Border Transgression: Mobility and Mobilization in Crisis [1 ed.] 9783737007238, 9783847107231

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Interdisziplinäre Studien zu Lateinamerika / Interdisciplinary Studies on Latin America / Estudios interdisciplinarios sobre Am8rica Latina

Band 2

Herausgegeben von Antje Gunsenheimer, Michael Schulz und Monika Wehrheim

Beirat / Advisory Board / Consejo editorial: Mechthild Albert (Universität Bonn, Deutschland) Gisela Canepa (Pontif&cia Universidad Catjlica del Perffl, Lima) Manfred Denich (Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung, Bonn, Deutschland) Edward F. Fischer (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA) Nikolai Grube (Universität Bonn, Deutschland) Matthias Herdegen (Universität Bonn, Deutschland) Roberto Hofmeister Pich (Pontif&cia Universidade Catjlica do R&o Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brasilien) Karoline Noack (Universität Bonn, Deutschland) Javier Pinedo Castro (Universidad de Talca, Chile) Ana Maria Presta (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentinien) Carlos Andres Ramirez Escobar (Universidad de los Andes, Bogot#, Kolumbien) Elmar Schmidt (Universität Bonn, Deutschland) Eva Youkhana (Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung, Bonn, Deutschland)

Eva Youkhana (ed.)

Border Transgression Mobility and Mobilization in Crisis

With 2 figures

V& R unipress Bonn University Press

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet þber http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. ISSN 2511-8404 ISBN 978-3-7370-0723-8 Weitere Ausgaben und Online-Angebote sind erhÐltlich unter: www.v-r.de Verçffentlichungen der Bonn University Press erscheinen im Verlag V& R unipress GmbH. Gedruckt mit freundlicher Unterstþtzung der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.  2017, V& R unipress GmbH, Robert-Bosch-Breite 6, D-37079 Gçttingen / www.v-r.de Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich gesch þtzt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen FÐllen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Titelbild: Protest gegen Jugendarbeitslosigkeit, Madrid im April 2011,  Eva Youkhana.

Contents

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Eva Youkhana Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

I. Approaching mobility, migration and borders Mar&a Jos8 Guerra Palmero Migrations, gender and transnational citizenship – Global economy and women’s mobility at stake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Yvonne RiaÇo Conceptualising space in transnational migration studies. A critical perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

Maria Schwertl Turning to the satellite, the container, the smartphone, technologization or situations of bordering and border crossing? Differences in using new materialistic approaches for ethnographic studies on migration and border regimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Juan Carlos Velasco Borders, migrations, and fortune

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

II. Contesting, negotiating, and mobilising Yaatsil Guevara Gonz#lez Negociando fronteras: T#cticas de migrantes indocumentados en la frontera M8xico-Guatemala . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Gioconda Herrera / Lucia P8rez Mart&nez Times of crisis and times to return? Migratory, occupational and social trajectories of returning migrants in Ecuador . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

99

Lara Jüssen Animating citizenship through migrant labor struggles. Latin American household workers and creative protest in Madrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

III. Constructing identities and belonging across borders Eva Youkhana Migrants’ religious spaces and the power of Christian Saints – the Latin American Virgin of Cisne in Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Rodrigo Fidel Rodr&guez Borges Denotar, connotar, criminalizar la inmigracijn. Cjmo los medios de comunicacijn hacen cosas con palabras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Marisa Ruiz Trejo A feminist anthropology approach to the “Transnational Radio Field”. The case of Latino Radio in Madrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Biographic notes

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Acknowledgements

The papers presented in the book were discussed in an international conference financed by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The concept and theoretical considerations are based upon research conducted within the “Research Network on Latin America: Ethnicity, citizenship, belonging” which was coordinated at the University of Cologne, partly conducted at the University of Bonn, in the Interdiciplinary Latin America Center (ILZ) and was financed by the Federal Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF). I want to thank all the authers for their thoughtful and interesting theoretical and empirical contributions and their patience during the composition of the book. I also want to thank the publisher V& R unipress for their support and Pax who proofread some of the English articles. Special thanks go to Diana Scheffen and Emilia Schmidt who formatted the papers and brought them into the right shape. And I want to thank Christian Sebaly for his technical support. This book has greatly benefitted from the critical academic reflection in migration and border regime studies.

Eva Youkhana

Introduction

Mobility and mobilization Migration of people from the Global South and / or developing countries, regions of conflict and war, and places threatened by natural and manmade disasters to Europe increased significantly after 2007. Since the financial and economic crisis hit the global economy, migration has been used as a strategy to overcome threats to people’s livelihoods, and to avoid unemployment, hunger, and death. Different types of migration (labor migration, serial short-term migration, circular migration, refugee and asylum-seeking migration, family or student migration, environmental migration etc.) mobilize not just people but also concepts, value systems, and commodities, and are challenging governments, administrations, the labor market, public institutions, belonging, and identity constructions, as much as the role of civil society. Given that the number of refugees drawn towards Europe is likely to rise (compare Rodrigu8z Borges in this volume), migration is becoming a growing concern of the member states of the European Union, which are struggling for sovereignty and to maintain their privileges as part of the Global North. At the same time, the aging European society needs immigration to keep up their living standard and ensure the maintenance of people in need of care (children, elderly, the sick). Germany plays a significant role in both developing perspectives on how to deal with the growing number of refugees and (re)establishing a restrictive European border regime to keep the crisis within the Global South. Thereby, rules and regulations concerning deportation of rejected asylum seekers become sharper, just as have those concerning family reunion and the surveillance and detention of “terror suspects”. The German Government, in addition, engages in international development cooperation and aid in order to solve problems related to underdevelopment, conflict, and bad governmentality in migrants’ home countries. Just recently, the German government has presented different programs for the voluntary return of rejected asylum seekers in order to repatriate them and link the migration process to the development of

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Eva Youkhana

small businesses in their home communities. Even though appreciated as an alternative to deportation, the outcomes of these measures are uncertain. Another strategy is to support the creation of refugee camps in countries of destination such as Jordan, which are becoming entire cities with their own supply and control infrastructure. In Europe, relief organizations, volunteers, and aid organizations try to improve the conditions in reception centers and the temporary accommodation of refugees. In contrast, activists of the political right mobilize against the growing number of asylum seekers and refugees seeking shelter in Europe. Within these processes surrounding migration the media plays a significant role, because digital networks, information, and communication structures are used to improve mobility, transgress borders, and build networks and new collectivities (Reichert 2013: 29). On the one hand, they stimulate political communication and participation among migrants and thus have a high potential for political, social, and cultural mobilizations as well as shifts in power relations. On the other hand, they are used as instruments to promote processes of social exclusion through polarized reporting. Thus, the negative sentiments toward migration are once again growing. German media, for instance, are talking about the danger of increasing “povertydriven migration” from South and East Europe, and the German Government veto against granting Romanians and Bulgarians freedom of movement under the Schengen treaty. In the same vein, the former German secretary of the interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich (2011–2013), cautioned against the migration of people from non-member states living in (Southern) Europe and called for stronger measures to prevent their movement within the EU member states.1 This populist propaganda mirrors demands by nationalist groupings that talk about a “case of emergency” (Ernstfall), an “ethnic pluralization”, and a situation prior to civil war (“Vorbürgerkrieg”). According to xenophobic parties in Germany such as Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) or Pro NRW, a “multi-ethnic society” is , naturally unstable and must be avoided in order to sustain the nation and its homeland and to prevent so-called ethnic conflicts.2 These examples show the increasing need to oppose tendencies to ethnicize political and socio-economic contestations and conflicts (Butterwegge 2007, Groenemeyer 2003, Nghi Ha 2000), stereotyping, xenophobia, and racism that resurfaced in many European countries along with the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2007/2008 (Rodrigu8z Borges 2011) and the shortcoming of political solutions surrounding the impacts. The study of these developments, and the analysis at the interface of (human) 1 http://www.n-tv.de/politik/Rumaenen-bleiben-draussen-article10253091.html. 2 http://ernstfall.org/ernstfall/drohende-ethnische-konflikte/.

Introduction

11

mobility and mobilization (in times of crisis), is an international and interdisciplinary concern that needs to draw on new scientific concepts and approaches that give justice to the fluidity of social relations and relationality with further socio-cultural conditions and political and economic developments. Methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2006) based on essentializing conceptions of belonging, assuming primordial ideas of origin and “gruppist” (Brubaker 2009) imaginations of the social, are scientific approaches that do not sufficiently address the multiplicity of contributing factors that influence these mobilizations in times of migration. Instead, they comply with the expectations of gruppist and essentialist notions of the collective and pave the way for processes of social exclusion. Without questioning the epistemological and scientific contribution of conventional approaches in migration studies (new economics of labor migration, dual labor market theory, transnational theory, migration network theory), here, social markers such as nationality, race, and ethnicity are becoming naturalized categorizations instead of being subjects for further scrutiny and reflection. Due to the dynamic experiences of migration during the last two decades, Spain has become a hot spot for the analysis of this new form of mobility through which nationalized and regularized Latin Americans move from Spain to Germany, Spaniards move to Argentina or Colombia, and people from Africa or Eastern Europe to Spain. Conceptions of belonging and citizenship that range from essential notions to cosmopolitan constructions of social relations are put to the test against the backdrop of these experiences (Anthias 2009, PfaffCzarnecka 2011, Yuval-Davis 2011).

The international conference in Bonn The international conference on “Border transgressions: Mobility and mobilization in crisis”, which took place at the Interdisciplinary Latin America Center (ILZ) of Bonn University from 8th–9th May 2014, resulted from networks and joint research activities in Spain, Ecuador, and Mexico within the “Research Network on Latin America: Ethnicity, Citizenship, Belonging”. Financed by the Fritz Thyssen foundation, scientists from different disciplines discussed how belonging is mobilized, produced, challenged, and negotiated, and how identities are constructed and reinforced by the media. In particular, questions about how migrants use different resources, media, artifacts, and the material culture to engender agency and enact citizenship were elaborated. With the presentation of case studies from Spain, Ecuador, and Mexico different articulations of belonging and acts of citizenship were debated from a trans-local and comparative perspective. Migration politics and regulations in Europe were introduced, and

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it was explored how citizenship rights are allocated and / or enacted and how processes of social inclusion and exclusion happen under different legal and labor conditions. Practices of migration and “critical cosmopolitanism” from a gender and postcolonial perspective were presented, looking at the intersection of different social and racial and/or ethnic discourses. Arguments were made about the ways in which media and language influence public opinions about migrants, as well as enable the production of transnational social networks and the enactment of citizenship. A presentation critically reflecting the meaning of space with regard to migration politics introduced the conceptual thoughts being followed by a discussion on how migration studies can benefit from Science and Technology Studies (e.g. ANT) and vice versa.

The composition of the volume Corresponding to the main topics of the international conference the volume is divided into three parts. The first part sets out to critically discuss established paradigms in migration studies and politics in order to suggest new approaches and settings for the analysis of mobility, migration, and boundary-making approaches. Maria Jos8 Guerra discusses women’s role as laborers within the global economy and debates different notions of migration and citizenship in discourses about national sovereignty. She argues that gender aspects are widely ignored in immigration policies and not problematized when addressing structural inequalities at a global level. She relates this “gender blindness” to an androcentric bias in traditional notions of the concept of citizenship in which the title “citizen” is mainly associated with men. Given that migration responds to a globalized sex/gender system and to the extension of global care chains, Maria Jos8 Guerra explores how the care regimes in European countries become a core driver for the feminization of migration. She argues that this trend is linked to women’s “social citizenship” in education, health, housing, and care (of children, elder and sick people) in general. She discusses the disproportionate burden on women in developing countries after the Structural Adjustment Programs during the 1980s and 1990s, and referring to Saskia Sassen (2000), shows how these resulted in even more structural gender injustices. Women’s survival within these “cross-border circuits” imlpies transnational motherhoods, a certain degree of independence and empowerment of women. From this, Maria Jos8 Guerra votes for deterritorialized models of citizenship in order to give justice to the transnational productivity of women. The concepts of territory and space are being addressed by geographers, but not yet sufficiently by scholars of migration studies, as has been argued by

Introduction

13

Yvonne RiaÇo. She conceptualizes space in transnational migration studies by suggesting to look more carefully at the multiplicity of locations, including the intersecting social and material dimensions of space, within which migrants’ practices can empirically be observed. Yvonne RiaÇo proposes to consider three interrelated dimensions of social space: a) the materiality of space, the physical dimension as the material basis for any kind of interaction; b) the social practices, interaction, and networking organized within and between certain locations; c) the dimension of meaning, referring to the significance people attach to places alive with symbolic representations and imaginaries. With her model she reworks the triad of Lefebvre’s production of space (2007/1974) (representational spaces; spatial practices; representations of space) and is able to make it available for transnational migration studies. Materiality and material semiotic perspectives as proposed by RiaÇo are also picked up by Maria Schwertl, who describes the effects of the analytic turn back to space and materiality on ethnographic studies of migration and border regimes. Thus, she presents three materialistic approaches that have been discussed rather controversially in migration studies: Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) (Latour 2005); post-humanism; and assemblage approaches. While ANT focusses on non-social networks composed of techno-social practices between heterogeneous actors, post-humanism follows things, artifacts, and materialities rather than social actors. Finally, assemblage approaches zoom in on situations, focusing on their microphysics and logistics, and question the explanatory power of the macroscale, as argued by Maria Schwertl. Giving the example of different uses of a container in the course of a development project in Ghana, the author put to the test the mentioned approaches by opening the container, its varying and changing the content, and the social practices around it. From this, Maria Schwertl is able to show what migration studies (and also development studies) can learn from these new materialist approaches and vice versa, and how the material turn in social sciences can benefit from studies of migration, border regimes, and mobility. In particular, the question of agency – not just of people but also of non-human actors – is posed while challenging the widespread assumption in social sciences that things and artifacts are just passive bearers of agency. The conceptual part of the volume ends with a discussion of the normative dimension of human (im)mobility, borders, and the inequalities that emerge from them. Juan Carlos Velasco describes the increasing use of fences, trenches, and walls that impede human mobility even though the dilution of the role of the nation-state and its sovereignty can be observed from a global perspective. He argues that these developments (calling for national sovereignty, implementing ever-more restricted border regimes) contradict the idea of the freedom of movement of people understood as a human right of individuals in a globalized

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world. Instead, borders are creating unjust human relations and inequalities, even standing in a dialectical relationship with justice, which brings into question the legitimacy of (national) borders. Following previous discussions by for example Sandro Mezzadra and Bryan Neilson, Juan Carlos Velasco shows that borders differentially include or exclude people in an arbitrary way – a process that can be compared to a lottery. Whether one belongs to this or the other side of the border, lives in a rich or a poor country, and benefits from citizenship rights or not, depends on the fortune of one’s place of birth, and is, as explored by the author, disconnected from personal choices and beyond one’s control. In order to rectify the “strange” relationship between fortune and (in)justice, Velasco proposes a world with open borders (rather than a world without borders) in order to overcome the exclusionary character of borders due to the fate of birth. The second part of the volume presents empirical cases from Latin America and Spain to demonstrate how migrants challenge, negotiate, and mobilize citizenship and belonging under different conditions. Based on empirical research, participant observation, and interviews with undocumented migrants of Central American origin at the border between Guatemala and Mexico, Yaatsil Guevara Gonzales shows that the varying practices and social interaction of migrants and smugglers at so-called clandestine borders open up new opportunities and create collective agency. The Guatemalan/Mexican border, which has undergone a severe reinforcement plan in order to discourage unregistered border crossings from Central Americans towards the United States, is a case in point to demonstrate how routes and trajectories of migrants have been reconfigured since then. With an historical review of the activities and functionalities of the Mexican borders in the southern part of the country, Gonzales argues that these borders have always been permeable to the trade of goods, services, and people. Even though incidences such as the enactment of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the strengthening of the borders after 9/11, the “war” against drug trafficking, recent development strategies (Plan Puebla Panam#), and natural disasters in El Salvador and Guatemala have made border crossings an increasingly difficult undertaking, undocumented migration is still functioning with the provision of reliable services and safe guidance. As a result of the abovementioned difficulties, more sophisticated strategies for border crossing lead to more concerted activities that have a positive and supportive effect on people. The wish to leave as much as the wish to return is shaping and transforming migrants’ trajectories, and therefore must be regarded as one stage in a larger migration project. Giving the example of Ecuadorians returning from Spain to their home country, Gioconda Herrera and Luc&a Perez Mart&nez examine the labor and social integration of returnees in the context of the global crisis, and show what roles gender and social background in migrants’ countries of origin

Introduction

15

play for the reintegration of the returnees. By framing the state of the art with regard to the still sparse literature on return migration, particularly after the European crisis, the authors provide empirical evidence for their assumption that men tend to be more likely o return to their home countries than women. Because of a greater recognition of their work and activities in the countries of destination, a better income situation, and more decision-making power, women often see a return to their home countries as potentially risking their relatively enhanced position as migrants. Besides gender, the stage at which a person is at in the life cycle matters and has an effect on return migration, because the younger a person is when migrating, the better he or she can gain social capital. However, Herrera and Mart&nez argue that labor and social integration on return is still more related to the social position and capital of migrants before they leave their home countries, and therefore contradicts literature that credits return migration with a much larger role in the (economic) development of the countries of origin. Further examples of how migrants challenge, negotiate, and mobilize citizenship are introduced by Lara Jüssen, who looks at the lived practices, enactments, emplacements, and embodiments of citizenship through the struggles of Latin American household workers in Spain, Madrid. Here, citizenship is not considered as an assigned legal status but animated by the denizens with or without citizenship rights. Referring to previous works by Engin Isin and Bryan Turner (2007), Lara Jüssen argues that a praxeological approach to citizenship allows us to place those actors who would not otherwise be considered as citizens in the picture. She states that a static interpretation of the concept of citizenship excludes irregular migrants’ strategies and practices of reappropriating the public space, staging political theatre, and voicing their claims, and thereby participating in decision-making, as shown in the example of female household workers in Spain. In fact, these practices are often part of a larger political movement to claim rights and create access and more democratic structures. The case of household workers in Madrid is indeed an interesting one as the feminist movement, and various political steps towards the regulation of household labor in Spain were put in place during the last decades in order to also protect work in the “private sphere”. The third part of the volume deals with the question of how belonging is produced and identity constructed at a transnational level. New information and communication technologies, and human mobility, and also the mobility of concepts, ideas, and values being represented and translated by the material culture foster these collectivization processes across physical and symbolic boundaries. To exemplify these social-material relations a third example of Latin American migrants in Spain is given by Eva Youkhana, who looks at the role of the

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figure of the “Virgen del Cisne” for the sense of belonging of the Ecuadorian community in Madrid. The study of the origins of the artifact laden with symbolic meaning, and its veneration and valorization, offers insights into the transcultural dynamics between both countries since colonial times, in which claims to common goods were enforced by both the colonizers and the colonized. Youkhana follows these transregional and historic relationships by unfolding the social and political landscape from an art object and its diverse replicas, which became powerful allies in enforcing the interests of both the Catholic Church and an association of Ecuadorian migrants in Madrid. By describing a recent conflict over the power of interpretation of the Saint, the author is able to show how agency can be conducted by an art object (Gell 1998) for up to several centuries. Since the European economic and financial crisis, perspectives on migration have shifted from the notion of a development engine for the countries of origin to a risk for the social security systems of the countries of destination. Through increasing numbers of refugees from war regions and countries such as Syria and Iraq, the negative perspectives on human mobility (irregular migration and refugees) are strengthened. Rodrigu8z Borges argues that the European crisis threw into question the model of the social welfare state, which has led to a renationalization of political discourses and a new political right that marks immigrants as scapegoats to be blamed for all negative impacts of the crisis. The mass media plays an important role in this trend due to its strong influence on public opinion. By analyzing the political and public discourses around migration in Spain from 2005–2014 Rodrigu8z Borges analyzes how negative notions and images in particular of refugees, produced and distributed via the mass media, support racist and xenophobic interpretations of migration by nationalist groups. He shows how the media coverage of migration goes hand in hand with strategies of the European Union and the member countries to control the external borders and further trail the politics of shielding. Giving the example of the Canaries, where an increasing number of refugees and irregular migrants have arrived during the last two decades, the author shows how new “facts” are created through language by sensationalist reporting. Thereby, migration and migrants are imagined as a threat to the security of citizens and the survival of the value system of various countries, of the entire European continent, or even of the entire Christian occident. The medium of radio is an important communication tool for migrants, and it connects diasporic communities with their countries of origin, families, friends, and all those left behind in the homeland. Marisa Ruiz Trejo analyses the mobilizing power of radio broadcasting for constructing national and religious identities, reproducing language and dialects, and creating citizenship – a topic that, she argues, has been ignored by anthropologists and scholars of migration

Introduction

17

studies in the past. By introducing the term “transnational radio fields” she shows how Latin American migrants advertise and commercialize aspects of their culture and lifestyles and at the same time engage in so-called ethnic economies being surrounded and affected by the economic crisis. The author’s detailed insights into daily experiences, articulations, and emotions of Latin Americans in Madrid are enriched by the personal observations of an anthropologist with a feminist orientation.

Bibliography Anthias, Floya, 2009. “Intersectionality, belonging and translocal positionality : thinking about transnational identities”. In: Rosenthal, Gabriele and Bogner, Artur (eds.): Ethnicity, belonging and biography : Ethnographical and biographical perspectives. Münster, Westfalen: Lit, pp. 229–249. Butterwegge, Christoph, 2007. “Normalisierung der Differenz oder Ethnisierung der sozialen Beziehungen?” In: Bukow, Wolf-Dietrich, Nikodem, Claudia, Schulze, Erika and Yildiz, Erol (eds.): Was heißt hier Parallelgesellschaft? – Zum Umgang mit Differenzen. Wiesbaden: Springer Verlag, pp. 65–80. Brubaker, Rogers, 2009. “Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism”. Annual Review of Sociology 35, pp. 21–42. Gell, Alfred, 1998. Art and Agency : An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Groenemeyer, Axel, 2003. “Kulturelle Differenz, ethnische Identität und die Ethnisierung von Alltagskonflikten: ein Überblick sozialwissenschaftlicher Thematisierungen”. In: Axel Groenemeyer and Mansel, Jürgen (eds.): Die Ethnisierung von Alltagskonflikten. Leverkusen: Leske u. Budrich, pp. 11–46. Isin, Engin and Turner, Bryan, 2007. “Investigating Citizenship: an agenda for citizenship studies”. Citizenship Studies 11(1), pp. 5–17. Latour, Bruno, 2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Lefebvre, Henri, 2006/1974. “Die Produktion des Raums”. In: Jörg Dünne and Stephan Günzel (eds.): Raumtheorie. Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, pp. 330–342. Nhgi Ha, Kein, 2000. “Ethnizität, Differenz und Hybridität in der Migration: eine postkoloniale Perspektive”. PROKLA – Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft 30(3), pp. 377–398. Pfaff-Czarnecka, Joanna, 2011. “From ‘identity’ to ‘belonging’ in social research: Plurality, social boundaries, and the politics of the self.” In: Sarah Albiez, Nelly Castro, Lara Jüssen, Eva Youkhana (eds.): Ethnicity, Citizenship, Belonging: Practices, Theory and Spatial dimensions. Frankfurt/Madrid: Vervuert, pp. 197–218. Reichert, Ramjn, 2013. “Die Macht der Vielen. Über den Kult der digitalen Vernetzung”. Bielefeld: transcript. Rodriguez Borges, Rodrigo Fidel, 2011. El discurso de medio. Inmigracijn y prensa en la frontera sur de la Unijn Europea. Madrid: Editores Plaza y Valdez.

