Migration, Gender and Belonging on the multiple ways of thinking and living the Urban Public Space in Poble Sec (Barcelona)

CLAUDIA PEDONE; SANDRA GIL ARAUJO; BELÉN AGRELA ROMERO; LUCÍA SOLAVAGIONE

Ginebra

Congreso; European Sociological Association Congress Sociology for Turbulent Times: Views from around The World; 2011

European Sociological Association

The main goals of this paper are to explore a) the migrants’ use of the urban spaces and the changes of the city, b) formal and informal practices in local communities and neighbourhoods in which intercultural interactions take place, c) migrants’ citizenship practices in their daily lives and their bounds with the places of emigration and immigration. Our presentation has been elaborated on the basis of the following research projects: Migration Policies, Family Transnationalism and Civic Stratification. Latin American Migration to Spain, in which we are currently involved; and Gender, Migration and Intercultural Interactions in the Mediterranean and South East Europe: an interdisciplinary perspective (GE.M.IC) finished in January 2011. In this Case Study, our fieldwork took place in Poble Sec, Barcelona, a working-class neighbourhood which, in January 2008, registered an immigrant population of 27.9%. We have chosen a specific area of study considering its diversity in terms of origin of the population. The research was based on a qualitative methodological perspective from a gender approach. We consider public spaces as privileged places of interaction and participation, which are crucial to the formation of the identification processes and to the construction of citizenship. The urban public space, especially in big cities, has always been subject to tensions and conflicts between different functions and actors that have diverse uses and interests. We propose the idea of citizenship as social practice that migrants engage at multiple scales and within multiples public spheres across national boundaries. From this point of view, the urban spaces are a privileged place to understand migrant citizenship practices. One of our main interests was to pay attention to the meaning and value assigned by the migrant population to local belonging, their ways of appropriating the spaces where they live and their imaginaries around the idea of citizenship. In our fieldwork we could identify a feeling of belonging to Poble Sec, where migrants carry out their daily life practices and successful business enterprises. This local territorial identification presents no contradiction with the claim for citizenship rights and with the exercise of transnational family, social, economic and political. All these testimonies put in question the simplistic conception that understands migration as leaving one place and arriving and settling at another. The findings of our study confirmed that citizenship practices led by the migrant population are produced at multiple scales and involve multiple public spheres that cross national borders and renegotiate relations between their homes in origin and in destination. This suggests that citizenship practices exceed the limits and jurisdictions of the nation-state.