared perspective within Spain? The concept of interculturalism is accepted by most of the political parties, but it is perceived as a middle ground between assimilationism and multiculturalism. These two models are not defended by any of the political parties represented at the state or regional Parliaments. There have been some advances in the formulation of this principle of integration, but we lack some elaborated discourses on this regard. In our research we asked the representatives of political parties to determine the position of the other political parties regarding the integration of immigrants. We found that conservative parties consider that progressive parties are closer to multiculturalism, whereas left-wing parties perceive their conservative counterparts as assimilationists. Conservative parties fear to be branded as xenophobes and progressive ones are afraid of being considered woolly liberals in their perception of immigrants’ integration. This can be evidenced by these excerpts:

‘We position ourselves as interculturalists, as everyone nowadays in Spain. Now, the problem is how can we understand interculturalism (…) I think that everybody is now in favour of interculturalism, nobody will defend a purely multiculturalist or assimilationist position. Notwithstanding, I think that we –political parties- don’t have a well-developed corpus on interculturalism, so there are practices in certain places where we can find something more of a badly-understood multiculturalism. There is a banal emphasis of differences, tending to classify people by their origins and promoting, thus, associativism and integration policies. They try to catch votes with this emphasis on the ethnic component of migrants’ organization. Mi impression is that this is quite widespread, that’s why I say that the rhetoric is one of interculturalism, but practices are bad multiculturalism’ (Member of the Parliament, Nationalist Party). ‘There are plenty of doubts within each organization. Broadly speaking, everyone has a very clear position, when it comes to action, that’s when you see the differences’ (Member of the Spanish Parliament, Partido Socialista Obrero Español – Socialist Party-). ‘At the international level we tend to talk a lot about the principle of interculturalism, as something…, as a middle ground between the French assimilationist model and the British multiculturalist one. But this argument, which I sometimes defended too, is a bit tricky. In the end, our normalization policies are closer to the French model than to multiculturalism. But, well, this is more a personal opinion’ (Trusted political post of the socialist government during the term 2008-2011).

Is the defence of an intercultural model sustained at the regional and local level? Regional governments in Spain have been pioneers in the field of intervention and design of management strategies as regards to integration; even state policies have been developed later. Thus, it is quite usual to see the use of the concept of interculturalism in the regions researched when they define their integration model. We must also point out that the debate on the integration model is triggered from academia, so it has a larger impact on the politicians dealing with immigration management and public administration officers. Political parties usually make use of their ideological basis in order to

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incorporate their own perspective on immigration and immigrants’ integration in their discourses. In this excerpt of interview the need to define the integration process and the academia influence are shown:

‘We’ve chosen a model of accommodation, let’s say. Assimilation French-style, where all people must renounce to their origins and assimilate with the host society, is a failure. Mostly with young people, who don’t even know from where they come from, and this can create a series of problems. Multicultural model is a tolerant model, tolerant with cultural diversity; but it does not allow interrelations, which is the basis of a given society. Well, we’ve chosen…, we’ve chosen that model. This model is considered in the Pact11 and also in our Statute. We understand that accommodation is the need of immigrants to integrate within the host society within a larger basis of living altogether. This basis is established by the constitutional principles, the common democratic laws, the rights and duties… At the same time, society must give immigrants opportunities for integration. It must be a bidirectional process. This notion of accommodation is commonly shared. This is the term we’ve made up, especially in the academia, Ricard Zapata and some other people. I think that, in the end, it’s reality that prevails; this meaning that integration processes prevail over reality. Immigrants must integrate, but the host society must give them opportunities for integration too.’ (Member of the Catalonian Parliament, socialist).

However, we can find a common feature in the discourse on immigrants’ integration in Spain throughout all levels of administration and all regions: the greater difficulty in integrating the culturally distant immigrants, specifically, Muslim immigrants, particularly concentrated in Catalonia. The most important cultural debates regarding religious diversity are related to the building of a Mosque or to the use of veil or burka in public spaces. Islamophobia as a particular kind of xenophobia is implicit in many public discourses. We can define islamophobia as the envisioning of Islam as a compact and monolithic religion, opposed to social change, isolated, inferior compared to occidental culture, sexist, irrational and primitive. Islamophobes believe that Muslims are associated with international terrorism and promote a clash of civilizations (Martín Muñoz, 2012). We can illustrate this discourse via the following excerpts of interviews to local political representatives:

‘There are certain political parties which are trying to distinguish between the good and the bad immigrant. The good immigrant is one who is culturally or religiously closer to us. The bad one is the other’ (Member or an ecologist political party at the regional level and city councillor). ‘Maghribian population is the one who is creating a bigger clash, and now with this economic crisis, the clash is even bigger. There is stronger competition for services and for jobs too’ (City councillor of a conservative party).