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Sassen, Saskia, 2000. “Women’s Burden: Counter-geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival”. Journal of International Affairs 53(2), pp. 503–525. Wimmer, Andreas and Glick Schiller, Nina, 2006. “Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation–state building, migration and the social sciences”. Global Networks 2(4), pp. 301–334. Yuval-Davis, Nira, 2011. Belonging and the politics of belonging. Intersectional contestations. London: SAGE.

I. Approaching mobility, migration and borders

Mar&a Jos8 Guerra Palmero

Migrations, gender and transnational citizenship – Global economy and women’s mobility at stake1

Introduction The migratory phenomenon fosters transnationality. In this context, it is necessary to question the restrictive nature of a model of citizenship linked exclusively to the guarantee of rights to the individuals belonging to a nation state. The ongoing debate over the deterritorialization of citizenship cannot be isolated from the changes brought about by globalization. The global economy promotes women’s mobility for the labor market, the care market, etc. However, the gender perspective required by the feminization of migrations is still marginal in both its theoretical and its empirical dimensions. Rendering visible gender-branded structural injustice in both countries of departure and host countries proves to be crucial in order to propose a new model of citizenship that advocates social and economic rights, in keeping with the normative framework of human rights.

Theoretical considerations: citizenship rights and migration This paper will focus on the issue of the feminization of migrations in the normative terms of citizenship, understood initially as the statute that guarantees rights and entitles individuals to membership in a political community. In this context, economic and social rights are especially relevant. Nowadays, many of the issues posed by the condition of migrants are settled on the basis of a definition of who has “the right to have rights”, to put it in Hannah Arendt’s words, rights that are sometimes understood flexibly in the case of some disaggregated rights such as social rights. According to one understanding, those entitled to rights are men and women citizens and even residents, while on the 1 This paper has been supported by the Research Program FFI2015-63895-C-1-R from the Spanish Government.

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other they are human beings at large. The universal conception of human rights clashes with the particularization of rights imposed by nation states on the basis of territorial criteria. Transnational phenomena such as refugee displacements, diasporas, and migrations question and challenge the correlation among national citizenship, territory, and rights, and pose a daunting challenge to the validity of the state monopoly over rights in the current framework of globalization. One of the utopian horizons of our historical moment would entail that national borders did not undermine the rights of migrants. As Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik point out: “The relevance of mobility, combined with the relevance of place, makes questions of immigration and citizenship both pressing and contested in countries around the world” (2009: 1). As these authors state, the presumption that non-citizens, taken as an undifferentiated whole, are situated outside the circle of the rights and obligations of citizenship is being strongly questioned today, both from the normative perspective and from that of activism in favor of human rights. In this respect, it is essential to take into account both transnational configurations, such as the European Union, and mobility patterns linked to the economic, social, and cultural processes of globalization. Nevertheless, the power of the nation state to propose new models of citizenship and implement international treaties with national effects in order to guarantee migrants’ rights remains unchanged. Thus, because of the migratory phenomenon, debates over national sovereignty and citizenship are currently heated. However, we find that there is practically no problematization of the issues of migration and citizenship from a gender perspective. The typical model of immigrant is that of the man who migrates alone, with the idea of reuniting the family in due time. The feminization of migration challenges this androcentric view and forces us to reflect on the relations between those who stay and those who leave, thus rendering visible family dynamics and their patriarchal determinations. In their recent book, Migrations and Mobilities. Citizenship, Borders and Gender (2009), Benhabib and Resnik make two proposals: first, making the gender perspective an indispensable approach to the migratory phenomenon, and, second, assessing its social, economic, and political implications with respect to human rights and citizenship. The achievement of gender equality must be incorporated as an objective of migratory policies, and in order to do so, it is necessary to acknowledge the structural inequalities that affect men and women in different geographical enclaves that are currently linked due to the movement of persons. Indeed, global economy and its demands fosters the mobility of women for the labor market, for the care industry, etc. On the other hand, the type of vindications expressed by citizenship claims include economic demands associated with redistribution, cultural demands associated with recognition, and political demands associated with repre-

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sentation. In this respect, we follow Nancy Fraser’s (2008) latest theorizations. This means that there are two levels at least: first-order disputes related to equality and justice, having to do with classical discrimination vectors such as class, race, gender, and sexual orientation inside the nation-state; and also metadisputes that have to do with the assumptions of justice, which give rise to the necessity of rethinking the very scope of justice itself, of its scales and frameworks. The establishment of a transnational or global justice is still outstanding, and the phenomenon of migration, with its challenge to the restrictive conception of citizenship, must be part of that proposal. Many analyses have already linked citizenship and gender. Thus, we could say that women have been historically left out of the definition of citizenship, since, according to the liberal-republican model, they were conceived as “the other” and considered merely as the condition of possibility for the citizenship of men. The androcentric bias, nowadays, is reinforced by an asymmetrical social structure that continues to discriminate against women. In this context, our questions are targeted at the double challenge posed by the feminization of migration: on the one hand, the magnitude of migrations reveals the restricted and reductive nature of citizenship rights that are limited to the nation state. The emergence of transnationality and of diasporas disputes the traditional view of belonging to a political community. Thus, it is possible to detect the disparity between the normative view of human rights, which prevails independently of national citizenship, and a world plagued by borders that are constantly renationalized and strengthened in order to monitor and control the so-called migration flows, in an economic and often political context, like that of Europe, in which transnational or global economic processes are fostering mobility. On the other hand, the insertion of women migrants reveals the persistence of what we shall call the now globalized sex/gender system.2 The majority of female immigrants are absorbed into those tasks linked to the care of others and to housework, the so-called global care chains, and into the sphere of prostitution, thus reproducing and “racializing” the patriarchal system and its structural injustice. The advance toward a society characterized by equality between the sexes continues to be a myth, a mere fiction, proved wrong by job-placement data regarding female immigrants. In this approach to the issue of migration from a gender perspective, we shall 2 Here I follow Nancy Fraser’s (2009: 88) suggestion, sharing her critical precautions: In general, then, I propose to situate the trajectory of second-wave feminism in relation to the recent history of capitalism. In this way, I hope to help revive the sort of socialist-feminist theorizing that first inspired me decades ago and that still seems to offer our best way of clarifying the prospects for gender justice in the present period. My aim, however, is not to recycle outmoded dual-systems theories, but rather to integrate the best of recent feminist theorizing with the best of recent critical theorizing about capitalism.

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also see that female immigrants are active agents in the achievements of rights, especially those associated with social citizenship, such as education, health, and housing, thus becoming protagonists of what Saskia Sassen has called the feminization of survival. There has been a new twist in the issue of women’s citizenship, since it now focuses on the intersection of the different types of oppression that female immigrants are subjected to as immigrants, as workers, as women, and, at times, as members of a different race, ethnic group, or culture. The call effect of the feminization of migrations is, mainly, the care regimes of developed countries, with the incorporation of women into the job market and the absence of male co-responsibility. Lack of social protection and poverty are the factors that tear women away from their own children. It is therefore imperative to render visible transnational motherhood and the “affection drain”. This illustrates Saskia Sassen’s thesis about the “feminization of survival” and makes it possible to ascertain that the official discourses of economy and politics neglect what Cristina Carrasco calls the sustainability of human life. That is, they obscure the facts associated with social reproduction. Finally, in the light of the empirical and conceptual findings of the gender perspective, we shall once again suggest the need to revise the models of citizenship in order to make them coherent with the new transnational order and with the need to guarantee migrants’ human rights.

Stating the problem: Work and care regimes and gender equality As we had said before, the feminization of migrations puts us face to face with the problem of the sexual division of labor and its slow erosion in developed societies. On the one hand, it has triggered the trend of incorporating women into the remunerated workforce; on the other, the co-responsibility between men and women with respect to the so-called social reproduction is still a fiction. The double or triple burden of both paid and unpaid work continues to weigh on women’s shoulders. An excellent example of this is C. Lemke’s analysis: A few years ago, the weekly The Economist published an issue on the future of the European social model, featuring a title page showing a multi-armed woman simultaneously holding a baby, cooking, typing, and cleaning, all at the same time. She looked intensely stressed; her hair was standing up, her eyes were wide-open. The headline read, ‘Work longer, have more babies. How to solve the crisis of Europe’s social systems’. The issue addressed key challenges to European welfare systems, including the aging of the population, high unemployment, and falling birth rates. The solution to these problems, at least the one suggested on this title page, involved women carrying the burden. Strikingly, ideas of social justice, or gender equality were absent from this imagery. Of course, this statement was ironic. However, when thinking about

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the current debate of welfare reforms it becomes clear that these reforms involve renegotiating gender roles and rethinking challenges to gender equality (Lemke 2006: 34).3

The global and/or national economy has fostered the professional family model, with both husband and wife absent. The demand for domestic work and care services is ubiquitous, but even more pressing in countries that have not developed a solid community resources structure. The socialization of care alternative – kindergartens, day care centers, attention to groups with disabilities, etc. – lessens the demand, but in countries like Spain, which have arrived both late and badly to the so-called welfare state, the demand for feminine work to do household chores and provide care services is a determinant factor. In line with Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (2008) thesis of the commercialization of private life, the transfer of these occupations to other women who have come from afar is currently a defining feature of our societies. As other authors say : Domestic work (never distributed) is transferred to other badly paid women, a fact that once again conceals the myth of marital egalitarianism and of feminine emancipation through employment, while maintaining intact the patriarchal structures of the home and the workplace (Russel Hochschild 2008: 13).

It is therefore essential to visibilize the gender-branded structure of care and work regimes in order to inform both socioeconomic analyses and public policies related to care regimes and to migrations. It is also worthwhile to mention the disturbing transformation that prostitution has undergone in the last two decades. The massive enrolment of foreign women in this controversial sector, referred to by some as the sexual services sector in order to normalize and naturalize it, reinforces the hypothesis regarding a global sex-gender system that reproduces structural injustices linked to marginalization and lack of opportunities for women. Likewise, the tendency associated with international trafficking in women and girls generates flagrant violations of human rights. The demands of care, and also of “sexual services”, are structured according to a traditional logic of gender roles formerly played by female “nationals” and now played by immigrant women, roles that have now become feminized labor niches in the framework of global economy. With this brief reference to the issue of prostitution, which has been widely studied, we believe to have shown the role 3 The text continues as follows: Everywhere across Europe, the combining of work and family and the need to change traditional gender arrangements is at the core of debates about the future of our social systems. It is a discourse that is not only addressing women’s equality, but the question of how to rebuild the welfare states in Europe in the face of new challenges and tough policy choices. How should states and societies respond to changing labor markets, the growing need for care of the elderly, and demands for sufficient quality child care (Lemke 2006: 34).

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played by structural gender injustices as determinants of the feminization of migrations.

Feminization of survival and migrations Saskia Sassen analyzes the presence of women in the global economy, in what she calls “cross-border circuits”, which are conceptualized by the author as “counter-geographies of globalization” (2004). Women are “profitable” because the increase in feminine migratory flows – among which the illegal trafficking in women for prostitution and especially for the informal market, mainly that of domestic work have to be counted – generates benefits. For whom? For those trafficking in persons, for “formal” employers (multinationals), and for informal employers (underground economy entrepreneurs), thus generating a strong source of revenues for countries of departure. In the case of women, these “cross-border circuits”, linked to immigration, are interpreted as forms of survival. Together with the feminization of poverty, Sassen talks about the feminization of survival. To understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to refer to the context of developing countries and, especially, to the Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1980s and 1990s (opening up of national economies to foreign investment, elimination of government subsidies, and financial crises, all sponsored by the IMF). The costs for the population have been unemployment, deterioration of traditional sectors, and crops for export, which in turn cause hunger, etc. These measures have not only failed to reduce the foreign debt of Third World countries, but also, as we said before, placed a disproportionate burden on women’s shoulders. What roles have women played in this context? They have been part of the workforce in the underground economy, slaves in the sex industry, and workers in the precarious domestic service sector and in the “care” sector for children, senior citizens, and the sick. In the light of these phenomena, the feminization of survival refers not only to the subsistence economy in which whole communities depend on women, but on the fact that now governments also depend on the income of women inscribed in cross-border circuits. Remittances by emigrants are a fundamental aspect of this phenomenon. It has not been easy to perceive these phenomena because the economy of development is characterized by a clearly androcentric approach. The critique of economic orthodoxy from the perspective of feminist economics has revealed that reproductive, non-monetized work is considered external to the economic system. For example, Cristina Carrasco (2001: 43–70) has pointed out the following factors that obscure the importance of tasks aimed at sustaining human life: the above mentioned centrality of production, the dependence on a salary,

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and the “masculine” work culture in which women are either assimilated to the topic of homo economicus or excluded.4 Social reproduction and the environment are the unthought-of, invisibilized, buried issues in the context of what is postulated as the sole reality of production. Carrasco wonders how it has been possible for something as basic as the satisfaction of basic needs, a task assigned mainly to women, to have been kept in utter darkness. The masculine supremacy supported by a patriarchal social organization has conspired to undervalue labor5 – those activities related to the satisfaction of basic needs, which leave no trace, yet sustain the world – and to privilege work as that which produces tangible, lasting goods. Moreover, the combination of patriarchy and capitalism has accentuated invisibility and disdain: the fact that the work of women in the domestic sphere consists in “ensuring the necessary work force supply” (Carrasco 2001: 49) has not been recognized. The very category of work and its association with a salary, with monetization, is androcentrically biased, in such a way that most of women’s activities are excluded. The fact that “the care for human life is a social and political responsibility” (ibid: 55) has not been acknowledged. Carrasco cites the example of the disregard for this aspect in debates over the Welfare State, in the context of the neoliberal offensive aimed at achieving its dismantling. In sum, the conflict can be stated thus: When prioritizing between sustainable human life and economic benefit, our patriarchal and capitalist societies have opted for the latter. This means that persons are not the main social objective, but rather that they are in the service of production. Sociopolitical interests do not aim at achieving a better quality of life, but at increasing production and obtaining benefits. A clear reflection of this is the policies concerning deregulation and flexibilization of the labor market (Carrasco 2001: 55).

The consequence of this conflict is that the responsibility for sustaining human life is unequivocally transferred to the domestic sphere as the responsibility of women. In the era of global capitalism, this is true everywhere in the world for historical, social, and economic reasons. If we take into account the fact that the old model of man as provider, both in the West and in the rest of the world, is in decline, we find that the responsibility for survival too often falls upon the shoulders, feet, and brains of women. Carrasco’s diagnosis thus reinforces Sassen’s theory of the feminization of survival. What are the effects of this globalized delocalization of production over the last few decades? Sassen points out that these effects include greater benefits not only for multinationals due to cheaper costs, but also for the governments of supposedly developing countries. The latter promote both the installation of 4 Further down, on the same page, she says “… human reproduction as a social process has never been used as a central analytical category in the study of societies” (2001: 43–70). 5 Carrasco uses the terms coined by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (1958).

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industrial centers because of foreign investment, and the emigration of its inhabitants, thus turning them into producers of remittances or sources of revenues. In the specific case of women, the situation is exacerbated because those same governments, in keeping with Adjustment policies, have reduced state services that ease the burden for women (education, health, social services, etc.). Furthermore, all of this goes hand in hand with the massive and extensive pursuit of illegal profits (corruption, trafficking, etc.) on the part of businesses and governments. This contributes to the strengthening of alternative survival circuits, which are literally outside the law. “Developing” countries foster and benefit from emigration, especially that of women, who are more faithful to their care networks and family obligations than men and thus send their remittances in a timely manner. The foreign currency income attenuates the impact of high unemployment rates and poverty, as well as that of the reduction of social expenditures on education and health, in the context of Structural Adjustment plans. In principle, therefore, our view of the feminization of survival is a “negative” one. Nevertheless, Sassen makes us aware of some of its positive or ambivalent aspects. Both proletarization – no matter how precarious – and international migration grant a certain degree of autonomy and power to women, when compared to the restrictions they are subjected to in traditional societies where women are meant to stay at home: domestic slavery, inability to leave the home, inability to take outside jobs, etc. This generates changes in feminine subjectivities, whether they settle in the global city, the large cities of the world, or in cross-border industrial complexes in the so-called developing countries. The tensions experienced constantly in Ciudad Ju#rez, Mexico, are a case in point. Faced with the prospect of malnutrition or confinement to the home, these changes might be considered as gains, albeit meager ones, since it amounts to choosing between different types of slavery : labor, domestic, sexual… Many of these types of slavery are promoted by underground economy networks and transnational illegal trafficking organizations. In brief, this phenomenon could be considered a “return to the servitude” of olden times, a sort of re-feudalization. A good example of this is the domestic and care services sector that we have already talked about. Sassen states that households are an essential category to understand the global economy, since in both departure countries and those receiving immigrants it causes a re-articulation of the re/productive framework in the context of globalization. This has repercussions at the work level, on the shaping of affective and family life, and on models for coexistence. The meager gains observed by Sassen in the feminization of survival might be greatly valued by women, but, in many cases, they also contribute to uprooting and feelings of guilt about having left behind the children they are working for.

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Transnational motherhood has thus become a new phenomenon that is accompanied by the transfer of care and affection of women from the South to children, sick people, and senior citizens in the North. The point is that by earning their own living, women acquire a greater degree of autonomy in the household, and, in many cases, become social and community agents, which grants them political presence. As immigrants, they have to struggle to obtain social services and this integrates them into the host community in other ways. I would go so far as to say that they are perceived in a somewhat less hostile manner than male immigrants, especially if they enter the domestic work sphere and the growing care services industry. The capacity for agency, for acting, of many of these women is increased with respect to that which they had in their countries of origin: uprooting, mobility, and new roles all contribute to the creation of new cross-border feminine subjectivities. Women’s negotiation of education, health, and care services turns them into agents pursuing their social and economic rights, which clashes with the fact that they do not belong politically to the group of citizens. Here we find the key role played by migrant women with respect to the effective and disaggregated achievement of social citizenship in some but not all host countries. So social citizenship is marked by the feminine agency of migrant women, and it is the starting point for reconsidering the achievement of rights by all immigrants. The conditions of migrant women are invisibility, informality, and precariousness. The political struggle for immigrants’ rights must take into account an analysis of structural gender inequalities when it comes to proposing a new and inclusive conception of citizenship.

Migrations, gender and citizenship If we want to discuss the situation of migrant women and of immigrants in general, developed societies must begin by recognizing the impossibility of closing borders in a world that proclaims mobility as a hegemonic value. Furthermore, we must recognize the rights of migrants in keeping with the idea of “the right to have rights” that every person is entitled to and included in the universal and inclusive nature of human rights. On the other hand, the impossibility of deporting immigrants with guarantees, a fact linked to migratory policies focused exclusively on the imperative of security and of the militarization of borders, fosters the decline of the rule of law by making possible the existence of limbos such as immigrant detention centers, where basic rights are suspended. Migratory policies governed by renationalization and criminalization of migrants promote the increase of clandestine activities. In their shadow, of labor and sexual exploitation, these policies do not address the disturbing

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paradoxes of the migratory phenomenon (Castles 1998) our economic model needs migrant men and women, but we do not want them and, normatively, we grant them the status of sub-citizenship. The above mentioned paradox arises from the disparity between “the right to have rights” deriving from the universality of human rights, and the restriction of citizens’ economic, social, and political rights deriving from the nation state’s territorial criteria for citizenship. If we want to respect the normative framework of human rights, migrations should entail the deterritorialization of rights, in keeping with the transnational dynamics of migrations. However, what we observe in European countries and in the United States is that migrations become a political argument, together with security and in line with a rhetoric of fear that reinforces the “renationalization” of politics and the appearance of xenophobia and chauvinism. Furthermore, in addition to favoring the fictional renationalization of politics in transnational contexts such as the European one, migratory policies are gender-blind. With respect to aspects such as family reunification, those policies perpetuate the family model associated with the man as provider and the woman as dependent. To this deficiency, we must add the emphasis on control and surveillance of borders, the reluctance to carry out regularizations, and the extremely scarce investment in integration policies. Consequently, the crisis of integration policies in Europe leads us to see the tension hotspots linked to gender : both the foulard affair in France and the community freedom granted to cultural minorities according to the United Kingdom model, which at times violates women’s individual rights, are symptomatic of a lack of reflection about the structural injustices suffered by women migrants. Women suffer these injustices both in their groups of reference and in the whole of a society that should welcome their plurality and differences while guaranteeing their rights. In sum, women are situated in zones of tension between opposing cultural and social expectations that undermine their status as citizens and their rights, both in the recipient society and within the ethnic or cultural minority. Nevertheless, at the same time, their social agency is undeniable since they negotiate matters of social citizenship having to do with education, health, or care policies. We do not want to close this quick approximation to the issue of migrations, gender, and citizenship without examining what is known as “transnational motherhood”. The idea of motherhood relies on proximity to one’s sons and daughters; however, tens of thousands of women from Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other geographic enclaves work thousands of kilometers away from their families, supporting them faithfully with their remittances. Restrictive immigration policies have fostered these new forms of transnational families that serve as a wake-up call for us to reflect on the rights of women migrants and those of their children. Thus, including the gender perspective in

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the empirical and normative study of migrations is decisive. However, we must add another outlook to the one we have in host countries, namely, that which verifies the positive and negative effects of migration in countries of departure, ranging from the crucial role of remittances to the brain and affection drain, especially in the young population that starts out on the adventure of migration.

