Barcelona Societat 28

There is nothing new about foreign nationals arriving in Barcelona to develop their life plans. In the 20th century, the people arriving in the city mostly came from other parts of Spain. But from the 1980s onwards, a significant number of people from Latin America and Northern Africa started to arrive. It was in this context that the Care Service for Immigrants, Emigrants and Refugees (SAIER) was created in Barcelona, with the aim of welcoming and providing support for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees arriving in the city.

Over thirty years have passed since then, during which time profound, structural changes in this area have occurred in the city. In 2000, there were about 46,000 foreign nationals registered as residents in the city, or 3.5% of Barcelona's population. By 2020, there were 360,000 registered foreign nations, which represents 21% of all city residents.

Therefore, in regard to migration and refuge, the challenges facing municipal services and policies have changed. Although local administrations do not have formal jurisdiction over immigration and refuge, municipalities are responsible for providing support and accompanying all city residents, whatever their origins. For this reason, beyond state legislation, public policies and services aimed at managing the arrival of foreign nationals can only be properly conceived and implemented if this is done at a local, urban level.

The City of Barcelona has a long history of promoting public policies and services aimed at sheltering migrants and refugees. In recent years, we have experienced situations that are unprecedented in recent history, such as the so-called “refugee crisis”, which started in 2015. It was then that SAIER's care work started to increase, rising from just over 2,000 asylum seekers in that year to over 9,500 by 2019. This change has been a challenge for Barcelona. In response, the city created Nausica, a pioneering programme to support asylum seekers who, on leaving the Spanish Asylum Programme, had not achieved a sufficient level of personal and economic autonomy. The programme provided support in the areas of housing, vocational integration, legal advice, psycho-social support, language training and schooling. Furthermore, the Refuge City Network was created, which is currently formed by around twenty cities all over Spain. It aims to share good practices and begin politically effective processes in order to jointly tackle these challenges.

In addition to the challenge posed by the growth in the number of asylum seekers in Barcelona since 2016, over 90% of asylum applications are rejected, which means that tens of thousands of city residents end up being in an irregular administrative situation. Administrative irregularities are a serious impediment to their chances of developing any kind of life project. For this reason, Barcelona City Council has promoted active resident-registration policies, especially in the last five years, with the aim of ensuring that all city residents have access to basic rights such as health and education, whatever their current administrative situation may be. Meanwhile, the City Council continues to promote actions that focus on closing the Foreign Nationals Internment Centre (CIE) in Barcelona, a paradigmatic centre for the European migration policy, which is opaque and offers internees no rights, while we work hand in hand with organisations that defend human rights in the city, providing legal and psycho-social support for the internees. In parallel with the actions carried out at a state level, aimed at attaining the necessary changes and relaxation of legislation concerning foreigners, Barcelona City Council has promoted various programmes, such as employment plans or funding to stimulate recruitment, focusing on the regularisation of these people's administrative situation, thereby combating the social, economic and administrative exclusion they are subjected to.

The irruption of Covid-19 in 2020 caused a social and economic crisis of as yet unknown scope, which has hit people in vulnerable situations particularly hard, including migrants and refugees. Home and care workers and young migrants who are alone or have left care are two of the groups that have been most affected by the current context. This problem is being addressed by a series of more intensive support policies, run by the other responsible administrations.

It is often these groups that suffer serious stigmatisation, which incites hate speech and social and institutional racism. For this reason, Barcelona City Council has reinforced municipal resources such as the Office for Non-Discrimination (OND) and has intensified collaboration with social organisations within the framework of the Discrimination Observatory –which currently has twenty-two member organisations that work towards non-discrimination–, the Human Rights Resource Centre (CRDH) and the Anti-Rumour Network, formed by three hundred and ninety organisations and over six hundred individuals. Similarly, in 2020, the City Council produced the study La clau pot ser un nom (The Key Could Be a Name), concerning racial discrimination in access to housing. The study revealed that people with names of Arab origin had 20% fewer opportunities for gaining access to housing than people with Spanish or Catalan names. The objective of these services and tools is to support the victims of discrimination and to discover the extent of discrimination in our city, in order to co-produce, with the affected groups and organisations specialising in this area, a series of transformative public policies aimed at eradicating the scourge of discrimination and hate speech. In addition to providing support, in discrimination situations where sufficient evidence can be obtained, Barcelona City Council also initiates sanctioning procedures, as in the case of fines imposed for discrimination in access to housing due to racial reasons.