                                                                                                               11 It means the National Pact for Immigration in Catalonia, which implies an agreement on a series of premises on immigration. It was signed in Catalonia by most of the political parties, trade-unions, NGOs, migrants’ associations and social entities, the 19th December 2008. More information on this Pact can be found on: http://tinyurl.com/cqvnws6

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‘We had to assume the discourse of our political party regarding some issues as the burka debate and this has created some frictions and a political debate over some other questions regarding immigration that previously had not been discussed. It is also true that we, Popular Party, we are very fed up with this politically correct discourse of the tripartite local government because there are also problems in the streets. There are clashes, problems in the buildings, problems in public spaces… because, for example, there are some places where, in summer, old people do not dare to get out at night because the park is squatted by.., let’s say, bunches of young people (…) And when you tell the government about these problems, they say: ‘Be careful with xenophobia because we can be accused of being…’ No, no, we’re not talking about that’ (City councillor of the Popular Party, in the opposition).

Local perspectives on immigrants’ integration are more pessimistic, but also more pragmatic and closer to the process. In Spain, municipalities count with scarce resources in order to implement any kind of policies. They usually depend on subventions from regional and state administrations. Their discourse tends to the defence of the equality of treatment and access to public services and is less focused on cultural issues. This can be exemplified by the following extract:

‘(We intend) to make all immigrants take part in all administrative procedures and to make them equal to us. This is the position, to normalize a situation. Even if kids maintain certain aspects of their culture, they should have equal opportunities in the access to education, to the health system, to associations, to a potential job, to training… We defend the equal chances to all, and we assume that we depart from an unequal situation for those who are immigrants’ (City councillor in the government of a conservative party).

The existence of anti-immigration political parties in Spain is only represented at local councils, particularly in two of the regions analyzed: Catalonia and Valencia Community. They get a bigger electoral score in Catalonia, where Plataforma per Catalunya (PXC)12, political party leaded by Josep Anglada, has won representatives in 40 Catalan municipalities. The analysis of the interviews we have carried out in those municipalities with representatives of these political parties make us reach the conclusion of the existence of a trend of left- and right-wing parties to more restrictive positions (Tharänhardt, 1995). One of the key points in the discourse of conservative parties is the emphasis in the loss of identity and its necessary protection (Lakoff, 2006). The new populist right in Europe centres its debates on issues as immigration, taxes, crime and nationalism (Taggart, 2000). The discourse of Plataforma per Catalunya and España 200013 (this last, in Valencia Community) presents Spanish natives as an example and blames the others for the problems, meaning by the others the Muslim population coming from Morocco. The presence of Plataforma per Catalunya in Catalan municipalities has implied a greater emphasis in debates around immigration in the local plenary. Traditional political parties state that it is complicated to tackle this direct and simple discourse, and that integration policies are a medium-term process that can hardly report electoral support. This can be evidenced by the following interview extracts:                                                                                                                12 Webpage: www.pxcatalunya.org 13 Webpage: www.esp2000.org  

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‘Plataforma is obviously a populist party who tries to trigger xenophobia, etc., etc (…) Whether you want it or not, the people who don’t have any problem with immigration, who is progressive and who is completely supportive of integration,…, well, they are those who don’t live with immigrants, generally. (…) Integration is made of closeness (…). In Koranic schools, for example, boys to one side and girls to the other; the (male) teacher never addresses the girls. It’s an ancient discipline, with rod and fingers. And then, how they mess up everything they learn there! But it also depends. For example, in Barcelona, you can go and talk with the parliamentarians who proposed this law14 and… There is growing divergence amongst policymakers and politicians. We, politicians, are at the trench, in the neighbourhoods, in the buildings, in the Koranic schools. And there are a lot of people, very self-sufficient and proud of making the most progressive law in Spain. Great! But, you see, this is not possible. You can’t have an 8-year old boy 20 hours locked in a Koranic school. But this, our policymakers don’t know. Why they don’t ask the people at the trench? Well, this happens too in the school field, too’ (Socialist city councillor).