Final remarks To finish this brief review of issues that deserve more space and lengthier treatment, I would like to bring up the conclusions set forth by Javier de Lucas regarding the current situation of migrants’ rights, which I will supplement with some remarks drawn from the inclusion of the gender perspective. The nation state grants immigrant workers only the strictly necessary rights. Therefore, the role of social citizenship is fundamental and the protagonists of the struggle for its achievement are, as we have said, mainly women immigrants as those in charge of managing daily life and of providing care to others in the fields of education, health, and social assistance. The nation state, says Lucas, sets up a sort of obstacle course for immigrants, where reversals are possible: falling into illegality due to the vicious cycle of the temporary nature of the residence and work permits. Thus, it hinders family reunification and gives rise to transnational families and motherhood. In this respect, I believe, migratory policies and their procedures have not yet lost their androcentric brand. Speaking of procedures, the nation state grants a great margin of discretion to the administration and to public authorities. And many times, that discretion turns into sheer arbitrariness. The fact is that there is no control over those authorities on the part of those subject to authority, that is, the immigrants, and that the jurisdictional guarantee of rights is suspended de facto. According to the logic of discrimination and not of equality, this leads to situations of instability that increase vulnerability and insecurity. According to De Lucas: The result is the construction of the immigrant as a second-class subject, and therefore as a sub-citizen, a legal status based on the denial of the most basic legal principles, since the principles of the state based on the rule of law do not apply to immigrants, precisely because they have been constructed as foreigners. The opposite is true for the citizen. The key to the justification of this status of domination/subordination and inequality/discrimination, together with an instrumental vision (the immigrant is a mere worker), is the link between the social heterogeneity (cultural, national) of the immigrant and inequality before the law. Cultural differences mean social incompatibility and, therefore, legal and political incompatibility (De Lucas 2003).

Thus, if we include the structural gender inequality factor, we can see that vulnerability is even greater in the case of women migrants. Given the nature of

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those activities related to social reproduction, care, and domestic work, the keys to the integration of these women, who find themselves in a situation of servitude, require further analysis. We would also like to point out the extreme vulnerability of those women who make up the controversial prostitution sector. The prostitution of a foreign woman is always conditioned by circumstances of poverty, but, on many occasions, it also derives from the coercion imposed by the phenomenon of transnational trafficking in women. The lack of social and political reactions to this problem is more than obvious. Our conclusion is that the debates correlating citizenship and migrations from a gender perspective need to be revised. Although women and immigrants are new social actors in the demand and generation of new deterritorialized models of citizenship, we must analyze how a greater political weight can be given to their marginal and marginalized presence, which is, nevertheless, central to the globalized economy. This is the challenge posed by Sassen, which, for the time being, provides the most nuanced version of globalization. In the light of this, Sassen attempts to rethink the possibilities of a “localized yet transnational” citizenship that is in keeping with developments international law and with the need to enforce the rights of bare humanity. This must be done independently of the protection of the nation state, through delocalized agents such as pro-human rights NGOs and internationally organized networks or social movements. In the face of neoliberal globalization, which is now undergoing a financial crisis, we must join all those who demand a just and democratic world order. The debate over migrations, citizenship, and gender is at stake. Our obligation is to promote it and establish correlations among the global, the national, and the local levels in order to make it possible to implement the relevant adjustments to guarantee the rule of human rights within and beyond national borders. This will need to be done from a transnational and/or cosmopolitan point of view that goes beyond the outdated state conception of rights.

Bibliography Ahrendt, Hannah, 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Benhabib, Seyla and Resnik, Judith (eds.), 2009. Migrations and Mobilities. Citizenship, Borders and Gender. New York: University Press. Carrasco, Cristina, 2001. “La sostenibilidad de la vida humana: ¿un asunto de mujeres?”. Mientras tanto 82, pp. 43–70. Castles, Stephen, 1998. Globalization and Migration: some pressing contradictions, Texto del discurso inaugural presentado en la reunijn del Consejo Intergubernamental del MOST, 16 de junio de 1997. http://www.unesco.org/most/news9e4.htm [last call 30/01/ 2017].

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De Lucas, Javier, 2003. “La inmigracijn como res pol&tica”. Dialnet. http://www.uv.es/ CEFD/10/delucas.pdf [last call 30/01/2017]. Fraser, Nancy, 2008. Escalas de Justicia. Barcelona: Herder. Fraser, Nancy, 2009. “El feminismo, el capitalismo y la astucia de la historia”. New Left Review 56, pp. 87–103. Lemke, Christiane, 2006. “Social Europe? How Work and Family Care Influence Gender Relations”. Puente @ Europa 4, pp. 34–38. Russel Hochschild, Arlie, 2008. Amor y oro. La mercantilizacijn de la vida &ntima. Apuntes de la casa y el trabajo. Buenos Aires: Katz, pp. 269–284. Sassen, Saskia, 2004. Contrageograf&as de la globalizacijn. Madrid: Traficantes de sueÇos. Sassen, Saskia, 2008. “Neither global nor national: novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights”. Ethics & Global Politics 1 (1–2), pp. 61–79.

Yvonne RiaÇo

Conceptualising space in transnational migration studies. A critical perspective

Introduction: Why think about space in studies of transnational migration? Migration and mobility are intrinsically spatial experiences. From the point of view of individuals, migration and mobility represent crossing physical, social and symbolic boundaries, which not only transforms the individuals themselves but the spaces in which, and through which, they act. Today’s facility to move around and communicate across national boundaries has also had a great impact on the way that we relate to space. The everyday lives of many individuals are no longer merely bound to a single geographical location but transcend national boundaries thus connecting and positioning them in social spaces that encompass more than one country. The topic of migrants’ transnational lives has greatly interested migration researchers in recent decades (e. g. Glick Schiller et al 1992, Nagel and Staeheli 2004, Portes et al. 2002, Pratt and Yeoh 2003, Smith and Guarnizo 1998). Studies have aimed at understanding the “process by which transmigrants forge and sustain multistranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (Basch et al. 1994:7). Unlike former theories of migration, which examined movements across geographical borders as either permanently leaving the ‘country or origin’ and assimilating in the ‘country of destination’, or as a temporary settlement followed by a return to the native country, the transnational perspective views migration as a simultaneous connection between two or more geographical localities. Clearly, space is at the core of this question. Everyday social interactions taking place between individuals living in different geographical locations do not take place in a “vacuum” but in space and through space. The significance of space for our everyday lives has long been observed by geographers (Thrift 2006). But how to understand space? This question has been of central preoccupation for geographers for quite some time (e. g. Allen 2003, Harvey 2006, Soja 1989, Thrift 2006). Besides, the spatial turn

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across the spectrum of humanities and social sciences has sought to understand the concept of space beyond the play of spatial metaphors (e. g. Smith and Katz 1993). The question thus need to be raised of how migration scholars have conceptualised space and empirically addressed the spatial dimensions of transnational migrant’s lives. In the following section we shall conduct a critical review of the literature regarding this question.

Critical review of the literature: How has space been conceptualised in studies of transnational migration? For a start, it is surprising to realise that there has been relatively little debate among scholars on how to conceptualise space and how to empirically examine it in the context of transnational migration (Pries 2008: 78, RiaÇo and Richter 2012). Although space is clearly a core dimension of study, studies that specifically focus on the spatial dimension of transnational social practices, are rather rare. In recent years, there has been growing interest among researchers in studying the spatial dimensions of transnational social practices. Studies have been carried out from two main perspectives: (a) locality and (b) transnational social space. Studies that use the perspective of locality have pointed to the importance of embedding migrants’ lives in specific localities (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). Ley (2004) has argued that transnational migrants are “not always in the air” but must necessarily touch down somewhere. Other authors argue that migrants are “unable to escape their local context” despite being “transnational” (Featherstone 2007, Guarnizo and Smith 1998, Landolt 2001). For example, locally bound state regulations, such as migration legislation, continue to play a role in shaping the possibilities of action and mobility of individuals (e. g. Bauböck 2007, Bommes 2005, Dahinden 2008, Levitt et al. 2003). Glick Schiller et al. (2006) have argued that studying the “specificities of locality” is important to understand the characteristics of migrants’ transnational lives. Moreover, Anthias (2008) has proposed the term translocational positionality to address issues of identity in terms of multiple social locations. She argues that “although we may move across national borders and remain middle class or women (for example) the movement will transform our social place and the way we experience this at all social levels and in different ways” (ibid: 15). Thus, we need to think of the multiplicity of locations that shape the identities of mobile individuals. Locality studies seem an exciting field of research for understanding the spatialities of transnational social practices. The question needs to be raised, however, of how scholars understand the concept of “locality” and “location”.

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The concepts of “locality” and “location” have not always been sufficiently defined. A variety of uses have been given to these concepts in the literature. Sometimes it is used to refer to a geographical location (geographic use) or a social location (sociological use); some other times it is used to refer to a concentration of a population (demographic use), and yet some other times it means an administrative division in rural areas or the size of a human settlement (scalar use). Anthias’ use of the term “location”, for example, seems to refer to an individual’s position in society as result of his/her gender, class and ethnicity. But individuals are also positioned in material space; i. e. in concrete geographical locations (i. e. countryside, city, specific neighbourhoods) where they live their everyday lives, and move daily across different geographical localities. What is the relationship between social position and geographical position? This relationship does not seem sufficiently discussed. More clarity is necessary about the social and material dimensions of the concept “location” and how they intersect. Furthermore, Glick Schiller and Caglar (2010) argue that locality matters in migration research. Moreover, Glick Schiller et al. (2006) use the concept of city size to examine “locality” and the “specificities of locality”. They point out that paying attention to city size is important because “the scale of cities reflects their positioning within neoliberal processes of local, national, regional, and global rescaling” (Glick Schiller et al. 2006: 612). In this approach, the characteristics of the transnational practices of migrants may reflect differences in city scale. However, the question remains open of why locality should be equated with the concept of city. Cities are in general defined as urban settlements with large populations and it does not become clear why non-urban settlements do not qualify under the concept of locality. The concept of locality thus remains vague or tailored to the specific research project. Besides, locality is used in a metaphorical way to refer to the idea of a socio-political context, thus, for example when scholars use the term “locality” to refer to the state regulations that shape the possibilities of action and mobility of individuals (e. g. Bauböck 1994, 2007, Bommes 2005, Dahinden 2008, Hess 2008, Levitt et al. 2003). From a methodological point of view, the concept of “locality” also raises some important questions. The first one is the problem of how to delimit localities for the empirical study. Massey (1991:28) has argued that “localities are not simply spatial areas you can easily draw a line around” but should be “defined in terms of the sets of social relations or processes in question”. This leads us to the second question of what should be the methodological point of departure for the empirical examination of transnational practices: localities as socio-physical entities or the individuals themselves? Some scholars have argued that our understanding of space cannot be merely reduced to physical structures and the geometry of location and size (e. g. Blaut 1961, Duncan and

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Savage 1989). Following an additional but related line of argumentation, Marston (2000, 2005) questions our use of a geographical scale perspective to understand human experience. In her view, scalar concepts such as the “global”, the “local” and “locality” are social constructs, which do not necessarily correspond to people’s experience. Thus, if we want to reconstruct individuals’ notions of space, rather than starting with pre-existing notions of scale, it may make more sense to start the empirical inquiry with the actual experiences of individuals, track the geographical extent of their transnational practices and then draw conclusions on how space is constituted in a transnational context (RiaÇo and Richter 2012). The perspective of transnational social space is the second set of migration studies with a specific spatial focus. Scholars have been specifically preoccupied by space and have used a variety of understandings. Faist (1998), for example, defines it as a combination of sustained social and symbolic ties that are contained in social networks and organisations that can be found in multiple states. Interestingly, space is used in this definition as a merely abstract concept. The notion of space is used to denote an abstract social field constituted by several social ties. The material dimensions of space are thus not addressed by this concept. Perhaps the most comprehensive work on transnational social space has been carried out by Pries (2001, 2008). His work is a response to the observation that social practices are “no longer embedded in uni-local geographic spaces” but “have a multipolar geographic orientation” (Pries 2001:1985). He sees the possibility of a worldwide cosmopolitan society as ensuing from the transnational social spaces that have come to characterize our contemporary social world. In his view, transnational social spaces are “relatively dense and durable configurations of social practices, systems of symbols and artefacts” (ibid:1984). His empirical analysis of transnational social spaces focuses on “pluri-locally spanned social realities and entities that grow up either from the grassroots by international migration or through a complex top-down and bottom-up process brought about by international business companies” (ibid:1982). In his later work, Pries (2008) uses the concept to empirically examine the “social realities” and “entities” that grow out of the transnational social lives of international migrants and the organisational structures of transnational organizations. After such an empirical examination, he addresses the question of how to conceptualise space thus reviewing the work of key authors in the field such as Bourdieu, Giddens and Simmel who emphasize aspects of power and social exclusion (Bourdieu 1985, Giddens 1984, Simmel 1903). Finally, he produces a categorisation that distinguishes between three types of transnational social spaces: (a) at the micro-level are the households of migrant families; (b) at the meso-level are non profit- and profit oriented in-

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ternational organizations such as multinational corporations; and (c) at the macro level are cross-border international regimes such as the United Nations. The former work advances our understanding of space in studies of transnational migration in several ways. First, it specifically addresses the question of how to conceptualise space highlighting some important dimensions that are constitutive of social space such as social practices and symbolic representations. At the same time, there are some questions that remain open regarding the conceptualization of transnational social space. First, space is used as a merely abstract concept. The question of the material dimension of space is not addressed. Social space cannot exist without a material basis. Secondly, the concept of space is used again in a metaphorical way. A variety of concepts such as “realities”, “entities”, “households”, “organizations”, and “regimes” are used to refer to space. Yet again, the concept of space remains vague or tailored to the specific research project. Pries’ geographical typification of transnational social spaces also raises the question earlier posed if geographical scale is the most relevant criterion to categorise transnational social space. Thus, in conclusion, although space is clearly a core dimension of study for the understanding of transnational social practices, the conceptualisation of space, and how people “produce” transnational social space through their everyday cross-border actions, remain issues that have not been sufficiently explored. In that sense, we fully support Featherstone’s (2007) view that we need to carry out much more scientific work which explicitly focuses on the spatialities of transnational social practices, both in theoretical and empirical terms.

What can be a fruitful approach to conceptualise transnational social space in studies of migration and mobility? It has become clear that a precise, comprehensive and practical approach is necessary to conceptualise space in studies of transnational migration. In order to address this question we would like to call attention to the widely used understanding by human geographers of space as a “social production” (e. g. Buttimer 1969, 1972, Chombart de Lauwe 1952, Lefebvre 2005 [1974], Löw 2001, Massey 1994, 2005). We understand this approach as been based on two premises: First, space is not merely an abstract notion but has a concrete material basis. Social space cannot exist without a material basis. Second, physical space is not merely a container where human action takes place. Rather, physical space is transformed by the actions of individuals. Interactions taking place between material space and human action invest the former with symbolic meaning thus transforming it into social space. Following the ideas of the above mentioned

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authors, and our own work, and my own work (RiaÇo 1988, 1996), in part with other colleagues (RiaÇo and Richter 2012), we propose three dimensions to conceptualize and empirically study socially produced space: (a) materiality, (b) social practice, (c) and meaning. The following sections present our on-going efforts to develop an integrative and practicable approach for conceptualising and empirically examining space in studies of transnational migration. Figure 1 below summarizes the proposed approach. For the sake of analytical purposes, these three dimensions are presented as separate, but they are necessarily interrelated.

Figure 1. Dimensions of analysis for conceptualising and empirically studying space in studies of transnational migration. Analysis embedded in power relations (gender, nationality, class, age) and a temporal perspective

Materiality, the first dimension, refers to the physical dimension of space: the material structures in which/through which human action takes place such as open spaces, streets, squares, buildings, a single room, or computers. Material space has specific geographical, aesthetic and historical attributes that influence the characteristics and extent of human action, and thus are important to be studied. These are for example geographical location, geographical distribution, geographical distance, geographical proximity, aesthetic characteristics and historical tradition. For studies of transnational migration studying materiality means examining the concrete places where the social interactions of individuals take place on an everyday basis. This approach helps us to “reground” transnational migrants. As Ley (2004) has argued, transnational migrants are not “floating” all the time in open, abstract space but must touch ground somewhere and at sometime. In order to maintain their networks, they live day by day in specific places, travel to other places and communicate with people through specific means (Conradson and Latham 2005). Their transnational practices thus “take place” in / through concrete sites such as computers, homes, public places, airports etc. In this debate, researchers have referred to ‘online’ and

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‘offline’ forms of sociality (Boase and Wellman 2006). They argue that face-toface networking, such as neighbourhoods and community, have been in some measure replaced by internet based networking (through computers). Miller and Slater 2000 refer to the latter as ‘social networking sites’ (SNS) and points out at the ability of SNS to both unite diaspora populations and facilitate their connections with their homeland. Social practice, the second dimension, refers to the way groups and individuals use and appropriate material space for large scale activities such as agriculture, industry, commerce, recreation or housing, as well as for daily activities such as social interaction, economic exchange, religious practice, political protest, etc. For studies of transnational migration studying social practice means inquiring into how groups and individuals use and appropriate specific material spaces, for specific purposes, and how such use and appropriation is imbedded in structures of power. Also, studying social practice means recognising social networks as the basic social structure around which social practice is organized. Social networks can be understood as “the social alliances structuring everyday action” (RiaÇo 2000). Social networks connect individuals in a complex system of interpersonal relationships and social roles (Dahinden 2005). Beyond being structures of support social networks are also channels of transmission of cultural values and help generate a sense of belonging among networks participants. Featherstone et al. (2007), among others, have highlighted the role of social networks in binding different places together. Transnational social networks, and the cultural, economic and political flows of exchange that circulate between network members, bind distant places together into one network of significance, one transnational social space. For studies of transnational migration studying social networks means examining what social, economic and cultural exchanges take place between individuals who live in different physical settings across borders. The analysis involves asking questions about the evolving process regarding who are the main actors involved in the process, what kinds of exchanges take place, where and when do they take place, how often do they take place, who communicates with whom, what is the role of the different actors, and what are main means of communication. Meaning, the third dimension, refers to the significance that human beings attribute to the material spaces in which / through which they carry out their human actions. Understanding meaning is understanding social space. Indeed, for Buttimer (1972: 282) social space is a “dynamic continuum upon which the experiencer lives and moves and searches for meaning”. The process of investing physical space with meaning is contingent upon the changes that occur through everyday interactions and actions (Massey 1994). Although space is materially constituted, such material structures are reworked into a meaningful composite through the social actions and interactions of groups and individuals. Long ago

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Massey described such social actions and interactions as the “trajectories” of individuals (1994) that intersect at a specific place and give that place a specific meaning. For Johnston (2004: 68) “a space becomes a place through human interactions with it, both through physical manipulation, via such activities as agriculture, architecture, and landscape, and symbolically, via such activities as remembering, formulating, depicting, and narrating”. Thus, empirical analyses of transnational migration need to focus on the question of symbolic meaning, i. e. giving explicit focus in the empirical enquiry as to how material places are actually invested with symbolic meaning, thus producing social spaces. Further, studying meaning implies understanding symbolic representations and geographical imaginaries. Groups and individuals have specific imaginations of distant places where their friends, colleagues and relatives live and these imaginations play a role in the meaning they attribute to their places of origin. Represented spaces may be imbued with social meanings, that can be individual or collective, structured in layers, some deeper than others but always overlapping each other. People do not just give meaning to space but they also establish a relationship with it. Belonging has thus a spatial component. Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004) also elaborate on this issue and distinguish between “ways of being” and “ways of belonging” into a social field. Antonsich (2010) argues that belonging is a notion both vaguely defined and ill-theorized. It should be analyzed as place-belongingness. In her analysis of belonging, and the related politics of belonging in migration studies, Youkhana (2015) incorporates space as an analytical category that cross-cuts established categorizations of race, class, gender, and stage in the life cycle. The notion of “sense of place” is useful to understand the attachment and sense of belonging that people have to specific material spaces. For Yi-Fu Tuan (1974) sense of place refers to the affective bond between people and the physical settings in which / through which their human actions take place. Sense of place can have a positive or negative connotation (such as fear). Concepts such as cosmopolitanism help us understand that it is possible to belong to multiple places (Appiah 2007, Hannerz 2006, Tarrius 2000). Figure 2 below summarizes the arguments introduced above and traduces them into a practicable model for conceptualising and empirically analysing space in migration and mobility studies.

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Dimension of analysis MATERIAL STRUCTURES

Focus of attention Giving attention to the specific characteristics and implications of the concrete material sites in which/ through which social practices take place.

SOCIAL PRAC- Examining how individuals use and appropriate difTICE ferent physical spaces, for different purposes, in different socio-economic & political contexts, at different times, and with specific consequences regarding access to resources. SYMBOLIC Focusing on how material sites are (re)created, MEANING transformed and invested with meaning in the process of movement / migration

Aim for empirical study Mapping sites Tracing social exchanges

Tracing meanings

Figure 2. Proposed model for conceptualising and empirically analysing space in migration and mobility studies

Two final points. First, conceptualising space in studies of transnational migration cannot be disentangled from time (Jaisson 1999, Massey 2005, Soja 1996). Social space cannot exist outside time, as every place (city, square, house or even single room) is a specific place at a specific moment, but it changes (maybe slowly, maybe faster) as people cross it, use it, and appropriate it. To stress this fact, Massey uses the term time-space when referring to a socially produced space (Massey 2005). Also, transnational relations imply that there exist different places around the globe that are simultaneously important in one person’s life (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). Although people are able to bridge spatial distance by using modern communication technologies they also experience the time lag that exists between different places. Time is thus constitutive of social space and can constrain or facilitate the transnational experience (Ley 2004). Thus, the empirical study of transnational social space needs to be much more clearly connected to the question of time. Second, analysing transnational social space needs to be imbedded in geographically and temporally contingent power relations (gender, nationality, class, age). The latter necessarily affect the mobility and immobility of individuals, and thus the constitution of transnational social space. Mobility has often been treated in the literature as an unproblematic term. Authors such as Massey (1993: 60) point out that “Time-space compression has not been happening for everyone in all spheres of activity”. Mobility is not equal for all. Empirical analysis of transnational social space thus need to take account of existing differences of mobility among individuals depending on their gender, class, and ethnicity.