When designing public policies addressing migrants and refugees and the fight against discrimination, Barcelona City Council has always had the support of Barcelona's Municipal Immigration Council (CMIB), made up of nearly sixty migrant organisations and associations, which accompany asylum seekers and refugees, as well as local-resident associations, civic and cultural associations and trade unions, which together constitute a forum of joint governance and joint production of public policies. Through the CMIB, Barcelona City Council has ceaselessly called for greater support and funding from the Spanish Government and the European Union, in order to develop more decent, comprehensive refuge policies.

In this issue of the Barcelona Societat magazine, we analyse these and other questions relating to migration. The current challenges concerning migration and refugees are far from minor, but rather those of an open, complex and diverse city such as Barcelona. Ultimately, they are the challenges of a city that is growing thanks to its diversity and wishes to be a place of freedom and rights for each and every resident, whatever their origins.

Marc Serra

Councillor for Citizen Rights and Participation at Barcelona City Council

Foreword

Foreword

Authors

Bru Laín and Albert Sales

Summary

Migration – population movement whereby one or more people move geographically more or less permanently – is not a new phenomenon. For thousands and thousands of years, people have moved from one country to another or changed city, region or even continent for various reasons: forced to do so by climate change, for reasons to do with the search for food, to flee wars, civil strife or persecution, to find a safer place to live or work, and so on. These days, we tend to think there are more migratory processes than before and that, as a result of globalisation, there are now many more displaced persons. History shows us, however, that there has always been migration (both of ‘who goes’ and ‘who comes’) and that, if anything, what is changing is the our conception of them. For example, during the first two decades of the 20th century, migratory movements were perceived very differently and in a more ‘natural’ or ‘justified’ way than now, given that, among other reasons, the passport – the formal and administrative requirement that accredits us as a migrant – is a post-1918 invention motivated by the enormous population movements caused by the First World War.

Take stand

The Mediterranean: border necropolitics

Author

Blanca Garcés Mascareñas

Summary

This article takes a historical look at how the Mediterranean has become a border based on the normalisation of death: since the shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa in 2013 to the deafening silence concerning the deaths (by omission) in the latest disaster in April 2021. During the early years, the central question was how to save lives, although the way this response was framed has changed year by year. In recent years, in a process that may have been accelerated by the pandemic, saving lives is no longer the question. The state has started to act (or not act) openly and without subterfuge, even when its actions violate their own legislation. In this context, the article ends by asking what the role of cities has been (including the city of Barcelona) and what qualities all refuge cities should have in order to be considered as such, both in the area of international politics and on a more local and practical scale.

In depth

Foreign migration in Barcelona: from the financial crisis of 2008 to the pandemic of 2020

Authors

Andreu Domingo, Juan Galeano and Jordi Bayona

Summary

Just before the collapse of migration as a result of Covid-19, Barcelona was witnessing a new international migratory boom, one that began in 2014. This recent dramatic growth was linked to the current economic cycle, but was substantially different to what had taken place during the first decade of the 21st century. It is not only a question of an increase in the foreign-born population, but also a change in terms of the origin, sex and age of the new arrivals, and also their level of education. In this paper we look at the main demographic changes that have taken place in the city from the onset of the financial crisis in 2008 to when the pandemic hit in 2020. Particular attention will be paid to the residential distribution of the recently arrived migrant population which is linked to the housing market and the effects of the economic crisis, and also the demographic composition of neighbourhoods and the challenges that the city will have to face in the coming years in order to guarantee social cohesion.

