3Cs weblog

Arriving in Madrid at the end of January was quite chaotic, not only with the baby and moving into a new house- but also the need to register a series of papers and bureaucracies that one needs when arriving in a new country… medical ids, citizenship/residence papers (when possible), registering ourselves with the municipality, and other stuff like hat. All of this implies waiting in colas/lines…

What was interesting to see, was that in most of the lines (some of which were quite long) that vast majority of fellow “waiters” were what would be called in ugly sounding legal language as “extra-communitarians” in other words immigrants from non-EU countries. Everyday- dozens or hundreds of people processing residence papers, renewing permits, registering themselves at the municipality, processing health ID cards, etc. all at offices that are still to a large degree adjusting to what for them are new populations.

The immigration “question” is seen as something quite new here, and although one might be bale to find some longer history to it, the dynamics and population shifts tis is producing are quite radical and all happening very fast. To give a statistical example:

According to the INE (national institute for statistics) In 2000 the migrant population (including EU and extra communitarian) was 2.3% of the whole population, roughly. In 2006- this jumped to 10+% (these numbers don’t include estimates of sin-papeles/undocumented). This might reflect that the authorities are getting better at counting- but there is definitely some truth to the idea of a radical change. Spain a country which always considered itself as “homogeneous” (often ignoring other minorities such as gypsy/roma, basques, catalans, castilians, asturians, and other linguistic groups) was now being reworked by very visible forms of diversity. On the one hand the perceived newness seems to lead to a certain innocence via a vis the situation and without the long histories of slavery and exclusion that have rocked the Americas for so long- for example new marriage statistics point to the fact that somewhere between 10-30% of new marriages are between “national” and “immigrant” (problematic categories to begin with- but we’ll leave that aside). On the other hand there’s a lack of awareness of forms of racism and exclusion that are rearing their heads- from racist sounding comments being said openly (“aren’t there any Spaniards here” or “well, that part of town, you know has lots of those people…from outside”)- to anti-immigrant pogroms or attacks.

Waiting on these lines, in places were few if any “nationals” need to wait- we got to hear some of the comments people (“immigrants”) would make to each other about their perceptions of the situations, stuff like: “we’re paying their social security pensions, and taking care of their elderly and they treat us like crap!” “these people won’t do any work and then they complain about us who have to suffer through this treatment!” “we” are always renewing papers here, filing something there…”

The way that immigration has jumped into prime focus and has burst onto the scene is incredible- nad the newness (perceived or real) of the issue is palpable. It can go in many ways for the moment it seems. From greater awareness form the get go about the need to avoid segregation, supremacy and discrimination- to the increasing militarization for the border on the part of the whole EU resulting in a militarization of the immigration question (like what many u.s. republicans are pushing on the border with mexico).

We’re keeping our ears open- and we’ll be sure to get involved in as many political messes as we can- to see how this all works out. Just for some other fun fact related to this: 1) the other week when that neighborhood housing rights group was preparing to do an action in the Lavapies barrio (where we live) they talked about producing flyers in multiple languages. Well if in the US, its already an achievement to have it in Spanish- this group- for all its faults- was able in less than a week to print an distribute flyers in Spanish, French, Arabic, English and Chinese!!! 2) There’s all sorts of migrant rights/anti-racist stuff that is beginning to happen including lots of self-organization by migrant communities, just the other week there was a protest by our house by a sort of independent migrant workers’ union, and today we met one of the main dudes in African liberation/panafricansim in Madrid (who named his son Malcolm X!)

Cheers,

More later!

MSG