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Conclusions This paper has argued that space is a crucial dimension of study when studying migration and mobility. Everyday social interactions taking place between individuals living in different geographical locations do not take place in a “vacuum” but in space and through space. A critical review of the transnational migration literature has shown that recent work has considerably advanced our understanding of transnational migrants’ practices. At the same time, and although space is clearly a core dimension of study for the understanding of transnational social practices, the conceptualisation of space, and how people “produce” transnational social space through their everyday cross-border actions, remain insufficiently explored. Moreover, we have argued that space is not merely an abstract or metaphorical concept, as it has often been used in the migration literature, but has a tangible material dimension. In line with Featherstone (2007), we see the need to carry out much more scientific work which explicitly focuses on the spatialities of transnational social practices, both in theoretical and empirical terms. Accordingly, this paper has raised the question of what can be a conceptually adequate and empirically practicable approach to examine space in studies of transnational migration and mobility. This paper has proposed a model of analysis that includes three interrelated dimensions of analysis: materiality, social practice, and meaning. Addressing the material dimension of space means identifying, characterising and understanding the concrete material sites in which / through which the transnational lives of migrants take place. Studying social practice means inquiring into how groups and individuals use and appropriate different material sites, for different purposes, in different socio-economic and political contexts, at different times, and with specific consequences regarding access to resources. Finally, we have argued that material sites are not merely a container where human action takes place. Rather, material sites are symbolically transformed into a meaningful composite through physical manipulation, social interaction, appropriation, experience, representation, and remembering. We need to explore how material sites are (re)created, transformed and invested with meaning in the process of transnational movement and migration. Ultimately, the proposed three-dimensional analytical model needs to be embedded in power relations (gender, nationality, class, age) and in a temporal perspective. Finally, this paper has made some provocative methodological suggestions. It has argued that concepts commonly used by migration researchers such as “global”, “micro”, “macro” and “meso” are social constructs by researchers, which do not necessarily correspond to people’s experience. Thus, we have suggested that if we want to reconstruct an individuals’ experience of space, rather than starting with pre-existing notions of scale, it may make more sense to

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start the empirical inquiry with the actual experiences of individuals, track the geographical extent of their transnational practices, and then draw conclusions on how space is constituted in a transnational context.

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Tuan, Yi-Fu, 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press. Youkhana, Eva, 2015. “A Conceptual Shift in Studies of Belonging and the Politics of Belonging”. Social Inclusion (Open Access Journal) 3(4), pp. 10–24.

Maria Schwertl

Turning to the satellite, the container, the smartphone, technologization or situations of bordering and border crossing? Differences in using new materialistic approaches for ethnographic studies on migration and border regimes

In May 2015, shortly after several severe boat tragedies in the Mediterranean that effected the total number of at least 1750 deaths (Tagesspiegel 2015) caused by the European Approach to Migration in the first third of 2015 in the Mediterranean alone, the European Border Agency Frontex posted the following feature story about the new EU border surveillance system EUROSUR on its website: On the afternoon of Tuesday, September 16, 2014, Moroccan authorities alerted Spain’s Guardia Civil that they have lost track of a small rubber boat full of migrants […]. The Moroccans were growing concerned because they knew that the migrant boat was having engine trouble and was unlikely to make it to Spanish coast, putting dozens of people aboard in grave danger. The Spanish authorities quickly initiated search and rescue operation (SAR) and began to patrol the sea in the area they hoped to find the missing 7-metre boat. But it was nowhere to be found. At the same time […] a satellite was scheduled to take a radar scan of the area of the sea where the migrant boat was suspected to be in the evening. The image showed what appeared to be a small boat drifting north. […] The following morning, a Spanish Maritime Safety Agency (SASEMAR) vessel [due to this information] tracked down the boat that had been drifting for three days. The 38 people on board, including eight women and three infants, were exhausted, but still alive (Frontex 2015–05–06).

One could argue a lot of different cases with the way Frontex is characterizing the European border regime as humanitarian here and is using humanitarian reason to justify the surveillance of the Mediterranean Sea via satellites and radar. Or the role the evoked opposition of the huge sea and the small rubber boat is playing within this kind of reasoning. But one could also use the term ‘technologization’ to describe changes of the European border being displayed in this story via satellites, radar and information networks – which is exactly what is more and more often done within border studies (e. g. Dijstelbloem and Meijer 2011, Verstraete 2001) and what is to me one of three ways to deal with or discover material-semiotic realities in recent migration or border studies. This discovery has been – I would argue – mainly caused by the conjunction

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of material and technological changes in managing and surveilling migration (particularly the turn to biometry), in “protecting” borders (for example by the means of drones and radar) and in the practices of migrants themselves (for example the use of mobile phones to do remote parenting described by Daniel Miller and Mirca Madianou (Madianou and Miller 2012) on the one hand and of changes in the humanities, that have become especially interested in materialities during the last years on the other hand. So much so, that a material turn has been declared (Reckwitz 2008). Thus we cannot only observe an increased sensibility for materialities on the side of migration and border studies but also on the side of governance (which is not surprising at all given the knowledgepower-coherence described by Foucault for example). In this article I want to explore some of the effects, stimulations and challenges the material-semiotic turn within social and cultural sciences poses to ethnographically oriented migration and border studies and I want to argue that there have so far been three different ways of handling new materialistic approaches1 (i. e. Actor-Network-Theory, Posthumanism, Assemblage-Theory or STS) within migration and border studies: – The first one is looking for or at change (with a bigger whole like the European migration regime2 in mind) and thus often speaks of technologization or creates new terms to describe new technosocial practices. One example would be the term “polymedia” introduced by Miller and Madianou (Madianou and Miller 2012) or the term “connected migrant” by Dana Diminescu (Diminescu 2008). – The second one is explicitly looking at or following things, artefacts and materialities (like barbed wire, containers or flip-flops but also bodies or data). – And the third one is looking for a different perspective, that wants to zoom into situations, its microphysics, its eventfulness.

1 I use the term “new materialism” here as an umbrella term to summarize different approaches like ANT, posthumanism, new material feminism or assemblage theory. While the term is more often used in feminist contexts or to group together thinkers like Jane Bennett or Manuel DeLanda and less often used to denominate ANT or Deleuze, I still think the term “new materialism” is appropriate here, because it denotes the difference between recent materialistsemiotic approaches and historical materialism. Furthermore, it puts emphasis on the appeal of “newness” that comes along with the different perspectives and books that are all looking for a different way to deal with non-humans and human-non-human networks. My own background, I would say, is more in ANT and assemblage theory than posthumanism though. 2 I use the word “regime” here according to the current usage of the word within critical migration studies in Germany, that is to identify the European migration and border policy arena or constellation, which is permanently changing and shifting and is formed by a whole lot of different actors and elements, among them not only official politics or NGOs, but also companies and especially the movements of migration (Tsianos and Pott 2014).

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While I have mainly worked with the latter way of using material-semiotic approaches and theories (i. e. new materialism) within migration research, I think it is high time to integrate all three threads into one perspective or at least into one toolbox or to think about the different effects the three different approaches to materiality have. This article is a first attempt to do so. Further ones will follow hopefully. Grappling with what following materialities like satellites, small boats, smart phones or containers has to do with zooming into situations like border crossings or remote parenting and what it has to do with describing transformations, developments or re-entanglements within regimes or shifts in between actors can help us to clarify why we want to work in the vein of materialsemiotic debates and what kind of stories we want to and can tell when we use them: where is human agency and resistance, where is critique when we tell material-semiotic stories? Or to use the example given above: Is new materialism up to writing about broader shifts like the alliance of militarism and humanitarianism or about the agency of migration? And which one of the three approaches brings us closest to these aspects? Thus this article is not only about what migration studies could learn from ANT- and STS-studies, but also what new materialism could learn from migration studies – especially from those that position themselves to be critical. Once again, the question of agency and how to look at agency is thus posed. While new materialists like Bruno Latour have argued that agency is always the complex effect of a network of humans and nonhumans, migration scholars have pointed to the multidirectionality, the transnationality and the autonomy of migration. The question then is: how do the latter look through the perspective of the former? In exploring the options of approach one to three, this article is not about the potentiality of things only, but about the potentiality of new materialism for migration and border studies. The core potential of bringing new materialism to migration and border studies it is argued, is a new focus on actor networks that does not stop where migration or border research normally stops: at the migrant or at the border. While thus focussing on the zooming-in-aspect that new materialism and especially ANT is making possible – this focus is of course due to my own usages of the material turn in migration research so far (Schwertl 2010, 2013, 2015) but it has been also argued for by Marianne Pieper, Vassilis Tsianos and Brigitta Kuster (Pieper, Kuster and Tsianos 2014) –, I want to start with differentiating between the three different ways of using ANT and STS for ethnographic migration and border studies. One thing should be taken notice of beforehand however : in what has been called “border studies”, “mobility studies” or research on globalization, materialities feature much more prominently than in what has been called “migration research”. This is due to the fact that these research areas also follow things like sugar (Mintz 1985), flip-flops (Knowles 2014) or containers (Cowen 2009, 2014) around, or look at airports (Potthast

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2007) as part of airspaces (Urry 2007) while migration studies tend to follow around migrants. When talking about migration and border studies in the following I thus ignore huge differences not only between migration studies, border studies and mobility studies but also within migration studies, where one would have to differentiate at least between labour migration studies (especially those in the 1970s), biographical studies (especially in the 1990s) and transnational studies (especially since the 1990s). All of them brought and bring not only a different genealogy and positioning within the academic landscape along, but also a different take on materiality : while border studies have tended to focus on the geographical and physical border and thus developed a stable sensitivity to materiality, (Newman 2011) migration studies – in spite of Marxist approaches and some interest that was taken in the living conditions of the guest workers in the 1970s and 80s (e. g. Reimann and Reimann 1987) or the circulation of things in migrant networks (e. g. Schwertl 2010, de Souza Lobo 2014) – have tended to bypass questions of materiality until recently, when not only transationalism or the formation of mobility studies but also attempts to musealize migration brought along a new interest into material aspects, for example into how transnationalism is actually and materially done (e. g. Schwertl 2010, de Souza Lobo 2014) or how home making and belonging are materially done (Vilar Rosales 2010). It is mobility studies that have explicitly been started with the aim to think simultaneously about “five interdependent ‘mobilities’ that produce social life organized across distance and which form and (re-form) its contours”, that is 1) human travelling, 2) the circulation of things, 3) the imaginary movement and circulation of images, 4) virtuality, 5) communication (Urry 2007: 47). The aim of the approach was “a wholesale revision of the ways in which social phenomena have been historically examined” (ibid: 47). But when looking at the Routledge Handbook of Mobilities (Adey et al. 2013) or at the new journal Mobile Culture Studies, (Schlör and Rolshoven 2015) while mobility studies blur boundaries between tourism and migration, they do not care to blur or decenter categories like migration or to decenter the anthropocentrism, new materialism has attacked. Further mobility studies show a certain obsession with mobility (thinking about how mobility is done or experienced or how it will look in future or how it is changing our society) but forget about immobility (Gutekunst et al. 2016). Thus, to bring in new materialism is one further attempt to decenter migration and border studies and to make it sensitive to other sectors, circulations or regulations as has already been called for by the transnational approach (Glick Schiller et al. 1992) (and in its succession the call for a global power perspective (Glick Schiller 2010) (or by critical migration studies. (Hess and Kasparek 2010, Transit Migration Forschungsgruppe 2007) This is why I begin

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the following investigation into ways of material-semiotic approaches in migration and border studies by following a container.

Three different ways of looking at a container For several years a container had been standing on the property of GhanaianGerman School3 without anybody taking notice of it or any interest in it. It seemed to have become invisible. This is generally an impression that containers give easily, since they normally occur in great and unclear number and additionally most of the times are only tools of transportation for other, more important things. The said container however had not only had the task of transportation. After having arrived in the village called D., it had been used for some time as a bicycle repair shop and for the training of future bike mechanics by Ghanaian-German School. A lot of containers are used as workshops, dressmaker’s shops or kiosks in Ghana in what can be described as a kind of post-usage. Still, using the said container as bicycle repair shop was little successful, since comparatively few people are using bikes for transport in Ghana’s Ashanti Region, where the village called D. is located. This is why not only the repair shop but also GhanaianGerman School’s bike mechanic training course was closed shortly after its opening. Afterwards, the container was used to store all those things that continued to arrive from Germany. And those were quite a few, since GhanaianGerman School is the development project of a native Ghanaian living in Germany. For over twenty years now, Kofi and his friends have been contributing to the “development” of Kofi’s village of origin – among other things by having second-hand-goods transferred to it. This is why after the container’s function had changed again, it stayed where it had stood since its arrival in order to store the things from Germany, such as tools or computers. And it stayed there for years. But at one of Kofi’s visits to the project, something changed: he took notice of the container and wanted to know, what was inside of it. What had he and his friends actually brought to the village, what had been used and what had stayed within the container or been put there? Opening the container brought medical equipment, machines, tools for woodworking, sewing machines, a solar cooker, but also curiosities like a fridge with individually lockable boxes to the forefront. 3 I did research on Ghanaian-German school for three months at the beginning of 2010. It was one of the examples of “migrants” doing development aid in their so called country of origin, that I was following around to understand, how established projects dealt with the newly risen interest in them due to what I would later call the hype about migration& development, that is a turn in migration management as well as development aid to the topic of migration and migrant remittances that had begun with the turn of the century.

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Opening the container meant to check whether or not the transfer of things to Ghana had (developmentally) made sense. Some of the things they found inside the container that they had brought to Ghana from Germany had never been used and had stayed in the container since their arrival, some were no longer used. Opening the container also meant, to become aware of its existence and of the possibility of using it for a better purpose than just storage. This also is evident from the fact that after having been cleaned from the mess inside of it, the container once again was used as a bicycle repair shop – this time however only for internal means, that is for the maintenance of the school’s three bicycles. What makes this container and the practices evolving around it relevant to migration and migration politics? What meaning do the container and its opening have to migration and border research? Looking for an answer to these questions, one has to differentiate between the container as metaphor, pars pro toto – William Walters calls this angle of it its symbolism – and the container as concrete and material object with a history – William Walters calls this the machinery it is involved in and one could also speak simply of the materiality of it (Walters 2013: 2). Further, looking for an answer, we can come back to the three different ways to think through material-semiotic phenomena differentiated above: The first one is the perspective of change and transformation in regimes and the perspective of regimes as actor-networks. Of course, the container is part of actor-networks, regimes and their transformations or changes. The very reason that Kofi became aware of the container were some major changes in the development sector in general and in Kofi’s development project in specific that had taken place some time before the discovery. Due to embezzlement accusations regarding the development project, Kofi had decided to reorganize things and positions within it and to be more in charge of things, which brought him to re-discover the container. This is a clear sign of the regimes the project is part of: it is funded by the German Development Agency (GIZ) and thus has to live up to the latest standards of development cooperation that include transparency and ownership but also a strong disbelief in transferring or disposing of goods, which had been permissible for some decades. The container thus can be used analytically to find out about changes and conflicts in development regimes – or in migration regimes. Why is it anyway that remittances – be they monetary or not – and migrants’ development practices have attracted so much interest in recent years? While this goes back to the discovery by the World Bank in 2003 that migrants remittances are by far higher than Official Development Aid, which caused a lot of different politics and programmes to make use of the development potential of migration, this also meant that the position of Kofi and the container changed. Kofi, who has been in the development sector for about twenty years, has now become visible with his project. This is also, why the

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container became visible to him. Looking at the container and the changing tides of interest around it can thus also point to transformations, emergences and tendencies in regimes. The second perspective to look at the container is as an object and as a material manifestation of migrants’ transnational practices, of the monetary and commodity flows being connected to migration. Containers filled with development aid sent by migrants can be classified as non-monetary remittances (Levitt 2001). They are at the junction of global logistics, the transport of goods and its infrastructures (where the container has been the standardizing tool to make globalization of production and consumption even possible) on the one side (Cowen 2014) and migrants’ transnational practices on the other. To look at the thinginess of containers (Schudson 2014), their social life (Appadurai 1986) or biography (Knowles 2014) – as I have just done above –, mainly opens up to practices and other things and actors they are connected to, it opens up to actornetworks that do not only consist of migrants. Practices of remitting, helping, organizing, networking, doing business as in the case of Kofi and the village called D. become evident from their material side (Schwertl 2015), which also makes obstacles and borders running through these practices more evident (the hype about migration& development described in the first point talks about the transfer of knowledge or money as if these could flow freely). But also practices of production become visible when looking at the container’s materiality : To chose another example: if we follow things like fingerprint scanners around, we can not only see what they do and make possible, what role they have in bordering and citizenship practices, but also how and why they are and have been developed, what historical situation made it possible for them to become important and manifest. Last but not least the specific container in the village of D. cannot only be used to follow the development and the migration regime (approach 1) or the container (approach 2), but also to zoom into situations (approach 3), as I have done when describing the discovery of the container and its contents. I could have continued with the way the container was cleared and its contents were sold, used or tossed and thus could have explored more interactions within and around it. Thus I could have explored the interactions, discourses, roles, subjectivities and power-structures within Ghanaian-German School that also are part of different regimes and circulations. Thus through the looking glass of (opening) the container, I could have explained some broader rationalities and tendencies within development and migration regimes. In using the example of the container here for exploring the three different ways to think material-semiotically through migration and border processes, I put an object to the center, that has not only been used as accomodation for asylum seekers but also as space of “desparate mobility”, when migrants use

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containers as means of transport by transforming themselves into a part of the inanimate goods transported within it, in order to get away from one country and enter another (Walters 2012). It would be useful to think more about these invisibilized yet central objects regarding their role in migration and border regimes, not only to look at the overlapping yet often contradictory regimes of transport and migration, but also to find out about the microphysics of power, exclusion and moving. Looking at migration studies from the point of view of the container decenters them, but it also refocuses them on overlapping regimes, on practices, microphysics, contestations and negotiations. The polyvalence of objects becomes evident here: objects do not have one dimension of meaning only, they are not naturally in the world, they are made, produced, used, they can be misused, (Oezkan 2008, Walters 2012) that is used besides all ways of consumption or production. Things can change. This is why they are interesting to migration and border studies. In the following, I want to explore deeper the three ways to tackle containers and other material-semiotic aspects in migration and border studies.

Approach 1: Regimes as actor-networks or actor-networks in regimes In 1995, George Marcus in explaining Multi-Sited Ethnography and its relation to the world system wrote: “any ethnography of a cultural formation in the world system is also an ethnography of the system” (Marcus 1995: 99). This could also hold true for the first approach towards materialities within migration and border studies that is followed by some researchers of biometry or other “new” aspects of migration and border regimes like Eurosur (the new European border surveillance system) – not all of them working ethnographically but a lot of them drawing on in depth explorations (Dijestlbloem, Mejer and Besters 2011, Puar 2009, Scheel 2013, Tsianos and Kuster 2010: 6). Accordingly this approach could be framed in the following way : any ethnography or exploration of a formation or actor-network in the regime is an ethnography of the regime and indicates shifts and transformations of the regime (Schwertl 2013). The question posed here is, what the regime is looking like right now, what is happening, what the shifts and trends are in it or how a new discourse, category or actor-network evolves and what it looks like or does (Puar 2009). Approach 1 uses new materialism to grasp change and denotes it with terms like technologization and digitalization. Before the new material turn, explorations of emergent formations within migration and border regimes have often remained either within Foucauldian logics and discourse analysis or within the logics of social movements, but ever so more – and this could be seen as a change in epistemology –, some of them try

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to grasp what role specific materialities and technologies have in transformations of migration and border regimes but also in the movements of migration (Pieper, Kuster and Tsianos 2011). This goes beyond a sensitivity for technologies (as practices of governing the self and others) and architecture as displayed by governmentality studies, since according to this new materialist perspective, materialities are actually a game changer. Thus nonhuman elements or actants are not seen as permissive but as mediators (Latour 2005). Thus these studies often try to grasp what is actually changing through these new technologies and materialities (what qualitative changes they bring along in border control). In order to do so, Simon Sontowski has argued recently, one has to put technologies, their emergence and failings center stage and one has to quit assuming in a social determinist way that border technologies are just the effect of politics or in a technical determinist way that they are actually predestinating the way the migration and border regime goes (Sontowski 2014). Alexa Färber has argued regarding urban anthropology, that ANT and assemblage theory is used in research where there is no preconceived opinion about power or its stabilization and surprise is thus possible (Färber 2014). Thus ANT and assemblage theory allow one to understand the complex interaction between different actors that lead to stabilizations and to follow it by looking at the material side of these interactions. A researcher where the concern for regimes as actor-networks and for their material side is clearly visible although he is drawing more on Foucault and governmentality studies and less on new materialism is William Walters, who has not only tried recently to recenter border studies around routes not borders, but has also has focused on vehicles of migration in the course of this refocussing (Walters 2012, 2013). Thus he clings to specific materialities to look at politics. While also working on a new perspective (as is argued below) for migration and border studies, at the same time he tries to grasp what is actually happening right now in migration and border regimes and diagnoses a new kind of politics that actually is – just like his research – refocusing on routes: viapolitics. To Walters, viapolitics are “those instances when journeys, vehicles, transportation systems, and subjects identified in reference to those systems, are brought into the scene of migration. It denotes the various ways in which these elements are constituted as objects of power, sites of politics, and stakes in social struggles” (Walters 2012: 4). He claims: “All migrations involve journeys. But not all migrations involve viapolitics. Not all migrations are marked, contested and remembered by their journeys” (ibid: 5). Thus, with the concept of viapolitics Walters wants to initiate a new way of talking about migration and migration governance that does not focus on the border, but takes mobility as its starting point.4 4 Also other researchers have looked at new material practices framed by Walters as “viapo-

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Brigitta Kuster and Vassilis Tsianos have likewise followed some new material-semiotic practices and actor-networks within the European Border Regime: the ones connected to the Eurodac system, that has the task to store fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants but also to prevent multiple asylum applications by “searching and comparing the fingerprints of migrants” (Tsianos and Kuster 2010: 5) – thus being a tool of automated border governance. They not only follow the practices of border guards and police (including taking unreadable fingerprints) but also of migrants around Eurodac and diagnose a new “digital deportability”, which means that deportability is extended “within and beyond state boundaries” and that European data systems are “also increasingly used to exclude and where possible to expel the group of migrants who have succeeded in travelling to Europe and are living illegally in one of the member states” (Broeders 2011: 58f). The “flexible multidirectionality of the mobile subjectivities of migrants” are thus entangled to “the knowledge-based cyber-technologies used for their surveillance” (Tsianos and Kuster 2010: 6), which means that the digital border cannot be equated to the digital reproduction of the territorial border but is a highly mobile, bodily and pervasive form of border. In both approaches – the one of Walters and the one of Kuster and Tsianos – following materialities or material-semiotic networks is used to look at the regime and at ways of governing and their new materialities. More often – I would state however – diagnoses about the new materialities of borders and border regimes are given without looking in depth at actor-networks or materialities. Then, the diagnosis “technologization”, “digitalization” or “militarization” is based on the emergence of some new technologies or network systems without exploring what these actually are changing when it comes to movements and their control. In the given examples, not only transformations are followed but most of the time, actor-networks. A lot of recipients of ANT in specific and new material approaches in general have understood them to be only about the introduction of objects and materialities like scallops, (Callon 1986) waterpumps, (deLaet and Mol 2000) keys (Latour 2000) or microbes (Latour 1993) to social and cultural sciences. But the Actant-Rhizome-Ontology – this is the name Latour gave ANT in an explanation of its positions (Latour 1999) – is less about single entities than about translations, (Callon 1986) networks, (Callon 1986), multiplicities, (Mol 2003) rhizomes and connections (DeLaet and Mol 2000, Mol 2003, Sørensen 2012). Right at its beginning in the 1980s, when it took shape at the Centre de litics”: recently there have been more and more discussions about mappings and countermappings (Casas-Cortes et al. 2014, Cas-Cortes et al. 2015, Hess 2010, Spillmann 2007, Tazzioli 2014).