In depth

The situation of domestic workers of migrant origin in times of Covid-19: analysis and perspectives

Author

Sònia Parella Rubio

Summary

Paid domestic and care work has been, and continues to be, largely unregulated, with much lower levels of protection in terms of social and employment rights than other sectors, and is characterised by discriminatory pay and working conditions and high levels of informal employment. It is an extremely segmented sector, and is marked by gender, class and ethnic/racial inequalities. There is no doubt that the pandemic caused by the coronavirus (Covid-19) has sharply highlighted the importance of care for sustaining life, and at the same time the lack of visibility, appreciation and recognition suffered by the sector within our society. This article focuses on migrant domestic workers, many of them in an irregular situation, and who as a result are working in the informal economy. It analyses the impact of the type of regulation in force with regard to this kind of work on living conditions and access to employment rights for women workers of migrant origin. The text concludes with a section containing recommendations for dignifying this work, and ensuring that it is recognised, with a particular emphasis on the role of local government.

In depth

Reception policy in Barcelona. Thirty years of experiences and lessons learned

Author

Ramon Sanahuja Vélez

Summary

Over the last thirty years, Barcelona has undergone one of the most profound and rapid demographic transformations in its history due to the arrival of a steady influx of migrants from both non-EU and EU countries since the early 2000s. According to the municipal register of residents on 1 January 2020, 27.8% of the people living in the city were born in a foreign country. In 2000, the percentage of foreign residents in Barcelona was just 4.8% of a total population of 1,512,971. Many of these people arriving from other countries over the last twenty years have ended up settling permanently in the city, forming families and acquiring full citizenship. This steady flow of migrants has enabled Barcelona to maintain its demographic weight, with the city's population increasing to 1,666,530 in 2020, the highest figure since the end of the 1980s.

In depth

Living in the barzaj: the tensions of the ghosts of glocalization. The atrezzo that accompanies lone young migrants on the stage of Fortress Europe

Author

Neus Arnal Dimas

Summary

If this text were a play, the protagonists would be the young people who have migrated to Catalonia alone in recent years. The setting would be a context defined by the limits of a Fortress Europe at odds with the protagonists who quietly appear, both in the border areas and in the municipalities. The supporting cast and atrezzo would be the society in the country of origin and the host society, the media, governments and political parties, who would at the same time effectively be co-creators of this production. These pages will take the reader-observer below the surface of this performance in which it is not clear whether the protagonists are free agents or simply puppets in a constant struggle to shake off the invisible strings that bind them.

In depth

Fewer rights, greater suffering

Author

José Javier Ordóñez Echeverría

Summary

Every week for the past nine years a group of volunteers from the Migra Studium Foundation have visited the people being held at the Zona Franca CIE. The aim of these visits is to listen to them, support them, provide them with information about their situation, and facilitate their defence and access to justice system. They are also a springboard for advocacy, denunciation and awareness-raising work, particularly in relation to the violation of rights, as part of a network with other civil society platforms and organisations. Achieving improvements in the conditions under which people are held in the CIE and advocating for changes in immigration policy that would transform a currently hostile system are just two of the key elements. The ultimate goal is to close down the CIEs and foster a more welcoming, hospitable society. The impediments to making these visits - or even outright prohibition by the authorities - are also a way of raising awareness and continuing to denounce the existence of rights violations in the CIE. This is also what has been happening during the coronavirus pandemic.

In depth

Inter-epistemic dialogue for a broad neighbourhood participation model

Author

Omaira Beltrán

Summary

The article examines some epistemic practices of the south and how they can provide a frame of reference for re-evaluating the field of social participation as a space where the new communities of residents of Barcelona are included in the various power relations. This reflection is made in the context of applying a set of intercultural policies with an inter-epistemic approach that develop equality, recognition and interaction. We will also think about the use of language as a place for construction and legitimation, and we will conclude by discussing the challenges faced by CONFAVC in fostering the intercultural model in Catalonia’s neighbourhoods.