‘They biggest problem we have here (referring to the municipality of Vic, Catalonia) is that most of the population is Muslim. Latin American or European immigrants are more acceptable, they integrate better, but it is very difficult to integrate Islam. Furthermore, we are also very worried about radical Islamists preaching at our Mosques, salafists and all that stuff. And, then, you know we have a political party that makes their flag out of this issue, because that’s they way they get known. When you propose a new political party you have to sell something, something attractive, isn’t it? We also need to have a flag and, at that moment, I was seeing that immigration was becoming a problem, because it was a taboo for all political parties. Then, if it is a taboo, they do not dare to speak out democratically. Then I said that we were going to face the problems, and that we were going to talk about immigration. And now when you talk about Plataforma per Catalunya, you talk about immigration. I think this is good, because all political parties need their icon’ (City councillor and leader of an anti-immigration party).

5. Conclusions

“Culture"- the word itself, or some local equivalent, is on everyone's lips” (Sahlins, 1993: 3)

Spain becomes an immigration country at the end of the XXth century, when the rest of the European countries counted with more than fifty years of hosting tradition. The debate on the integration model in Spain is influenced by academic critiques to assimilationist and multiculturalist models. This provokes the quest for a third-way, which is the defence of rhetoric interculturalism, prone to be defended in legal texts and documents rather than in practices or local policies. The retreat of multiculturalism in Europe has been signalled by certain authors (Meer and Moddod, 2011: 2; Faist: 2009; Joppke: 2004). The reasons underlying this retreat could be summarized as follows: a) multiculturalism is considered to be a source of social fragmentation; b) multiculturalism has

                                                                                                               14 It means the Catalan Law on Worship Spaces (Law 16/2009 of the 22nd July) Link: http://www.observatorioreligion.es/upload/92/16/Ley_16-2009_Centros_de_Culto_Cataluna.pdf

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implied a disregard of economic inequalities; c) multiculturalism is conceived as a folk devil, causing moral panic amongst native population (Cohen, 2011); and, d), finally, multiculturalism has been blamed for international terrorism (Meer and Moddod, 2011). This attack against multiculturalism has implied that any political party in Spain is identified with it. However, we must recognize that the multicultural perspective is more associated with left-wing parties (Jupp, 2003); at least, this is the perception of conservative parties. The liberal version of assimilationism considers that immigrants should adopt the national identity of the host country as their primary adscription, and that this identity should prevail over any other in case of conflict (Bauböck, 2002). This is the expression of the fear of foreigners being too loyally tied with foreign communities with opposed interests with the receiving country (Bauböck, 2002). In Spain, assimilationism has more to do with conservative political parties, more worried by protecting the identity, either national or regional. Interculturalism is defined by contrast with multiculturalism in the sense that the first seeks a greater interaction and dialogue instead that the simple co-existence promoted by the multicultural model. In this sense, interculturalism is supposed not to overemphasize the group and to seek a greater synthesis, more social cohesion and a national citizenship. Furthermore, it is argued that interculturalism can criticize certain cultural practices which are not liberal as part of the process of intercultural dialogue (Meer and Moddod, 2011). Through the analysis of our fieldwork, we have reached the conclusion that conservative parties place a bigger emphasis on the need of foreigners to integrate in the host society. This ideological stance is blurred when we reach the local level of administration, where the positions are more nuanced. The regional variable has also its own influence, since, for example in the Catalan case, nationalist parties seek an identification of immigrants with the process of nation-building. We conceive nationalist parties as those who defend regional identity, language and cultural, as well as the preservation of their social values, their different ways of life and their economic interests (Hepburn, 2009). Catalan nationalism promotes, on the one side, respect for immigrants’ cultures, and, on the other side, the integration of immigrants into Catalonia’s language and culture. This idea of interculturalism has still another enemy in its horizon: the emergence of populist conservative parties, which place immigration in the political agenda by defining it as a problem. Populism always refers to the people and justifies its actions by appealing to and identifying with the people; it is rooted in anti-elite feelings; and it considers the people as a monolithic group without internal differences except for some very specific categories who are subject to an exclusion strategy (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007). There is a weak discursive development in Spain in the field of immigrants’ integration. The concept of interculturalism as a third-way between assimilationism and multiculturalism is a common place, both for progressive, as well as for conservative parties. In this arena, the extremes are bad considered. Political parties, especially progressives, have tried to hide from