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Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI) and the Pcole nationale sup8rieure des mines de Paris, ANTwas interested in framing the construction of science and technology not as a singular and linear process, but as a network, a phenomenon that would only evolve because of relations and connectivities. Thus ANT is interested in ontological politics; that is “a politics that has to do with the way in which problems are framed, bodies are shaped, and lives are pushed and pulled into one shape or another” (Mol 2003: viii). It is interested in epistemic moments, where multiplicities are banned and thus works against the retrospective disguise of these moments and against the naturalisation of the status quo.5 Seen from this point of view, ANT is not a thing theory but a non-social network theory and this is what is made use of in the vein of migration research drafted above that does not believe in fixed categories or actors. Methodologically and epistemologically that means: “Attachments are first, actors are second!” (Latour 2005: 217). Instead of single entities, research inspired by this kind of material-semiotic focus starts digging into interactions, into how different actors or actants came to be together in one situation, how they came to be what they are today or how they came to be part of a certain network and how they are actually interacting. This also complicates jumping to hasty conclusions about the relevant actor or actor-networks at a specific point in time. This also means digging into emergences and the constant reshuffling of networks, connections and entities – for example those evolving around Eurodac or viapolitics. It means not to start from entities like institutions, organisations or single humans and their “identities” and thus it also implies not to start from migrants and their organisations, as a lot of migration researchers have done (Glick Schiller and Wimmer 2002). This approach thus is helpful in order to counter methodological nationalism and methodological individualism that is the very tendency within the humanities to start from the nation state as entity or the individual as entity. If the boundaries of an entity are always the result of interactions then the entity does not exist, as such, before a specific situation or moment in time. Instead of explaining the world via identities and entities like states, policies or institutions, this approach is about assembling actor-networks and about pointing out the multiplicity of actants involved in fabricating entities. Thus entities like regimes are seen as a whole bunch of actor-networks or as a one huge network without assuming wholeness.

5 Here it comes close to Foucault’s perspective on governing and categorizations and his interest in what is seen or unseen and what is speakable or not and it has been also called “postconstructivist” for this (Degele and Simms 2004: 259).

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Approach 2: Following things and materialities In mid-August 2015 a short discussion was engaging the German press: why did so many refugees have smart phones and why was this not to be considered a luxury or even pointing to their misusage of the asylum system? Articles explained that smart phones were not only used to stay in touch with family and friends dispersed all over the world due to their flight or with family and friends back home, but also already during the flight, to organize the route and journey (Meyer 2015). The German press was having a moment where it followed things and objects and around the practices connected to them accordingly. Recently, more and more researchers have done the same. Heidrun Friese for example has looked at the shifting economies around ships on the isle of Lampedusa and especially has followed ships that have been used by refugees and migrants thus drawing attention to the problem of disposal of these boats. (Friese 2014) Authors like Jörg Potthast, John Urry or Brenda Chalfin have looked at places like airports (Potthast 2007, Urry 2007) and ports (Chalfin 2010) to show the crises or precarity or permanent production of connectivity and mobility. A lot of research or books that follow things around that cross borders or are mobile – and that I am about to refer to –, would on the one hand not position themselves within migration and border studies but rather in mobility or globalization studies or more generally in science and technology studies. On the other hand they also do not often draw on new materialist approaches but rather on classic books like for example one edited by Arjun Appadurai that is called The Social Life of Things (Appadurai 1986). Thus it is kind of a wide stretch to include them here. Still, they often deal with phenomena that are highly relevant to migration and border studies and that are supposedly only excluded from them or positioned in a different field of research, because migration and border studies are supposed to follow people not things (e. g. Pries 2008). But when Caroline Knowles follows the production and consumption chain of flipflops from Kuwait, where oil is extracted, to Korea, where plastic granulate is produced, to China, where the flip-flops are finally made and further on to Ethiopia where flip-flops are not only sold but also smuggled, she is not only interested in the mechanisms of production, but in the work and working lifes of those producing and consuming flip-flops, who are again and again migrant workers (Knowles 2014). And when Erin B. Taylor (Taylor 2015, Taylor and Horst 2014) or Bill Maurer (Maurer, Nelms and Rhea 2013) follow mobile money, or William Walters follows ships and stowaways, (Walters 2008) they not only follow new technologies but mobility practices from below. Last but not least: when Reviel Netz (2004) rewrites the history of humans but also animals from the perspective of Barbed Wire for the time between 1874 and 1954, he also

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describes attempts to control space and movements (through barbed wire) as main feature of history and takes movements and moving actants as starting point to look at both history and control. Thus not only the bodily side of preventing movements becomes obvious, but also the violent, cruel and painful side. Thus following things and materialities cannot only mean following production and consumption chains (Knowles 2014, Mintz 1985) or the changing meanings and usages of things throughout their life cycle, (Appadurai 1986, Kopytoff 1986) but it can also mean doing genealogical work and enable different, unheard narratives. Because focussing on things enables one to think through different regimes and sectors. In migration studies, we often fall short of this multiplicity of entities. Thus – while I am definitely sceptic of writing monographs about things in migration and border studies, because it brings us away from social struggles – I think to follow things for a certain period of time within a research project, could raise our awareness of overlapping yet disjunctural phenomena, scapes or regimes, of bodily experiences and their unnaturalness and outrageousness or of the power and exclusions manifest in things. This is also what the anthropology of infrastructure has drawn attention to recently (Star 1999).

Approach 3: Zooming into situations, microphysics or events In a recent presentation on what he calls the deportation regime, William Walters stated: “The activity of transportation, the infrastructures, procedures, personnel and vehicles by which the ‘removal’ of people is effected has been at best marginal and frequently missing from the analysis of deportation, its politics and its relationship to global mobility and forms of citizenship” (Walters 2013: 2). Following this analysis he argues – in a Foucauldian vein – for an exploration of the microphysics of migration control which could be accomplished by looking at vehicles like planes, ships or busses as mobile yet temporarily locked up spaces and at the journeys and interactions that take place within them. By looking at vehicles as “key symbolic and material locus” (Walters 2013: 2) of doing deportation, negotiations and contestations as well as attempts to stabilize the procedure can be traced. Thus the perspective of microphysics enables one to zoom into situations and their power structures. Starting from a similar point, the mig@net project and its researchers – among others Vassilis Tsianos, Brigitta Kuster, Olga Lafazani, Nelli Kambouri, Dimitris Parsanoglou, Renata Pepicelli – observe border crossings as events and processes. They use assemblage and agencement theory for that and look at specific situations, in which Eurodac is made or unmade (Tsianos and Kuster

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2010). Thus the system “Eurodac” becomes perceptible as a process, as something that is enacted and made from situation to situation but can just as well fail, if no input (i. e. fingerprint) is created within the single situations. Given the alarmist style of much public politics that give the impression that one has to act quickly in reaction to current dangers, arriving masses, crises or “society’s decays”, Jasbir Puar – drawing on the material-semiotic concept of assemblage – suggests a decelerated approach towards regimes, discourses and politics – in her case to the new formation of homonationalism: “So, in the midst of the frenetic speeds of crisis and urgency, a slowing of time happens, and with it, a deeper scrutiny of every single experienced moment. Like an enlarged timescape, […] text is always a slowing down of a particular historical moment of crisis, a matching of increased speed of thought that accompanies responses to crisis with the slowing down of individual frames necessary to really comprehend and attend to this crisis” (Puar 2007: xxi). In Puar’s book Terrorist Assemblages this means to zoom into specific events like a court case or an episode of a TV-series and to point out the logics running through them, to describe how they work and what is happening within them. Walters, the mig@net project as well as Puar are thus all using new material theories or material-spatial framings to focus on the eventfulness and microphysics of and within situations. They use not only events (that are changing the course of trajectories) but situations in general as a means of deceleration and as a means of situating oneself, of being critical (Haraway 1988). A deceleration – like the one Jasbir Puar propagates as a counter point to the feeling of crisis and the speed of alarmist interventions – is not only possible with Foucault or Assemblage-Theory though but also with ANT, because you can use it to linger in situations and concentrate on actors’ interactions and ethnotheories. This is why various authors including Burno Latour, Tim Ingold, Mathias Rodatz and Anne Dölemeyer have used the image of an “ant” to describe the method of “ANT”, because ants are slow but assiduous workers (Ingold 2008, Latour 2005, Dölemeyer and Rodatz 2010: 198). The aim here is to take a step back and to question the explanatory power of the macro-scale and the bigger picture. Accordingly everything is (re)produced in small, tiny interactions. A discourse, a discussion, a movement or technology can be “global” or “huge” only by being mediated and translated. This perspective then brings you back to the question of: who or what is actually doing what? Working in this vein – not only by using ANT but also assemblage theory or new situational approaches (Berlant 2011, Clarke 2005) – thus means a selective approach that goes from situation to situation, from one connection to the next. This implies a decelerated or decelerating method that does not jump from one level to the next in huge steps, but takes its time. This third way of thinking material-semiotically in migration and border studies thus uses new material

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approaches as a new perspective, as a way to reconfigurate how to look at borders and movements. It uses them to think twice, to zoom in and to establish a situational perspective that goes beyond social interactions.

New materialism: Migration and border studies: Critique Questions regarding the critical potential of new materialism have been raised more and more in recent years and they have been answered in different ways: Some answers emphasize the representational or ontological politics of ANTand new materialist approaches that for example favour “modest stories” instead of “strong stories” (Ren and Krogh Peterson 2013), that take a symmetric view6 and focus on multiplicities (Mol 2003) thus challenging implicitness and stability. In the same vein, the focus on epistemic moments and the production of knowledge and categorizations is highlighted and argued to be denaturalizing and critical (Beck 2014). This kind of argument on critique in new materialism thus emphasizes that technology, knowledge, facts, things, politics, regulations and standards are not just out there, they are produced and they are producing boundaries and differences. New materialism is able to follow this boundary making from below, as urban anthropologist Alexa Färber has argued (Färber 2014). So following these discussions and the points made above, what do new materialisms have to offer to migration and border studies, especially if they follow a critical angle? It can learn to denaturalize the status quo not only through deconstruction, discourse analysis or genealogies, but by following the making of politics, discourses, knowledge, categories or by zooming into how things become fixed and circulated. While I am fully aware that this kind of research is already happening, (Hess 2014, Klepp 2011) I would argue, that new materialist approaches could make migration research pay more attention to this kind of question, to its material side (Hayes 2009) and thus also to the side of science and research in governing migration. Furthermore migration and border studies can learn from new materialism to focus on the “backroads” of mobility, migration, movements and their regulations: on things like containers instead of glitzy and fancy stuff like biometry. Or on the backstages of glitzy and fancy stuff. This also brings along a different timeliness: instead of trying to be permanently on top of things, one learns to slow down, take one’s time, think 6 “Given the principle of generalized symmetry, the rule which we must respect is not to change registers when we move from the technical to the social aspects of the problem studied” (Callon 1986: 4) that is not to differentiate between actors of different qualities, Michel Callon, one of the “founders” of Actor-Network-Theory wrote.

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again, reconsider and above all. To zoom in. Migrant and border studies could furthermore learn to pay more attention to other sectors and processes, besides migration, borders and its regulations. Because: if you follow the actor-network, it does not necessarily stop where you might have thought. Thus migration policies could lead you to insurances for shipping companies or to containers (Walters 2012) or to communal development aid (Schwertl 2015) or to customs (Richter 2015). Movements do not stop at the boundaries of our research focuses. And they are often not as clearly divided into human and non-human movements as we might think. Thus thinking material-semiotically makes one think more cross-sectoral. (On the interdisciplinary potential of ANT: Färber 2014). Assemblage theory explicitly focuses on the re-entaglements of elements and on multiple logics and strands. This is what one could follow. But then, not all usages of material-semiotic approaches are similar or are similarly critical – in the kind of understanding of critique that has been established by critical migration and border regime studies, that takes the autonomy of migration as its starting point and focuses on migration as a worldmaking and political movement thus questioning the notion that something like “migration” just exists. Critical migration and border regime studies focus on the production of migration and at the contestations around it. Thus, I would argue, following things and materialities around is of little interest to migration and border studies. Rather, new materialism should be used to follow actor-networks or to zoom in. Because then, agency is not lost but our view on it is becoming more agnostic and accepting of the fact, that agency is spread and disjunct. From this point of view then, new materialism can be used to look at humanitarianism and its enactment in specific situations. This means that migration and border studies can not only profit from new material approaches, but also new material approaches could profit from taking notice of what migration and border studies have to offer – especially those that call themselves critical: here not only the recent focus on transnationality has argued for a global power perspective, but also the concept of autonomy of migration has reshuffled our perception of power. Critical migration and border studies are sensitive to barriers, disjunctures and power structures. Taking notice of research choosing micro-approaches to these kinds of things might strengthen research on materialities, science and technology.

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Juan Carlos Velasco

Borders, migrations, and fortune*

Borders are taking the function of demarcating territories that social and political groups occupy. In the specific case of national borders, their purpose is to demarcate the physical environment of each of the political entities recognized by the international community (Schmitt 1950). This already seemed to be clear at the beginning of political modernity, as territorial integrity and the inviolability of national borders became fundamental principles of international law established after the Peace of Westphalia. Their validity has also been confirmed by the system that has been institutionalized around the United Nations since 1945. Borders also delimit geographically the different jurisdictional systems, and in one or another way all inhabitants of the planet are subject to these demarcations. Borders, then, are valid for everyone, but their effects are not the same for everyone. Something as random as the fortune or the misfortune to have been born on one specific side of a border, in principle a trivial circumstance in moral terms, has direct repercussions on the range of opportunities for welfare and justice that people can enjoy throughout life. Such effects become especially evident in the very unequal abilities that people actually have to move freely about the planet and settle in the country of their preference. Throughout this article, we will analyze the normative dimensions of this issue with the aim of finding ways to overcome this arbitrariness of fortune and reduce its effects on human mobility.

* This article was written as part of the research project “Human Rights and Global Justice in the Context of International Migrations” (Plan Nacional I+D - FFI2013-42521-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

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Borders in a globalized world Borders continue to be a tangible reality, but lately their meaning has become volatile and complex as they have gradually turned more fluid and selective, a result associated to a large degree with the dynamic of so-called globalization, the term that probably best expresses the spirit of these times. Among the different processes of social change subsumed under that notion, the elimination of borders stands out. The idea that borders have been or are really going to be eliminated is, however, closer to the realm of the imaginary than to the real, as is demonstrated by the fact that, in the midst of generalized proclamations about global interconnectivity, there has been no interruption of the establishment of technically advanced filters and border control and monitoring mechanisms. With a profusion much greater than in any other era, over the last two decades, a vast number of walls, trenches and fences have been erected all over the globe – reaching, according to some estimates, a total length of 18,000 kilometers (Rodier 2012) – which reliably mark the outline of national borders on the land the purpose not so much of blocking the entry of invading armies as impeding the transit of private persons and/or any other type of national flow. There are more than a few borders that during this time have acquired the same unsettling, characteristic look of high-security prisons. This wave of wall-building is taking place right at a historic moment when the effective sovereignty of States is being diluted: the ability to autonomously manage what happens in the territory of their jurisdiction has been limited as much as the degree of interdependence has increased. In this context, walls are erected “to offer a symbol of firmness to the internal public” (Mor8 2007: 15, see also Andersson 2014). The iconic value and performative functions predominate to such an extent that the possible meaning of such walls would lie more in their ostentatious visibility than in their doubtful effectiveness. They do not solve the conflicts between globalization and national interests, but project a glorified image of the scant sovereign power that States still possess (Brown 2010). The real space where social interactions play out is no longer confined by the limits of different political jurisdictions. For some time now, their effective perimeter has completely spilled beyond local and national jurisdiction, covering the finite spherical surface of the planet we inhabit. As Ortega y Gasset indicated already in 1929, “there is no longer any part of humanity which lives separately ; there are no islands of humanity” (Ortega and Gasset 2008: 272). Given that all human beings share the same physical environment as the setting for their multiple and varied social practices, it makes sense to think about whether borders are ungodly figures that should be overcome (in the Hegelian sense of the term). The answer is not at all simple. The world has certainly never been as unified as it is at present (in the sense that its different parts have never

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been more interconnected or in a greater relationship of interdependence), yet in many ways the dividing lines, the borders, are still being emphasized. People from all over the planet increasingly exchange information, goods, and services, and not only in virtual space, which continues to expand; direct contacts and communication have multiplied thanks to revolutionary innovations and a reduction of transportation costs. Furthermore, transnational networks of all sorts abound (non-governmental organizations, multinational corporations, academic exchange associations, terrorist groups and drug traffickers, etc.), collectives which operate internationally and strive with greater or lesser success to become actors of global reach. In this new context, States have not let down their guard in the control of their borders limiting the circulation of people, and there are many countries that present themselves as armored fortresses, albeit unconvincingly. At the same time, to achieve the objective of controlling borders, the interpretive framework of national security is prioritized above all else, often in clear contempt of the human rights of those vulnerable individuals who try to cross state borders. Borders not only continue to exist, they have become institutions with asymmetrical repercussions on the free circulation of persons. In this globalized world, where power has apparently been deterritorialized, where capital, services, and goods move with hardly any obstacles, the majority of individuals continue to run up against serious restrictions when they try to cross borders, such that their freedom of movement is severely limited. Despite the speeches that proclaim the Westphalian model to be obsolete (and with it the consideration that the modern State – a territory-based, autonomous political unit that maintains the monopoly of violence – represented the main framework of political action), borders have not dissolved, at least not for everyone. Increasingly common is a double regime for the circulation of individuals across borders, which thus serve to discriminate between “ceux qui font circuler les capitaux et ceux que les capitaux font circuler” (Balibar 1996: 377).1 For the former, borders that are liquid or at least permeable and flexible are put before them, while for the others, borders that are solid or the most rigid possible (Bello 2011: 24). For the former, those considered trustworthy, the crossing of borders is a simple procedure and for the others, those perceived as potential risks, it is a tortuous experience. They do not always work in the same way, nor do they have the same effects on everyone.

1 Translation by the author : Between “those who circulate the capital and those who are circulated by the capital”.

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Borders and justice The notion of borders refers not only to the imposition of a physical or mental barrier for prohibiting or allowing passage from one region to another ; the rights and obligations that individuals and authorities have are detailed in it. To begin with, the mere fact of being born on one side or the other of said lines most likely determines the nationality that one is going to have. Among the basic functions entrusted to this legal figure is establishing the criteria for belonging and determining who counts as a member of society. Understood as such, their link to social justice is obvious, as by indicating who is a member of the group, nationality also indicates who has the right to – that is, who must be taken into account and who can reclaim – a fair distribution of resources and opportunities. By contrast, those who lack the appropriate nationality experience “a kind of political death”, such that “those who suffer it may become objects of charity of benevolence” (Fraser 2009: 20). This, transferred to the world of migrations, entails at least two direct consequences. First of all, their real chances of emigrating, that is, of legally crossing the borders of another State with the goal of settling there, and secondly, the particular legal-political status that they might have in said country once they manage to settle there, are going to depend on the particular nationality that one possesses. For both issues, it does matter which nation a person belongs to. This is something that is well-reflected in the dynamic of contemporary migratory processes. Given the magnitude of the grievances and inequalities that the very existence of border policies generates, it is something that can and must be presented as a matter of justice: “to raise the question of justice in relation to the border means to take a critical standpoint that highlights the gap between justice itself and any (partial) realization of justice under given spatial and temporal circumstances” (Mezzadra and Nielson 2011: 189). Borders maintain a relationship that we could qualify as dialectical with justice: the particular element that paves the way for the creation, although necessarily partial, of universal values in the modern State. But borders do not maintain only an internal relationship with justice, insofar as they constitute one of the conditions for achieving it, but also an external relationship with it, in limiting its sphere of validity. The enormous challenge that so-called global justice currently poses is based precisely on finding the way to achieve distributive justice, overcoming the constrictions that state borders impose. This is, undoubtedly, an approach that revolutionizes very rooted habits in political philosophy (see Velasco 2010). A key normative problem that all political theory and, more particularly, all philosophy of justice have to face is defining their universe of application or the limits of each political community. That in some philosophical constructions

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this matter is sidestepped does not obscure the restricted reach of these formulations. As Michael Walzer points out in a text that has become a reference on the matter (see Walzer 1983: 31ff), the definition of the sphere of validity is a preliminary decision, a precondition of the political that determines all the following decisions that must be made about the organization of the common. And even though Walzer felt that this was an obvious matter that each community has to agree on freely, since then the question of the legitimacy of borders has been settled in the center of political philosophy. If the original use of the term border is spatial, even physical, there are also figurative but equally common uses: an imaginary line that separates different environments, for example, different spheres of conduct or of knowledge (this is how one speaks of the border of life, of science, of faith, or of time). Border is, moreover, an almost omnipresent metaphor which serves to establish divisions not only on political maps but also on the mental maps that socially organize the differences. As Balibar affirms, “Toutes les frontiHres sont en effet fonction d’une certaine cartographie, et notamment d’une cartographie des identit8s et des appartenances” (Balibar 2001: 61).2 In addition to demarcating a territory, borders shape the political space in which the principles and different regulations that are adopted are applied. Not in vain does the State define itself as a unity in a dual meaning: as a unit of legality and justice (a space in which its members share mutually invocable principles of justice) and as a unit of political decision. But this coincidence is only valid within that united space, and only for those that are recognized as members of the political community, a condition that is normally met via the statute of nationality. In this regard, nationality also functions like a border that marks the limits of membership and excludes the undesirables. Nationality and the exclusive rights commonly associated with it represent a powerful device of social closure (and thus of exclusion) with which rich countries trace a line that clearly separates their full-fledged members from those immigrants who come from poor countries.