Experiences

Paper Dreams. Employment schemes as a regularisation opportunity

Authors

Marta Edo, Loles Martínez, Daniela Martinez, Albert Paredes, Juana Prados, Carme Turull, Nerea Couselo, Omayma El Ouahhabi and Sergio Hidalgo Suarez

Summary

The fight against unemployment and job insecurity in the city’s most troubled neighbourhoods is one of Barcelona City Council’s top priorities. One of the actions with the highest priority is the reception and inclusion of people in an irregular situation and the creation of employment opportunities for them. This is why Barcelona Activa has launched a specific programme under the Municipal Employment Schemes that provides people with the opportunity to find a job, which in turns enables them to apply for a work and residence permit. Since 2016, a total of 152 people have successfully processed their work and residence permits thanks to this occupational programme with a concrete 12-month employment contract. This provides access to quality employment, which in turn contributes to these immigrants’ social integration. Participation in the employment scheme also improves the employability of participants, who gain work experience and improve their professional skills, facilitating their future entry into the general job market. It is an opportunity that goes beyond the working environment and brings the most vulnerable people closer to becoming citizens with rights and a democratic ability to participate. As expressed by one of the participants, the Municipal Employment Schemes programme is “much more than just a job”.

Experiences

The Barcelona Discrimination Observatory: figures, problems and challenges for the city

Author

Iris Aviñoa Ordóñez

Summary

For over twenty years, the Office for Non-Discrimination (OND) has been assisting people affected by discriminatory situations, and it spearheads Barcelona City Council’s fight against this scourge, which manifests itself in many different ways and for multiple reasons. Since 2017, the City Council and social organisations specialising in this area have joined forces with the Discrimination Victims Assistance Service (SAVD in Catalan) in the Board of Organisations, which has grown every year, with the current participation of 22 city social organisations and the OND. The Barcelona Discrimination Observatory is the result of this joint work. It aims to compile data on discriminatory situations in the city, showcasing and denouncing the problems that are concealed behind each situation, which, far from being isolated cases, respond to structural causes, where discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg. This article analyses some of the main data compiled in the 2020 Barcelona Discrimination Observatory report, and focuses specifically on instances of racist and xenophobic discrimination, which are the main motives for discrimination in the cases compiled by the OND and the social organisations.

Experiences

Anti-rumour strategy: Taking stock of a 10-year-old policy conceived in Barcelona

Authors

Joint authorship by the Department of Interculturality and Religious Pluralism for the Area for Culture, Education, Science and Community

Summary

The anti-rumour policy was born out of the combination of two factors. The need to respond to ongoing demands, resulting from associationism, to refute rumours involving immigrant communities, and the identification during the drafting of the Interculturality Plan (2009-10) that rumours and prejudices were one of the main factors that hindered coexistence in diversity and could generate situations of discrimination or racism. The anti-rumour policy was drafted in 2010 as a city strategy with an emphasis placed on training, awareness and communication that has evolved over its ten years in operation. This new policy was very well received by city residents, organisations and other administrations which have approached the City Council to learn about the experience. Many cities have adapted it to stop rumours, understanding that these are a good gateway to address deeper and more complex issues. Finally, the emergence of a mainstream xenophobic and racist discourse, pervasive in the media, social networks and neighbourhoods, made us rethink the way we work on the policy, going far beyond rumours.

Experiencias

The key can be in a name. Detection of evidence of ethnic discrimination in access to the rental housing market in Barcelona

Author

Ariadna Fitó

Summary

A field experiment carried out with the aim of detecting and analysing the presence of ethnic discrimination in the housing rental market. Using the correspondence analysis method, fictitious names were assigned that unequivocally pointed to differences in ethnic origin: Arabic names and Catalan/ Spanish names. Internet real estate platforms were used as a field of analysis. One thousand emails requesting information were sent regarding 500 properties advertised across all the districts of Barcelona, with the aim of analysing the reactions of the estate agents to the named applicants. The results of the experiment show that applicants with an Arabic name received 18% fewer responses than those applying under a Catalan/ Spanish name. A lower percentage of applicants with an Arabic name were also offered viewings. In higher-priced rental segments, the level of discrimination was lower. The results show that people with an Arabic name have access to fewer flats in the rental market, and that those they do have access to are more expensive.

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