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public debate the question of immigration, knowing that they will loose against a restrictive discourse on the part of their conservative counterparts. At the local level, we observe a perspective closer to assimilationism and with more difficulties in order to deal with abstract definitions. It is precisely at this level that these theoretical models must be confronted with practices and policies and where the populist pressure is higher; the management of integration becomes more complex. But, for the moment, interculturalism, even its different conceptions, is still a politically correct concept in Spanish politics. 6. Bibliography Anzadlúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. the New Mestiza. Second Edition ed. Aunt Lute Books, 1999. Bañón Hernández, Antonio Miguel. "El Discurso Periodístico a Propósito Del Viaje De Los Inmigrantes Pobres." In Zapata Barrero, Ricard and Van Dijk, Teun A. (comp.). Discursos Sobre La Inmigración En España: Los Medios De Comunicación, Los Parlamentos y Las Administraciones . 1st ed., 45-68. Fundación CIDOB, 2007. Bañón Hernández, Antonio Miguel. "Análisis Crítico Del Discurso Sobre La Inmigración: A Propósito De La Representación De Los Actores Comprometidos." Interlingüística no. 14 (2003): 15-30. Bauböck, Rainer. “Farewell to Multiculturalism? Sharing Values and Identities in Societies of Immigration”, Journal of International Migration and Integration, vol. 3, nº. 1, pág. 1-16. 2002. Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. La Construcción Social De La Realidad. 1st ed. Madrid : H.F. Martínez de Murguía, 1968 (1984 imp.), 1984. Bingham, Powell and Guy D. Whitten. "A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context." American Journal of Political Science 37, (1993, 1993): 391-414. Bjorgo, Tore. "The Invaders", "the Traitors" and "the Resistance Movement": The Extreme Right’s Conceptualisation of Opponents and Self in Scandinavia." In The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe. Racism, Identity and Community, edited by Tariq Modood and Pnina Werbner. London: Zed Books, 1997. Bourdieu, Pierre. ¿Qué Significa Hablar? Madrid: Akal, 1999. Brown, Andy A. Political Languages of Race and the Politics of Exclusion. Aldershot: Ashgate: 1999.

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7. Legal documents and administrative texts: Ley de Centros de Culto en Cataluña (Ley 16/2009 de 22 de Julio) publicada en el Boletín Oficial del Estado del 17 de Agosto de 2009. Link: http://www.observatorioreligion.es/upload/92/16/Ley_16-2009_Centros_de_Culto_Cataluna.pdf Ley Orgánica 2/2009, de 11 de diciembre, de reforma de la Ley Orgánica 4/2000, de 11 de enero, sobre derechos y libertades de los extranjeros en España y su integración social. Boletín Oficial del Estado, nº. 299 del 12 de Diciembre e 2009. Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigración (2011): Plan Estratégico de Ciudadanía e Integración (PECI, 2011-2014). Link: http://extranjeros.empleo.gob.es/es/IntegracionRetorno/Plan_estrategico2011/pdf/PECI-2011-2014.pdf Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigración (2007): Plan Estratégico de Ciudadanía e Integración (PECI, 2007-2010). Link: http://extranjeros.empleo.gob.es/es/IntegracionRetorno/Plan_estrategico/pdf/PECIDEF180407.pdf Real Decreto 557/2011 de 20 de Abril por el que se aprueba el Reglamento de la Ley de la Ley Orgánica 4/2000, sobre derechos y libertades de los extranjeros en España y su integración social, tras su reforma por la ley orgánica 2/2009. Publicado en el Boletín Oficial del Estado, nº. 103 del 30 de Abril de 2011. Link: http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2011/04/30/pdfs/BOE-A-2011-7703.pdf

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