Borders and inequality of opportunities Depending on which side of the border one was born on and has lived on, some people are deprived of practically any legal protection while others are guaranteed basic rights and freedoms; some are condemned to remain in the most abject misery while others, equally undeservedly, live in the lap of luxury ; some from the outset enjoy an infinite number of material opportunities and others 2 Translation by the author : “All borders are indeed based on a certain cartography, and particularly on a cartography of identities and memberships.”

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lack the very minimum to lead a decent life. The differences in income within each country, in many cases extremely large, pale in comparison to the differences in income between countries, such that “today, it is much more important, globally speaking, whether you are lucky enough to be born in a rich country than whether the income class to which you belong in a rich country is high, medium, or low” (Milanovich 2010: 113). Stated even more graphically : “All people born in rich countries thus receive a location premium or a location rent; all those born in poor countries get a location penalty” (ibid: 120). Political maps determine almost everything in this regard and the room for maneuver they leave is rather limited. Thus many of the planet’s inhabitants, for having been born on the wrong side of the border, do not have the smallest chance of one day becoming as wealthy as the poorest people in the United States, Japan, or Western Europe. The degree of disparity that exists is clearly illustrated with this piece of data: the poorest 1 % of the population of Denmark has incomes higher than 95 % of the inhabitants of Mali, Madagascar, and Tanzania (Milanovich 2013).Being born today with, for example, Swedish or Swiss nationality is like winning the lottery for life, as to a large extent your future will be solved, at least in comparative terms (Shachar 2009). It is a global lottery in which, as in so many games of chance, there are not many winners. The outline of political borders has an important effect on the production as well as the reproduction of inequality in the world: the borders frame perimeters of welfare, as they territorially circumscribe opportunities and options for life. And nobody is unaware that these opportunities and options differ enormously from one country to another. Therefore, in this regard, borders are not normatively neutral, as they impede access to opportunities by those who are not nationals of a particular State (Loewe 2012). In general, when we speak within our borders, the only social inequalities that we are willing to accept are those resulting from responsible actions or decisions by individuals and not those caused by circumstances beyond their control. Compensating individuals for these undeserved or coincidental circumstances would rightly be one of the essential missions assigned to state organization. Things are viewed differently, however, when it comes to issues beyond our borders. The practical consequences of the division of the world by borders, starting with the enormous socio-economic differences between countries, are precisely among the circumstances that are beyond the control of individuals, who should be compensated for the negative consequences they entail as regards distributive justice. In many cases, the benefits of the welfare state, or at least some of them, are linked to the possession of the statute of nationality, which in principle are denied to people who come from abroad. This way, a system of assignment that fell into deep disrepute some time ago is maintained, as the accident of having been born in one or another country, of belonging to one or another ethnic

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group, of being born rich or poor, is something unconnected to our choice and it cannot become an object of praise or an object of reproach. Reserving certain rights for nationals of a country automatically implies excluding many people from enjoying them, as such, from all the advantages associated with belonging to the social club (although it is questionable that States, as subjects of public law, could be considered as associations which reserve the right to refuse admission). The fact that some of the usual inhabitants of a country, as happens with many immigrants, cannot easily obtain nationality is not at all improvised: the very purpose of their peculiar status “is to prevent them from improving their condition” (Walzer 1983: 59). And all of that has a functional justification in exclusive benefit to the receiving society : “Without the denial of political rights and civil liberties and the ever-present threat of deportation, the system would not work” (ibid: 58). A segregating legal status is thus shaped, obliging one to live permanently in a subordinate social position with negative implications for welfare opportunities. In brief, “the denial of the membership is always the first of a long train of abuses” (ibid: 59). This type of functionality can also be extended to systems of border control, which do not strive so much to order migrations as to optimize the mechanisms that exploit transnational workers. Nationality, acquired in more than 95 % of the cases by the biological fact of birth according to the principles of consanguinity (jus sanguinis) or territoriality (jus soli) – is a completely contingent element. It is not the result of agreements that the individuals affected can reach, or of choices that they can make; nor does it depend in any way on merits that they can prove. Despite this, in the most prosperous societies, even though they define themselves as democratic, the statute of nationality in some way represents the modern equivalent of “feudal privileges” that select individuals enjoyed in the ancien r8gime: a status inherited by birth which considerably expands the range of opportunities in life (see Carens 1987, Ferrajoli 1999: 116, Shachar 2009: 21ff). Although it might be surprising for many people, from this perspective our world is organized in such a way that it greatly resembles the manner of feudal organization that was assumed to be abolished some time ago. Having been born in Denmark instead of in Mali, Madagascar, or Tanzania, for example, compares with having been born a noble instead of a serf in the Middle Ages (Carens 2013). This completely random circumstance dramatically determines advantages and disadvantages for people. Today there are few people who consider feudalism an acceptable form of social organization, as it legitimizes the special social status that some people enjoy only because of their birthplace. Nonetheless, there are also few people who raise much of a fuss over the fact that these privileges that result from being born in one specific country and not another are maintained.

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Overcoming the arbitrariness of fortune The inequalities generated or established by the division of the world through borders can be conceived by the individuals that suffer them as an effect of chance, of an ill-fated lottery devoid of all human influence. It is true, however, that behind these dividing lines, there is or has been an act of will, and it is difficult to assert that they are merely a product of coincidence. In any case, these inequalities benefit some and hurt others. Resorting to chance would be no more than a way of hiding, or at least ignoring, the set of structural conditions that facilitate or impede the demand for accountability, hence the need to confront that subjective representation with an inquiry into the causes of such inequalities. Only by knowing the causal origin – investigating the chain of effects that contribute to migratory processes – is it possible to subvert and remedy the misfortune. Chance, like fortune or fate, is one more of the many names used throughout Western tradition to refer to the territory of the irrational and, by extension, of everything beyond human control. Such terms are nothing more than rhetorical resources normally used as an ideological cover to justify serious decisions. We all need to give meaning to our lives, and to do so, the most helpful thing is to abide by certain easy excuses, even if they are hardly convincing and their possible soothing effect rapidly fades, when fatalism cedes to indignation. Resorting to the notion of chance or fortune is nothing but a rhetorical figure. It indicates, in the best of cases, the confession of impotence. For lack of a better story to tell, men, as Thomas Hobbes clearly warned, “invoked also their own wit, by the name of Muses; their own ignorance, by the name of Fortune” (Hobbes 1998: 75). Today, it is not appropriate merely to cite ungovernable forces as a response to any undesired effect derived from the social structure or individual actions or oversights. Not for everything is it appropriate to invoke destiny or necessity as a justification. Attributing the origin of certain unfavorable social phenomena to blind chance is nothing more than a very unacceptable way of avoiding or displacing responsibilities, “a poor cover” (Shklar 2009: 73). It is certainly within our power to conceive of everything that happens to us as a stroke of luck, or attribute it to some form of injustice, with the consequent accusation of responsibilities. This previous decision changes the course of events as well as their interpretation and, of course, also the nature of our reaction. Qualifying a situation as unjust and not as a coincidental mishap implies admitting that it must be rectified. Thus, and returning to the matter of migrations, it is not sustainable to assert that a world with borders or under conditions of strict monitoring is the work of nature or an unalterable destiny. It is, and this is beyond any doubt, a human construct. Although it is not easy to

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address all the factors at play, it is not, then, any sort of fate in which it is not possible to intervene. It is even less sustainable to claim that borders can be presented as a legitimate obstacle to mobility and that the rights of persons, including the rights to live and work in a specific place, depend on the side of the border they were born on. The idea that the division of the world itself by means of political borders objectively shapes a structural situation of injustice is then plausible. If this is true, and there are good reasons to believe it, the discourse needs to be contemplated in relation to the way the human world is organized, and that discourse would have to begin by clarifying some rather frequent misunderstandings. The properties that characterize an unfair situation are not reduced to the sum of improper actions performed by physical persons. Moreover, personal conduct that lies within the accepted regulatory framework can contribute to and reproduce situations of structural injustice (Young 2010). However, the fact is that resorting to the language of justice in some way might then be discretionary, if not strictly unavoidable. Fortune and justice maintain a strange relationship, but that does not mean it is not solid. Not in vain does an act appropriate of a well-ordered society consist precisely of overcoming the arbitrariness of fortune and reducing the negative reach of its effects. It would thus respond to an old dream of Western rationalism that seeks to dominate everything that is beyond human control. John Rawls, in his theory of justice, started from the supposition that “no one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society” (Rawls 1971: 102). Thus he conceives the struggle for justice as a way of eliminating or at least controlling the differences between individuals that result from such contingencies. It requires facing the destabilizing effects of the natural lottery in the fairest way possible with the goal of not corrupting the application of the principle of equality of opportunites from the beginning. Although natural accidents and other possible problems are inevitable, a just society must insist on compensating victims “in the direction of equality” (ibid: 101). There are many political philosophers that, situated precisely in Rawls’s wake, have nonetheless maintained a conspiracy of silence with respect to the role that social institutions like borders or national membership play in the genesis of problematic situations in which some individuals are at disadvantage from the beginning and, consequently, in the reproduction of an unjust social order (Tiller 1998). This blind spot is an incomprehensible omission in theories that try to respond to the demands of justice in our world. The frame of reference continues to be for them, as in the world prior to the processes of globalization, each of the already constituted States, inside of which the criteria for a good organization of society are established. To carry out this collective undertaking, those who are formally outside of the international community, and even less so those who come knocking at its door, do not count. The obligations of justice are

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binding only for those who are part of a political community and live under the same constitutional legislation. Two authors who follow this line of argumentation are Thomas Nagel (2005) and David Miller (2007), who believe that States, delimited by territorial borders, provide a united political sphere that appeals to the general interest and criteria of impartiality, thus constituting an environment conducive to achieving social justice. Contrary to this shortsighted, still-prevalent vision in political philosophy are voices that have risen to challenge the reality of interstate borders from the perspective of global justice, with the goal of taming the not-blameless arbitrariness of chance. It is this alternative current – until now a minority position – which this article follows, as its purpose is to motivate a broader exploration of the role of borders relative to justice. From the proposal outlined here, it would be advisable to extract a first practical, albeit tentative corollary : borders, as a basic element of the way the world is territorially organized, are a conceivable historical method, that is, a human construct, and as such, modifiable. And given that the world could be organized differently, it is appropriate to consider whether the system in place is just. If we conclude that it is not, as has been argued in these pages, one option coherent with the idea of territorial justice would be to take human rights seriously, and in this context, that would mean “creating rights for the individual out of the only two rights still reserved for citizens” (and not for all human beings), namely, “the right to reside and the right to circulate in our privileged countries” (Ferrajoli 1999: 116). Said another way : if it is necessary to spatially reshape the world, to rethink it from fundamentally spatial categories, a world with open borders (which is not the same as a world without borders, a scenario which would imply the outrageous and oppressive idea of a single world State) is a possibility that a theory of justice cannot fail to consider with the greatest of attention (Velasco 2016: 310f). It is not suitable to determine whether a society is just without evaluating the criteria which regulate membership in it, as well as the criteria that grant persons the right to access, circulate in, and remain in its territory. This is why the criteria for obtaining nationality and the criteria for establishing borders and their regulatory consequences are crucial issues for a theory of justice. Following Rawls’s conceptual framework (but thinking with Rawls against Rawls) we could say that, without knowing where one is going to be born and what nationality she will have, nobody of sound mind would propose a basic global structure in which the possession of basic rights and the access to basic goods benefits would depend on a determinate nationality. Or, stated somewhat more precisely : without knowing where they have to be born, the subjects of the original position (the thought experiment which supports Rawls’s whole theory of justice) would want to be assured that no system of territorial borders would legitimize sub-

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stantial disparities that block access to the resources and opportunities necessary to lead a decent life, but would instead recognize freedom of movement as a universal right. It would without a doubt be the most sensible way to tame chance and guarantee not being in the worst possible position: to be born in a country with no resources, and moreover, to lack the rights that allow a person to leave the country and enter another one. It should not be forgotten, then, that, unlike mere walls, the function of borders is not to impede exchanges, but to enable them by regulating transit (Debray 2016: 41ff), a regulation that must also comply with criteria of justice and equity. Therefore, if in spite of everything, in that initial agreement a world organized by means of borders would be approved, the different parties should at least stipulate that rich countries that refuse to share their wealth would lose the power to close the entry to their territories without further justification (Velasco 2016: 316ff). The opening of borders is probably one of the more significant issues that a reformist agenda will have to address on a global level. Of course, opening or closing borders is not merely a question of opening or closing gates, but rather of changing the machinery of a complex system. Therefore, it would be necessary to carefully consider the internal structure of global interconnections to understand the full implications of a world-wide opening of borders, the possible steps leading up to it, and the material and regulatory conditions it should be subjected to. It presents a fascinating political and intellectual challenge.

Bibliography Andersson, Ruben, 2014. Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe. Oakland: University of California Press. Balibar, Ptienne, 1996. “Qu’est-ce qu’une “frontie`re”?”. In: Balibar, Ptienne (ed.): La crainte des masses, pp. 77–86. Paris: Galil8e. Balibar, Ptienne, 2001. Nous, citoyens d’Europe?: les frontiHres, l’Etat, le peuple. Paris: Pditions La D8couverte. Bello, Gabriel, 2011. Emigracijn y 8tica. Madrid: Plaza y Vald8s. Brown, Wendy, 2010. Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York: Zone Books. Carens, Joseph H., 1987. “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders”. Review of Politics 49, pp. 251–273. Carens, Joseph H., 2013. The Ethics of Immigration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Debray, Regis, 2016: Elogio de las fronteras. Barcelona: Gedisa. Ferrajoli, Luigi, 1999. Derechos y garant&as. La ley del m#s d8bil. Madrid: Trotta. Fraser, Nancy, 2009. Scales of Justice. New York: Columbia University Press. Hobbes, Thomas, 1998. Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loewe, Daniel, 2012: “Obligaciones de justicia: ¿open borders o justicia distributiva?” Arbor 755, pp. 475–488.

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Mezzadra, Sandro and Neilson, Brett, 2011. “Borderscapes of Differential Inclusion”. In: Balibar, Ptienne, Mezzadra, Sandro, and Samaddar, Ranabir (eds.): The Borders of Justice, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 181–203. Mezzadra, Sandro and Neilson, Brett, 2013. Borders as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham: Duke University Press. Milanovic, Branko, 2010. The Haves and the Have-Nots. New York: Basic Books. Milanovic, Branko, 2013. “Las causas econjmicas de las migraciones”. El Pa&s, 30/10/2013, http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/10/29/opinion/1383051125_783112.html [last call 23/3/ 2015]. Miller, David, 2007. National Responsibility and Global Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mor8, IÇigo, 2007. La vida en la frontera. Madrid: Marcial Pons. Nagel, Thomas, 2005. “The Problem of Global Justice”. Philosophy & Public Affairs 33(2), pp. 113–146. Ortega y Gasset, Jos8, 2008. La rebelijn de las masas. Madrid: Tecnos. Rawls, John, 1971. A Theory of Justice. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Rodier, Claire, 2012. X8nophobie business. f quoi servent les contriles migratoires? Paris: La D8couverte. Schmitt, Carl, 1950. Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Shachar, Ayelet, 2009. The Birthright Lottery. Citizenship and Global Inequality. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Shklar, Judith, 1990. The faces of injustice. New Haven: Yale University Press. Velasco, Juan Carlos, 2010. “La justicia en un mundo globalizado”. Isegor&a 43, pp. 349–362. Velasco, Juan Carlos, 2016: El azar de las fronteras. M8xico: FCE. Walzer, Michael, 1983. Spheres of Justice. Oxford: Robertson. Young, Iris M., 2010. Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

II. Contesting, negotiating, and mobilising

Yaatsil Guevara Gonz#lez

Negociando fronteras: Tácticas de migrantes indocumentados en la frontera México-Guatemala

Abstract Due to the United States Southern Border’s externalization towards Mexico, control and repression to undocumented Central American migrants by the Mexican State has increased. For example, in 2015, Mexico detained more undocumented Central American migrants than the United States (Instituto Nacional de Migracijn 2015, Homeland Security 2015). This situation has resulted in a reshaping of migration flows and dynamics of border crossing and, hence, human smuggling practices. It is argued that clandestine border crossing can be seen as a process of social negotiation between the diversity of social and political actors that interact in the migration industry. Through everyday practices of negotiating and contesting tactics and strategies a constant exercise of resistance against ever more restrictive immigrations politics arise. Thus, migrants have to improve their passing strategies and smugglers need to offer improved services to their clients. Besides crossing borders physically, the involved actors also cross symbolic borders through affective ties and cultural recognition during their journeys. By that means, they cultivate and enrich their agency by adapting and renovating the mechanisms used for crossing borders against the backdrop of ever-changing conditions. The article is based on ethnographic research during eight months of fieldwork in the borderlands of Tabasco (Mexico) – Pet8n (Guatemala); using methods such as participant observation (Corbin, Strauss 2008), recordings of informal talks and retrospective interviews

Introducción Los procesos migratorios dentro la r8gion mesoamericana, conformada por Centroam8rica1 y M8xico son centenarios y en constante transformacijn. Sucesos histjricos entrelazados han dado paso a diversos panoramas entre los pa&ses del centro y norte del continente americano, y entre ellos destacan el 1 En 1821 a ra&z de la disolucijn de la Capitan&a General de Guatemala, las provincias de Ciudad Real de Chiapas, San Salvador, Comayagua, Nicaragua y Costa Rica se decretaron independientes, lo que dij paso a la conformacijn de lo que hoy se conoce como Centroam8rica: Guatemala, Belice, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica y Panam# (Pastor 1988: 153).

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desplazamiento forzado y la migracijn indocumentada2 de centroamericanos hacia M8xico y Estados Unidos. A lo largo de los aÇos se ha constituido un corredor migratorio mixto compuesto principalmente por personas provenientes del tri#ngulo norte centroamericano: El Salvador, Guatemala y Honduras, y que salen de sus pa&ses por diversas razones: reunificacijn familiar, pobreza, falta de oportunidades laborales, amenazas y extorsiones, violencia. La salida masiva de centroamericanos hacia otros pa&ses no es algo reciente3, las asimetr&as sociales y econjmicas que dejj la historia colonial, la concesijn y privilegios otorgados a los hacendados y compaÇias extranjeras – como la United Fruit Company –, el intervencionismo de las potencias mundiales – principalmente Estados Unidos –, el fin de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y la posterior Guerra Fr&a, llevaron a casi todo Centroam8rica hacia gobiernos militares, golpes de Estado, guerras civiles y guerillas, lo que resultj en cientos de miles de personas desplazadas y refugiadas en el sur, centro y norte de las Am8ricas. Sin embargo, es importante seÇalar que desde dos d8cadas atr#s, el Estado mexicano ha iniciado un proceso de reforzamiento en su frontera con Guatemala y Belice, histjricamente caracterizada por su penetrabilidad en comparacijn con su frontera norte mexicana, con la principal intencijn de detener a los centroamericanos sin estatus migratorio regular que pasan por su territorio. Lo anterior ha dado pie a nuevos procesos y patrones de movilidad e inmovilidad de los refugiados y migrantes indocumentados provenientes de Centroam8rica, mismos que est#n marcados por las interacciones de una amplia variedad de actores que participan dentro de la industria migratoria: redes de ayuda humanitaria, facilitadores de cruce fronterizo (o coyotes, como son nombrados en algunas regiones de Am8rica Latina), transportistas, oficiales de migracijn, empresas de env&o de dinero, redes familiares transnacionales, entre otros. Los actores sociales que participan en los corredores migratorios crean constelaciones sociales, y el entrelazamiento de 8stas con los procesos locales y nacionales, ha propiciado la modificacijn de los paisajes migratorios, un ejemplo claro es la reconfiguracijn constante de las trayectorias y rutas migratorias debido a los programas de control migratorio implementados en todo el territorio mexicano. 2 A lo largo del cap&tulo se utilizan de manera indistinta los t8rminos “centroamericanos”, “el centroamericano”, “migrante indocumentado”, “migrante centroamericano indocumentado” para referirse a las personas de El Salvador, Guatemala y Honduras que salen de estos pa&ses sin documentacijn v#lida para las instituciones migratorias de los pa&ses receptores y al cruzar una frontera internacional tendr&an un estatus migratorio irregular. Aunque la autora est# atenta de la problem#tica del uso indiferenciado de estos t8rminos, este es repertorio lingü&stico cotidiano de las personas entrevistadas, por ende considerado v#lido. 3 Un estudio detallado de la historia pol&tica y social de Centroam8rica se puede consultar en Foster, Lynn, 2007. A brief history of Central America. USA: Facts on file.

