National belonging, immigration and internal diversity in contemporary Catalonia: Controversies, paradoxes and contestation from everyday nationhood
- Autores: Eunice Romero Rivera
- Localización: VII Congrés Català de Sociologia i V Congrés Català de Joves Sociòlegs / Sociòlogues: llibre de resums de les sessions dels Grups de Treball, 2017, ISBN 978-84-8424-611-4, págs. 44-45
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
This research focuses on the interplay of nationalism and migration. It explores how nationalist narratives shape, and are shaped by, internal diversity in Catalonia; given concurrently, the huge impact of the 20th century immigration on its current demographic composition and Catalonia’s status as a stateless nation, with growing attention to the debate on independence.
Regarding to immigration, despite its paramount demographic impact it has not been central in the dominant Catalan national narratives. Therefore, those who hold a recent migrant background had to deal with their heritage factoring it in their own way of living Catalan nationhood. However, as findings show, national belonging and immigrantness are not fixed conditions, and public narratives of nation might affect the way they are experienced. The Catalan debate on independence brings fears and hopes for a ‘new beginning’ at the forefront, showing the complexity involved in the transformation of a nation that is, at once, striving for its independence and made out of former immigrants.
I take a bottom-up perspective focusing on the internal diversity of Catalan nation to see how its current political scenario shapes the experience and subjective articulation of national belonging. I do so with particular interest in the contestations and negotiations involved in the remaking of the Catalan national boundaries of belonging, asking how are national legitimacy and social hierarchies set throughout this process, as I understand national belonging as a symbolic capital not evenly distributed across the national field (Hage, 1998).
This is an ethnographic study that embraces an intersectional approach (Yuval Davis, 2011) including 30 life-story interviews with people situated in diverse social locations in the Catalan national field. Open-ended interviews and a final photo elicitation section allowed for the interviewees to address national belonging in their own terms. Additionally, seven focus groups were conducted, and more than thirty political events were observed. Some controversies arise from the intersection of political narratives and everyday understandings of national belonging.