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Esta investigacijn tiene como principal objetivo analizar las interacciones de algunos actores sociales que facilitan, o impiden, el tr#nsito y cruce de centroamericanos por la frontera sur de M8xico. A trav8s de 8stas, los migrantes de tr#nsito construyen un mosaico amplio de t#cticas y estrategias que se establecen a trav8s de experiencias comunes y de lazos construidos por las diferencias (Anthias et al. 2013: 9), que a su vez determinan el trazo de los itinerarios de tr#nsito, su duracijn y reconstruccijn. El argumento central es que a trav8s de negociaciones y confrontaciones que surgen de la interaccijn entre actores, se constituyen constelaciones sociales que impulsan procesos de agencia entre los involucrados a lo largo de las trayectorias migratorias. De esta forma, las negociaciones se convierten en el centro de procesos perif8ricos de relaciones de poder y pr#cticas sociales, que son sustanciales para gestar din#micas fronterizas de movilidad y la transgresijn de fronteras. La informacijn emp&rica incluida en este art&culo es parte del resultado de siete meses de investigacijn etnogr#fica colaborativa en el Hogar-Refugio para personas migrantes “La 72”. Este albergue est# ubicado en la ciudad de Tenosique, casi en la frontera entre Tabasco, M8xico – Pet8n, Guatemala y otorga principalmente ayuda humanitaria, estancia temporal y asesor&a en derechos humanos, esencialmente a migrantes indocumentados. All&, realic8 trabajos de voluntariado enfocados principalmente a asesor&a y acompaÇamiento en el proceso de solicitud de refugio en M8xico, a v&ctimas de abusos de autoridad o v&ctimas de asaltos y cr&menes en territorio mexicano. Algunos de los testimonios aqu& presentados se derivan de viajes a lugares claves en las rutas utilizadas para cruzar clandestinamente la frontera entre Tabasco y Pet8n (Tenosique, El Ceibo, El Naranjo, Santa Elena), poblados que sirven adem#s de plataforma para reconfigurar los trayectos del tr#nsito. Para recolectar los datos se utilizaron m8todos como observacijn participante (Corbin and Strauss 2008), grabacijn de pl#ticas informales y entrevistas retrospectivas con migrantes de paso, migrantes viviendo temporalmente en el albergue y refugiados. Todas las entrevistas fueron realizadas por la autora y los nombres de los entrevistados fueron modificados con su consentimiento4.

4 A excepcijn de entrevistas con coyotes, dadas las circunstancias de clandestinidad en que algunas entrevistas se realizaron. En estos casos, la autora ha modificado los nombres para mantener el anonimato de los informantes.

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Las fronteras sur de México Los estados mexicanos fronterizos en el sur son Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche y Quintana Roo; en Guatemala son los departamentos de San Marcos, Huehuetenango, Quich8 y Pet8n; y en Belice: Corozal, Orange Walk, Cayo y Toledo. Esta frontera se extiende aproximadamente a lo largo de 1,139 kiljmetros, de los cuales 962 km. colindan con Guatemala y 176 km. con Belice.5 En 1938 M8xico y Guatemala acordaron abrir una brecha de 573 km a lo largo de su frontera para marcar la frontera l&mite (De Vos 2004: 234) entre los dos pa&ses y construyeron monumentos (o mojoneras) a lo largo de 8sta para hacerla ‘affln m#s visible’ (SRE 2013: 14). El resto de la frontera con Guatemala est# marcada por los r&os Suchiate y Usumacinta que equivale al 53 % de su totalidad (Kauffer 2010: 32). De igual forma, el 87 % de la frontera entre M8xico y Belice est# circunscrita por el r&o Hondo (Garc&a Garc&a and Kauffer Michel 2011: 145) y en ese sentido la selva, los bosques, los pantanos y los cuerpos de agua extendidos a lo largo de los l&mites del Estado mexicano con Centroam8rica dibujan una frontera porosa y mjvil, que por ende ha sido una aliada incondicional de los migrantes centroamericanos. Histjricamente, el intercambio con Centroam8rica se extendij principalmente por el cauce del r&o Suchiate, que a lo largo de 77 kiljmetros divide a M8xico de Guatemala. Durante d8cadas, la mayor&a de centroamericanos con direccijn al norte6, estimado actualmente en 400,000 por aÇo7, ha transitado principalmente por el punto de cruce de Ciudad Hidalgo (Chiapas, M8xico)Ciudad Tecffln Um#n (San Marcos, Guatemala). El puente internacional Dr. Rodolfo Robles que divide a estos dos poblados, y que fue inaugurado en 1974, es la materializacijn del cruce formal que permite a los pa&ses del norte unirse a los pa&ses del sur. Pero a escasos cientos de metros del puente y la estacijn aduanal, s&mbolo del reg&men fronterizo, existe otra vida de frontera. Diariamente, los balseros transportan diversas mercanc&as y personas de un lado del r&o al otro pr#cticamente sin control alguno, de M8xico a Guatemala y viceversa; de esta forma, la frontera est# “abierta”, es permeable, se cruza “con facilidad” por los cuerpos de agua. En esta frontera el r&o Suchiate borra con sus aguas el tr#fico “ilegal” de materiales de construccijn, v&veres, flora, fauna, droga y personas 5 La informacijn sobre el nfflmero de kiljmetros que abarca la frontera sur es diversa, algunos autores seÇalan 1,139 km; otros 1,149 km.; como tambi8n 1,225 km. (Kauffer 2010: 40). 6 M8xico, Estados Unidos o Canad#. 7 Las estad&sticas sobre el nfflmero de migrantes indocumentados que cruzan la frontera sur son inciertas. La complejidad de las din#micas de movilidad y sus condiciones dificulta una estad&stica precisa. El Instituto Nacional de Migracijn emite el nfflmero de detenciones mensuales y anuales, sin embargo existen sesgos en dichas estad&sticas: por ejemplo una persona puede ser detenida varias veces en un mismo mes o aÇo.

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que lo navegan durante d&a y noche. Desde el puente es posible contemplar la frontera natural en constante movimiento. Por otra parte se dice que las fronteras de los estados de Tabasco, Campeche y Quintana Roo en sus colindancias con Guatemala y Belice, son fronteras olvidadas, ya que en comparacijn con las investigaciones que refieren a la frontera de Chiapas-Guatemala, los estudios sobre sus problem#ticas actuales son reducidas. La frontera Tabasco-Guatemala abarca 108 kiljmetros, y de manera oficial tiene dos cruces fronterizos, aunque se estima que existen al menos veinte cruces informales (Arriola 2012a: 181). De los cruces formales, uno es un paso fluvial y el otro es terrestre. El r&o San Pedro, divide a las poblaciones de El Martillo y El Naranjo, en M8xico y Guatemala respectivamente, y hasta el aÇo 2008 era el fflnico cruce fronterizo reconocido por el Instituto Nacional de Migracijn. El segundo cruce fronterizo formal es el El Ceibo, inaugurado a ra&z de la intensificacijn de los intercambios fronterizos propiciados por la construccijn de la carretera Tenosique-El Ceibo en el aÇo 2000 (ibid: 181). En este cruce se observa una din#mica similar a la de Ciudad Hidalgo-Tecffln Um#n: cruces y veredas clandestinas rodean el complejo aduanal de las autoridades mexicanas. Durante todo el d&a se transportan mercanc&as y bienes de contrabando que los cargadores acarrean a sus espaldas. Adicionalmente, tambi8n se han ido consolidando los asentamientos poblacionales al margen de las din#micas comerciales y sociales en esta frontera. Esta regijn es la segunda m#s utilizada por los migrantes centroamericanos para llegar a M8xico o Estados Unidos (Arriola Vega 2012a: 184).

Reconfigurando trayectorias Estudiosos de la migracijn centroamericana en y por M8xico coinciden en que durante las fflltimas d8cadas, los siguientes hechos marcaron y transformaron los patrones de la migracijn indocumentada que cruza el pa&s: 1) la firma del Tratado de Libre Comercio (NAFTA) entre Canad#, Estados Unidos y M8xico en 1994; 2) el reforzamiento de la frontera M8xico-Estados Unidos despu8s de los ataques del 9/11; 3) la guerra contra el narcotr#fico en M8xico declarada pfflblicamente en 2006; 4) los acuerdos internacionales entre M8xico y Estados Unidos para “sellar” la frontera mexicana del sur a trav8s de programas de desarrollo econjmico; 4) el incremento de inseguridad en los pa&ses del tri#ngulo norte; 5) las cat#strofes naturales en El Salvador y Honduras (terremotos y huracanes, principalmente); y 6) el despojo de recursos naturales por la entrada de compaÇ&as mineras y de bioenerg8ticos en el tri#ngulo norte (]ngeles Cruz 2010, Arriola Vega, 2012a, 2012b, Basok et al. 2015, Casillas 2007, Castillo 2010, Rivas Castillo 2010, Sandoval Palacios 2001). La combinacijn de estos factores ha provocado que la frontera sur de M8xico,

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affln m#s porosa y ‘abierta’ que la del norte, cada vez se constriÇa m#s, lo que ha gestado una mutabilidad de las din#micas de cruce y de vida en la frontera, as& como de las rutas de paso creadas y reconfiguradas continuamente por los migrantes que las transitan. Un ejemplo de ello es lo ocurrido con la utilizacijn de las rutas ferroviarias. Conocido como el tren de los migrantes o La Bestia, el tren de carga ha sido una herramienta fundamental para el tr#nsito de centroamericanos en M8xico (Guevara 2015: 69); pero en el aÇo 2005 el hurac#n Stan provocj la deshabilitacijn de la estacijn f8rrea en Tapachula, lo que causj que a partir de ese aÇo los migrantes tuvieran que desplazarse 250 kiljmetros hacia el norte para poder montar el tren que los transporta al interior del pa&s. Por otra parte, desde el aÇo 2014, a ra&z de la implementacijn del Programa Integral Frontera Sur, las v&as del tren ya eran m#s frecuentemente usadas como gu&as del trayecto y no como medio de transporte. As&, debido a la combinacijn de cat#strofes ambientales y las acciones de los programas de regulacijn migratoria a nivel nacional (Programa Plan Sur en 2001, Programa Integral Frontera Sur en 2014) e internacional (Plan Puebla Panam# – Proyecto Mesoam8rica – en 2001, Iniciativa M8rida en 2007), los patrones de movilidad de modifican. La incertidumbre y los cambios constantes son parte del terreno temporal que recorre el migrante indocumentado; las rutas, los cruces y los actores que facilitan la fluidez en el tr#nsito mutan constantemente, se interrumpen y se transforman a ra&z de factores pol&ticos, culturales y sociales que interactfflan a nivel global y regional e impactan en los m#rgenes de los Estados-Nacijn. La naturaleza de esta migracijn de intervalos es lo que Collyer (2010) llama trayectorias fragmentadas. A trav8s de estas interrupciones, las interacciones en el camino toman la condicijn de tensor e impulsan la formacijn de constelaciones sociales que en determinados momentos son pieza fundamental para la toma de decisiones durante el trayecto del migrante. Para ejemplificar esta consideracijn tomar8 el caso del rol del facilitador de cruce (coyote), quien es uno de los actores que invariablemente tiene significativa presencia en las trayectorias de tr#nsito. A trav8s del coyote se aprenden t#cticas de invisibilidad, las rutas, las negociaciones, en ese sentido, el coyote es un transmisor de conocimiento para el migrante en los corredores migratorios.

Constelaciones sociales: El coyote Contrario a lo que medios de comunicacijn y algunos autores seÇalan, estudios etnogr#ficos sobre cruce clandestino de personas sin documentacijn migratoria indican que en la mayor&a de los casos documentados, los gu&as y coyotes otorgan servicios eficientes y seguros, pues de eso depende que el migrante siga contratando sus servicios durante todo el corredor migratorio (Sanchez 2015:

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61, Spener 2009). Los gu&as, son personas que generalmente conocen el terreno de navegacijn del migrante indocumentado, realizan recorridos cortos y frecuentemente poseen permisos legales de residencia en uno o m#s pa&ses; ellos se encargan principalmente de guiarlos en el camino para evitar los diferentes riesgos que se pudieran suscitar en el tr#nsito, principalmente la deportacijn o el secuestro. Los coyotes adem#s, se encargan de hacer el cruce clandestino de fronteras y coordinar las estrategias de cruce (en acompaÇamiento con los gu&as) para garantizar un servicio completo al cliente. Para el migrante indocumentado, la clandestinidad es un estado inalienable y uno de los actores principales que navega en estos #mbitos es el facilitador de cruce. La isla de Flores, localizada al sur del Lago Pet8n Itz#, es la capital del departamento de Pet8n, Guatemala y se encuentra a 177 km al sur del cruce fronterizo El Ceibo. Tiene una poblacijn de 2,200 habitantes (INEG 2015) y desde 1967 est# conectada a tierra firme a trav8s de un puente que la separa de la conurbacijn con los poblados de San Benito y Santa Elena. La isla de Flores, antiguamente una ciudad maya, simboliza actualmente el acervo histjrico de la regijn y atrae a casi 150,000 personas al aÇo para turismo internacional de paso hacia las ruinas arqueoljgicas aledaÇas y la ciudad maya Tikal. El contraste con su ciudad vecina Santa Elena es dr#stico, all& tambi8n llegan miles de personas al aÇo, pero principalmente centroamericanos que preparan su cruce clandestino hacia la frontera de M8xico. Santa Elena se fundj como una conurbacijn de la isla de Flores8, es la periferia, es la puerta trasera de la isla, all& est# la vida de los locales y de lo subterr#neo, en Flores la de los for#neos provenientes de Europa y Estados Unidos. El cementerio, el rastro, el aeropuerto, las escuelas, los hoteles de no m#s de tres estrellas est#n en Santa Elena, los hoteles-boutique est#n en la isla de Flores. En las fflltimas d8cadas Santa Elena se ha convertido en un punto clave para las redes de actores que facilitan el cruce de migrantes centroamericanos indocumentados, el incremento del flujo principalmente de hondureÇos, ha propiciado que esta ciudad sea la plataforma de planeacijn estrat8gica para cruzar la frontera hacia territorio mexicano. Segffln algunos datos estad&sticos del Hogar-Refugio para personas migrantes “La 72”, la mayor&a de los migrantes que pasa por esa zona son hondureÇos, debido a su cercan&a geogr#fica con Guatemala, y provienen especialmente de los departamentos de Cort8s, Atl#ntida, Comayagua y Francisco Moraz#n, los departamentos con el mayor nfflmero de homicidos en Honduras (UNAH-IUDPAS 2015). En Santa Elena existe una amplia oferta de servicios de paquetes de cruce para los migrantes indocumentados. A unos cientos de metros de la terminal de au8 Son tres poblaciones conurbadas con la isla de Flores: San Benito 51, 913 hab; Santa Elena 53, 578 hab; y San Miguel 8,200 hab (INEG 2015).

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tobuses ya es posible encontrar los hoteles que sirven de plataforma para acceder a dichos servicios. Al llegar a la terminal de Santa Elena, los transportistas (taxistas principalmente) ofrecen su ayuda para buscar alojamiento a los migrantes, pues generalmente los hoteles tienen acuerdos con ellos y reciben comisiones segffln el nfflmero de migrantes que lleven para alojarse. En este contexto es posible observar dos patrones generales: los migrantes ya vienen con un facilitador de cruce y 8ste tiene acuerdos con dicho hotel, o bien, los servicios de cruce son ofrecidos por el personal de los hoteles a la llegada de los migrantes. Las ofertas incluyen el hospedaje, el transporte hacia la frontera con M8xico y el cruce de la frontera sur, principalmente hasta Tenosique o Palenque, una vez que los migrantes llegan a M8xico, generalmente inician negociaciones con otras redes de cruce clandestino para negociar la pasada9, o deciden ir de manera independiente, aunque esto var&a considerablemente. Es inusual que en este etapa del viaje los migrantes contraten un servicio completo (en este caso, el servicio se contrata desde el pa&s de origen, a veces a trav8s de los familiares en Estados Unidos), lo que incluir&a el cruce por M8xico y de la frontera M8xico-Estados Unidos. A continuacijn se presenta un fragmento de una situacijn de negociacijn entre un facilitador de cruce de Santa Elena y un grupo de personas interesadas en cruzar la frontera de Pet8n-Tabasco: “Yo les cobro por los tres mil djlares, pero es garant&a, de aqu& hasta Tenosique, hasta la entrada, pero garantizado, sin asaltos, sin migracijn, y8ndonos por El Naranjo, con las camionetas, el cruce, todo. Se quedan aqu&, ya no salen, yo les traigo todo lo que necesitan, la comida, les digo que ropa se van a poner para que se arreglen bien. Tu amigo se va a tener que cortar el cabello y no puede llevar ese sombrero que trae. Nos vamos a las tres de la maÇana” (Alonso, 2014, comunicacijn personal).

Una amplia variedad de circunstancias intervienen para las tomas de decisijn del migrante y el facilitador, ya sean consensuadas o no, tales como recursos financieros, trato de las autoridades guatemaltecas y mexicanas, exposicijn a asaltos o secuestros, frecuencia de interrupcijn del viaje, salud f&sica durante el viaje, tipo de transporte, entre otros. Desde El Naranjo, un pequeÇo poblado situado a la orilla del r&o San Pedro y a media hora de Santa Elena en autobffls, parten las lanchas y botes que llevan a los migrantes por un recorrido aproximado de dos horas hasta un poblado llamado El Pedregal, en donde los gu&as est#n esperando para iniciar el trayecto hacia Tenosique, M8xico alternando caminatas y viajes en camionetas usadas generalmente para transportar ganado bovino. Jorg8, hondureÇo, de 24 aÇos, me narrj algunas de sus vivencias de cruce en El Naranjo cuando nos encontramos en el albergue La 72: “[…]–‘hey muchachos, yo les voy a alquilar m#s barato porque ustedes son chapines, son de ac#- barato, 10 quetzales cada uno, incluso nosotros te damos la lancha en la 9 As& es se denomina coloquialmente al cruce de la frontera M8xico-Estados Unidos.

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maÇana te la contratamos, ah& vas a pagar el otro sueldo y te vamos a dejar donde vayas a Pedregal, hasta all# te cruzamos. Incluso con el mismo pago de all#, llevas incluida la camioneta de all# hasta donde te va a agarrar la otra camioneta que te va a llevar’-, pues bueno le dije” (Jorge, 2014, comunicacijn personal).

En El Naranjo tambi8n se ofrecen servicios de hospedaje, generalmente estos van acompaÇados de un contrato directo con el lanchero que espera a que se junten grupos de veinte o treinta personas para hacer un viaje. “Solo nos tardamos tres d&as en llegar ac# [a Tenosique], cruzamos por Pedregal, en lancha, dos horas parece que son de ac# en lancha. Nom#s hay que llegar al Naranjo y ah& hay unos lancheros, los mismos lancheros tienen cuartos para rentar la noche” (Jorge, 2014 comunicacijn personal, ).

Algunas veces, debido a los acuerdos y las negociaciones entre los facilitadores de cruce y las autoridades guatemaltecas y mexicanas, los narco c#rteles, etc., el migrante indocumentado enfrenta una constante violacijn a sus derechos humanos, discriminacijn, exclusijn, secuestros, tr#fico. Los abusos son parte de su cotidianidad en sus trayectorias; por ejemplo, durante la segunda mitad del 2014 en Tenosique, se realizaban constantemente redadas en la estacijn del tren, coordinadas por el Instituto Nacional de Migracijn, para impedir que los migrantes subieran a 8ste, muchas veces con m8todos violentos y que pon&an en riesgo su vida. De igual forma, la carretera El Ceibo-Tenosique estaba constantemente patrullada por agentes del INM, el objetivo era interceptar el flujo, detener a los migrantes y posteriormente tramitar su deportacijn. El coyote debe preceder este tipo de situaciones para garantizar el 8xito, al menos, a una parte de sus clientes. De esta forma, el facilitador de cruce improvisa y perfecciona sus redes, sus t#cticas y sus ofertas. Muchos coyotes ofrecen paquetes con tres intentos, es decir, si durante el viaje el migrante es capturado por las autoridades migratorias o por algffln cartel del narcotr#fico, una vez estando nuevamente en su pa&s de origen, 8ste puede contactar otra vez al proveedor de servicios y volver a hacer dos intentos m#s.

Coyotaje como resistencia y negociación En el camino del migrante, los puntos de inspeccijn10 juegan un papel central. All& se intensifican las negociaciones de paso, pues los oficiales migratorios, polic&as, transportistas y gu&as buscan sacar el mayor provecho del estatus “clandestino” del migrante. Las autoridades migratorias que se encuentran en 10 Durante el texto se emplean tambi8n otros t8rminos como garitas de migracijn, casetas de migracijn.

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las garitas generalmente est#n dispuestos a recibir sobornos de gu&as o tambi8n de migrantes, pero generalmente los migrantes prefieren rodearlas. Ello se logra si es que algffln migrante ya conociera el camino y as& muchas veces 8stos dirigen el trayecto, o bien contratando gu&as, que generalmente se ubican cerca de los puntos de inspeccijn, esperando que alguien requiera de sus servicios. Jos8 Julian, hondureÇo de 21 aÇos que abandonj su pa&s con su esposa y sus dos hijos pequeÇos, narra la situacijn a la que se enfrentaron al tener que cruzar la frontera de Honduras con Guatemala: “[…]cuando llegamos all# a Corintos, no me quieren dejar pasar a m&. Me piden los documentos y yo les enseÇo mi contraseÇa y dice [el oficial]… -no, no puedes salir del pa&s, los niÇos tampoco pueden salir del pa&s.” “[…] vamos a tener que rodear, rodear la garita ah& para salir al otro lado. Aqu& vamos a hallar a alguien que nos cruce. Nos vamos y hab&an dos chavalos y nos dicen: -‘nosotros los cruzamos para all# a que vayan a salir adelante, en donde no los agarre la patrulla, ah& va a a estar la combi ya esperando’-. ‘Vamos pues’ -le digo. ‘Cu#nto nos vas a cobrar’? – ‘Mir#’- me dice, ‘por ustedes sjlo me vas a dar 150 quetzales y por los niÇos 250 quetzales’” (Jos8 Juli#n, 2014, comunicacijn personal).

Los gu&as est#n en constante comunicacijn en el trayecto para acordar con las autoridades el paso libre o esperar a que 8stas no signifiquen un peligro de detencijn, si es que no pudieran llegar a acuerdos previos. En la cita anterior se observa que viajar con niÇos pequeÇos es una de las razones por que los migrantes deciden contratar los servicios de gu&as y coyotes, lo que genera negociaciones diferenciadas a la de los adultos; los gu&as y coyotes deben improvisar y consolidar t#cticas de invisibilidad que amortiguen el nivel de exposicijn de los niÇos con las autoridades migratorias. En estos casos, muchas veces es m#s seguro y barato contratar servicios de gu&as que intentar sobornar a las autoridades, que tambi8n aprovechan el estatus irregular migratorio de los padres y aumentan las tarifas de los sobornos. Entre los intercambios cotidianos de migrantes y facilitadores existe un ejercicio constante de resistencia y negociacijn. Dentro del coyotaje (Spener 2009: 199) – definido como un conjunto de pr#cticas sociales para cruzar fronteras concertadas con los migrantes-, existen mfflltiples perfiles de facilitadores de cruce, aquellos que operan a pequeÇas escalas, a nivel regional, o aquellos que forman parte de redes de crimen organizado m#s amplias, por ello algunas veces el migrante no tiene conocimiento de qu8 redes sociales soportan el servicio que se le est# ofreciendo. Por ejemplo, las pr#cticas y servicios proporcionados por los coyotes, varian mucho si son contratados en la frontera o en el interior del pa&s de tr#nsito, por ello dado lo imprevisible del terreno social, tanto el coyote como el migrante deben sacar la mayor ventaja posible del uno y del otro. De esta forma, las interacciones entre estos actores generan lo que Vigh

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(2007) llama, horizontes sociales, es decir “espacios de posibilidades y puntos de orientacijn que surgen constantemente a partir de la interaccijn entre agentes en movimiento y circunstancias pol&ticas y sociales cambiantes en donde 8stos intentan moverse” (Vigh 2007: 30).11 Por otra parte, la clandestinidad tiene un rol central en estos intercambios, es una ‘dimensijn de realidad social’ (Coutin, 2005: 196), un estado y una aptitud fundamental para hacer frente esta mutabilidad del espacio fronterizo. Es un estado, porque refleja la situacijn o condicijn en que el centroamericano se encuentra: sin documentos v#lidos, en intercambios “informales”, un estado ‘ilegal’; pero es tambi8n una aptitud, una capacidad para ejercer agencia y crear herramientas necesarias para la “navegacijn social” (Vigh 2007) en la frontera y el tr#nsito, es decir, la generacijn de habilidades para sobrevivir en un ambiente mjvil, en donde din#micas colectivas e individuales se interponen entre s& (Vigh 2007: 14). En ese sentido, el coyote es un agente central con expertiz en periferias. A trav8s del 8l, el migrante aprender a navegar, el migrante debe entonces ejercitarse y embarcarse en una clandestinidad invisible, es decir debe escoger los momentos y espacios precisos para dejar de ser imperceptible y volver a serlo, debe obligarse a poder identificar cu#ndo la frontera se convierte en un recurso o en un obst#culo (Korf and Raeymaekers 2013: 4). “Llegamos a Santa Elena y me acuerdo que llegamos al hospedaje, cu#nto nos va a cobrar le digo, la noche, 100 quetzales, est# bien, , una cama cada uno, est# bien y con el ventilador, tuc! Nos quedamos esa noche, fuimos a comer. El siguiente d&a nos volvimos a quedar en ese mismo hospedaje, est#bamos amarrando un viaje para movernos de aqu& para El Naranjo” (Jos8 Juli#n, 2014, comunicacijn personal).

Los itinerarios de los migrantes indocumentados son pendulares, oscilan entre lo visible e invisible, son zonas de negociacijn interrumpidas, voluntaria o involuntariamente, constitu&das por variedad de factores y actores que facilitan o impiden el cruce de fronteras, la movilidad o incluso el establecimiento del migrante, ya sea temporal o permanente. Dichas zonas son espacios de transicijn en donde la clandestinidad juega un papel central, all& es donde el migrante centroamericano cultiva y enriquece su agencia para generar mecanismos de cruce fronterizo – ocultos o visibles- que se ir#n perfeccionando con el nfflmero de intentos que el viaje le requiera. A esta versatilidad entre lo visible e invisible, se integran los actores sociales en los espacios de tr#nsito, en ese caso el facilitador, y a trav8s de sus interacciones se crean o truncan las posibilidades de salida del pa&s de origen y la entrada al pa&s de tr#nsito o de destino. 11 Traduccijn propia. Texto original: “…Spaces of possibilites and spheres of orientation that constantly arise in the interaction between agents in motion and the shifting social and political circumstances they seek to move within” (Vigh 2007: 30).

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Conclusión El proceso histjrico fronterizo entre M8xico y Centroam8rica ha generado din#micas de movilidad contempor#neas que dibujan un espacio permeable y de cambio cont&nuo. Esta frontera es porosa, su muro son sus r&os, sus selvas y sus montaÇas, es penetrable y maleable, affln y con las pol&ticas de constreÇimiento migratorio implementado en las fflltimas d8cadas. Pero su porosidad no se reduce a lo geogr#fico, 8sta se debe tambi8n a la cont&nua constestacijn de los actores que viven en y de la frontera que han desaf&ado a las circunstancias sociales vol#tiles y utilizan un inventario amplio de t#cticas y estrat8gias para navegar por los espacios fronterizos, que son tambi8n espacios de confrontacijn. Pero las fronteras traspasadas no son sjlo fronteras f&sicas, sino tambi8n simbjlicas (Anderson and O’Dowd 1999). La confrontacijn con “el otro” es una frontera simbjlica que el migrante cruza constantemente durante sus pasajes de tr#nsito, as&, las trayectorias del migrante indocumentado se convierten en espacios de negociacijn con otros actores sociales; la trayectoria no es sjlamente el camino f&sico andado sino tambi8n la experiencia migratoria encarnada en el imaginario del sujeto que migra. El sujeto migrante debe transgredir fronteras, las suyas y las de los otros, se ubica constantemente en estados perif8ricos y centrales que se dibujan y reconfiguran de acuerdo a los entrelazamientos con otros actores sociales. As&, en algunos testimonios mostrados en este art&culo se observan las din#micas de poder diferenciadas entre unos actores y otros, algunas veces el coyote se convierte en el actor que determina y traza las negociaciones del viaje, y otras 8stas se encuentran sujetas a las decisiones del migrante, por ejemplo en la eleccijn de sus servicios. Cada cruce de frontera, f&sica o simbjlica, genera procesos de agencia; m#s all# de si el migrante logra su objetivo final o no, la generacijn de conocimiento colectivo sobre las rutas, los peligros, los obst#culos, las redes de apoyo a migrantes, etc. genera plataformas de oportunidad que el sujeto migrante aprovechar# en algffln momento de su trayecto. Finalmente, es importante poner atencijn a la significacijn de los procesos de pertenencia que surgen a lo largo de las trayectorias recorridas. Por ejemplo, las pr#cticas afectivas y emocionales resultado del intercambio cotidiano entre los facilitadores y los migrantes, y sus implicaciones en sus pr#cticas sociales, son un campo anal&tico poco explorado y que habr&a que tener presente en investigaciones futuras.

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Bibliografía Anderson, James and O’Dowd, Liam, 1999. “Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality : Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance”. Regional Studies 33(7), p. 593–604. ]ngeles Cruz, Hugo, 2010. “Las migraciones internacionales de la frontera sur en M8xico”. En: Los grandes problemas de M8xico. Migraciones internacionales. M8xico: El Colegio de M8xico, p. 438–475. Anthias, Floya, Kontos, Maria and Morokvasic-Müller, Mirjana, 2013. Paradoxes of integration: Female migrants in Europe. Londres: Springer. Arriola Vega, Luis Alfredo, 2012(a). “Crjnica de la migracijn centroamericana en tr#nsito por la ruta del Golfo”. En: El Estado de la Migracijn. M8xico antes los recientes desafios de la migracijn internacional. M8xico: Consejo Nacional de Poblacijn, p. 185–212. Arriola Vega, Luis Alfredo, 2012(b). “Migrantes centroamericanos en ”transitoriedad”: hondureÇos en Tabasco, M8xico”. En: Migracijn internacional. Algunos desaf&os. M8xico, D.F.: UNAM-IIE, p. 193–216. Basok, Tanya, B8langer, DaniHle, Rojas Wiesner, Martha L. and Candiz, Guillermo, 2015. Rethinking Transit Migration. Precarity, Mobility, and Self-Making in Mexico. Inglaterra: Palgrave Macmillan. Casillas, Rodolfo, 2007. Una vida discreta, fugaz y anjnima: Los centroamericanos transmigrantes en M8xico. M8xico: Comisijn Nacional de los Derechos Humanos/ Organizacijn Internacional para las Migraciones. Castillo, Manuel ]ngel, 2010. “Las pol&ticas y la legislacijn en material de inmigracijn y transmigracijn”. En: Los grandes problemas de M8xico. Migraciones internacionales. M8xico: El Colegio de M8xico, p. 548–574. Collyer, Michael, 2010. “Stranded Migrants and the Fragmented Journey”. Journal of Refugee Studies, Agosto, 23(3), p. 273–293. Corbin, Julliett and Strauss, Anselm, 2008. Basics of qualitative research. Basics and procedures for developing grounded theory. London: SAGE. Coutin, Susan Bibler, 2005. “Being En Route”. American Anthropologist, 107(2), p. 195–206. De Vos, Jan, 2004. “La memoria interrogada”. Desacatos 15–16, p. 222–236. Foster, Lynn, 2007. A brief history of Central America. USA: Facts on file. Garc&a Garc&a, Antonino and Kauffer Michel, Edith, 2011. “Las cuencas compartidas entre M8xico, Guatemala y Belice: Un acercamiento a su delimitacijn y problem#tica general”. Frontera Norte 23(45), p. 131–162. Guevara Gonz#lez, Yaatsil, 2015. “Migracijn de tr#nsito y ayuda humanitaria:Apuntes sobre las casas de migrantes en la ruta migratoria del pac&fico sur en M8xico”. Forum for inter-american research (FIAR) 8(1), p. 63–83. Instituto Nacional de Migracijn, 2013. “Bolet&n Mensual de Estad&sticas Migratorias 2013”. [En l&nea] [5ltimo acceso 08/03/2015]. Instituto Nacional de Migracijn, 2014. “Bolet&n Mensual de Estad&sticas Migratorias 2014”. [En l&nea] [5ltimo acceso 08/03/2015]. Kauffer Michel, Edith, 2010. “Migraciones y agua en la frontera entre M8xico, Guatemala y Belice: Aproximaciones en torno a una relacijn multiforme”. Revista LiminaR. Estudios sociales y human&sticos, December 3(2), p. 29–45.

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Korf, Benedikt and Raeymaekers, Timothy, 2013. Violence on the Margins: States, Conflict, and Borderlands. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pastor, Rodolfo, 1988. Historia de Centroam8rica. Primera edicijn ed. M8xico: El Colegio de M8xico. Rivas Castillo, Jaime, 2010. “Centroamericanos en el Soconusco: ReseÇa de su presencia a trav8s de sus paradojas”. Revista LiminaR. Estudios sociales y human&sticos 8(2), p. 106–128. Sanchez, Gabriella E., 2015. Human smuggling and Border Crossings. 1ra. Edicijn ed. Reino Unido: Routledge. Sandoval Palacios, Juan Manuel, 2001. “El Plan Puebla-Panam# como regulador de la migracijn laboral mesoamericana”. En: Mesoam8rica. Los R&os Profundos. Alternativas plebeyas al Plan Puebla Panam#. M8xico: Instituto ”Maya”, A.C., El Atajo Ediciones, Fomento Cultural y Educativo, A.C., p. 215–268. Spener, David, 2009. Clandestine Crossings: Migrants and Coyotes on the Texas-Mexico Border. 1ra Edicijn ed. Estados Unidos: Cornell University Press. SRE, 2013. Diagnjstico General de la Frontera entre M8xico y Guatemala. M8xico: SRE. UNAH-IUDPAS, 2015. Observatorio de la violencia. Mortalidad y otros. Honduras: UNAHIUDPAS/Ministerio Pfflblico de Honduras. Vigh, Henrik, 2007. Navigation terrains of war. Youth and Soldiering in Guinea-Bissau. Oxford-New York U.S.: BergFhahn Books.

Gioconda Herrera / Lucia P8rez Mart&nez

Times of crisis and times to return? Migratory, occupational and social trajectories of returning migrants in Ecuador1

Introduction This paper examines the migration and occupational trajectories of returned migrants in a neighbourhood located in the urban periphery of Quito, the Commune of Llano Grande, by analyzing the experience of return migration as a social process influenced by transnational practices in order to understand the social and labor reinsertion of this returnee population in relation to some of the axes of social inequality – principally gender and class – within which these practices are inscribed. The premise is that return migration is necessarily imbricated with other processes of social transformation that ought to be taken into account in the analysis (Rivera 2011), but also that migration and return interconnect people, capital, and, in particular, unequal societies (Rivera 2011, Glick Schiller 2010). Therefore, the social reinsertion processes of returned migrant persons are analyzed by looking at their migration and occupational trajectories, the different forms of capital – social, cultural and economic – they accumulate, and how these are deployed in specific sociohistorical contexts. Following mass emigration toward the end of the 20th century, in recent years Ecuador has experienced an increase in temporary and definitive migrant returnees. This is in large part due to the persistent effects of the fallout from the global financial crisis, which strongly affects conditions of social reproduction for Ecuadorian migrant families in destination countries as well as the tightening of immigration policies in these countries, which has limited the continuity of migration flows. In Ecuador, there are several indications of a moderate increase in the population of returnees due to the Spanish crisis. The 2010 Census found that about seventy thousand people had lived in a foreign country in the five years prior to 1 This text was first published in Spanish in Estudios Pol&ticos, (No.47 – December, 2015) – We thank Adri#n Montfflfar for his careful translation into english.

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the survey (INEC 2010); on the other hand, Spanish government statistics show that the Ecuadorian population in Spain diminished by 56,466 between January 1, 2013 and January 1, 2014 (INE 2014). While this datum does not directly correspond to migrants who returned to Ecuador, as the people in question may have migrated to a third country, it does reveal a significant exodus of Ecuadorian population from its most important migrant destination: Spain. The Ecuadorian census shows similarities in the origin and demographic profiles of the emigrants: 46 % came from Spain, 26 % from the United States, and 6 % from Italy (INEC 2010); there are more male returnees from the United States and more female returnees from Italy, while the number of women returnees from Spain is only slightly higher than that of men. On the other hand, a recent study on return and employment (Prieto and Koolhass 2013) indicates that return migrants have a more difficult time finding a job than the non-emigrated population, with a larger impact on women. The article is based on a qualitative investigation carried out in Ecuador and Spain during 2012. The return migration experiences of 21 families were reconstructed through interviews and observation: a total of 45 in-depth interviews, 32 in Ecuador and 13 in Spain. The interviewees in Spain are family members of returnees in Ecuador who still maintain ties with their relatives in Spain; 15 of the 21 families analyzed have relatives in Spain. The goal was to gather information about the imaginaries and projects of return of the people who have not yet returned. Although 15 of the 21 households stated they had relatives in Spain, only those of six families were interviewed during the course of the research. However, the returnees’ input allowed us to inquire about the transnational ties these households maintain with their relatives in Spain as well as analyze social and labor reinsertion as a process that includes the interrelation of local and transnational spaces. In this sense, a multi-site research modality was chosen in view of the need to approach return migration as a process that involves families and is the product of negotiations between their members on both sides of the ocean. Regarding family structure, 18 of the 21 households studied were two-parent nuclear families and three were headed by a single mother ; only one of these is a transnational household – the wife has returned while the husband and children remain in Spain. In all other cases, the relatives in Spain with whom a connection exists are no longer part of the household: parents, offspring, or siblings with households of their own. These relatives are transnational social capital as there is no financial obligation for the family, although some financial transactions might exist between them. In any case, this situation allows us to look for concrete transnational practices, which family strategies think of as social capital that can eventually provide support for a return to Spain.

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Return in migration studies Experts in the field of international migration recognize that return as a subject was for many years thought of as an event that put an end to the migration project. The act of returning was framed by the dichotomy of the success or failure of the migrant person. On the other hand, from a perspective combining a transnational view with a systemic focus on migration, return is but a stage of the migration project that should therefore be analyzed as part of the migration system (Rivera 2011) or as a practice of migrants who experience transnationality, be it because they maintain monetary, emotional, affective, and social links or because their citizenship – of more than one country – affords them a greater international mobility (Guarnizo 1996). Even without an explicit transnational perspective, return is present from the beginning of the migration project as a dream, a wish, an imagined project, an objective (Sayad 1998). This demands that we reflect on how the idea of or the desire to return can shape, modify, affect, or transform the migration project (Cavalcanti 2013). This article adopts this notion of return: as a social process that is permanently present in the migration experience but focuses on its achievement, that is, on the negotiations, practices, and strategies deployed in relation to return. In Ecuador, research on this subject began to take off together with two phenomena: the analysis of the return migration policies launched by the Ecuadorian government and the impact of the global economic crisis. Studies in the field cover three areas of analysis: the reach of the programs and policies implemented by the Ecuadorian government; the experience of return in the context of the economic crisis in destination countries, that is, return migration as a strategy ; and the experience of return itself for migrants who have returned to Ecuador. Indeed, one of the factors to consider is the policy toward returnees Ecuador launched in 2007. While some migrant returnee support programs have been set up, the number of benefit recipients has diminished; on the other hand, the Ecuadorian president’s rhetoric about the importance and the need to return was a constant of his discourse toward migrants in destination countries (Moncayo 2011a). Among the literature that takes government return programs as their background, some works focus on analyzing policies and comparing them to the experiences of Ecuadorian returnees (Moncayo 2011a, 2011b, Castillo 2011). Studies of return migration in destination countries are framed by the European economic crisis, a context that seems to heavily influence an interpretation shared in common by many of them: the view of return migration as a last resort in the migration project where return appears to be a strategy among others and not always the most desirable option (Boccagni 2011, Boccagni and Lagomarsino 2011, Herrera 2012, Peris-Mencheta, Ljpez and Masanet 2011). Only a

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few woks have analyzed the social and labor reinsertion processes of these migrants (Hern#ndez, Maldonado and Calderjn 2012). Christian Schramm (2011) offers very suggestive elements to understand the role of transnational connections and social networks in the reinsertion processes of returnees: he presents a typology of return experiences – the constant, the seekers, the failures – and finds that those most likely to decide to return are those who maintain strong links with relatives in their country of origin – the constant. Additionally, migrants of this group seem to have more positive social reinsertion experiences. Other studies have focused on analyzing the experience of returnees as beneficiaries of business enterprises, finding labor and social reinsertion processes that are complex and that depend to a great extent on the success or failure of their businesses. On the social level, findings suggest that return migration presents us with changes in family and gender relations that should be analyzed more systematically (Moncayo 2011a). This article analyzes return taking into account the density of transnational links that families maintain, as well as the need to deepen analysis of gender. The paper, therefore, adopts three main perspectives to approach migration and return: the transnational perspective in migration studies; the need to think of migrant subjects and their experiences in relation to the social structure, with its heterogeneous and diverse characteristics, as subjects who are cut across by markers of social difference and inequality ; and granting the analysis of gender central importance in analyzing return processes. According to the transnational perspective, return is conceived of not as the end of a process but as part of the migration cycle (Rivera 2011). In the process of return the need to adapt arises, which for migrants does not imply an abandonment of the identity they developed while abroad but rather taking advantage of the “attributes” of this identity in order to stand out among the locals (Cassarino 2004). On the other hand, the process of return is shaped by the social capital available to migrants during their migration experience (Durand 2004, Schramm 2011). For migrants, “their connections with the community of origin and their extended family [constitute] a support system that facilitates return and makes the adventure less risky” (Durand 2004: 112).2 Just as social connections are crucial for leaving the country and insertion in destination countries, they are crucial to the process of return as well. Sustaining those connections, which have a fundamental role in preparing and organizing return, is made possible by the transnational mobility of the migrants. Transnational 2 Original text: “sus lazos con la comunidad de origen y con su familia extensa, [constituyen] un sistema de apoyos que les facilitan el retorno y hacen menos riesgosa la aventura” (Durand 2004: 112).

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living is an essential part of the return experience because of the intensity of economic and family connections, and because of the ease of movement of the families. Bi-national society breaks with the dichotomy of origin and destination societies in migration (Guarnizo 1996, Rivera 2011). Other studies link transnationality with the acquisition of social or human capital that can help with reinsertion. The “comparative advantages” migrants accumulate while abroad are thought of as “the incorporation of new skills, ideas, and attitudes toward work activities” (Cort8s 2011: 3),3 which make it possible for migrants to return to the country of origin in better conditions than before they left. This thesis belongs to what is known as a functionalist view of return, which tends to look at migration – and migrants – as bearers of modernization and greater investment for the society of origin (Guarnizo 1996). This article, by looking at different migration paths taken to the destination country and back, attempts to shed light on whether labor and social insertion upon return is in fact aided by the migration experience, hot it is affected and what are the difficulties as well as the benefits that occur. In this sense, the effects of return migration must be understood, on the one hand, in the social and economic context migrants were part of destination societies and in the context they are joining when they return. That is to say, migrant trajectories should be analyzed in relation to the social structure and not as isolated entities. It is also necessary to examine the connections and obligations these migrants developed with their relatives and communities during their transnational experience (Guarnizo 1996). Therefore, rather than presuppose that the experience migrants acquire and the human capital they develop necessarily translate into better conditions and greater job opportunities upon returning, one must consider that return experiences are diverse per se and are linked to the structural conditions of each context, the different forms of capital mobilized by subjects, and the unequal conditions of the societies interconnected through labor migrations (Rivera 2011). For this reason, along with a transnational perspective, one must adopt an attentive view of how the social structure, inequalities in their many forms, and social conflicts are expressed in these processes. Some works analyzing gender focus on the differences between men and women on the decision to remain or return. Luin Goldring (2001) finds that men tend to want to return, mainly because of social constructions surrounding prestige and because of a more acute condition and perception of social and economic exclusion in destination societies, whereas women, because of their closer relationship with the local community, built through their participation in 3 Translated by the authors: “La incorporacijn de nuevas habilidades, ideas y actitudes en relacijn con las actividades laborales”.

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activities related to the education of their children or preventive health, more often express a desire to stay. The author attributes this to a greater recognition of women as subjects and citizens in local destination societies compared to the societies they come from. Additionally, Luis Eduardo Guarnizo (1996) finds similar gender differences, although the women in his study have already returned in spite of their wish to stay. In this case, migrant women were motivated to return by family ties.

The site of the inquiry: Llano Grande, caught between ancestral identity and transnational migration The Commune of Llano Grande belongs to the Parish of Calderon, administratively a “rural” division of the Quito Canton and part of the Metropolitan District of Quito. Although it is defined as a ‘rural’ space, a quick visit to Llano Grande shows the space of the commune is fully integrated to the city, notwithstanding some uninhabited spaces and the small parcels of land many of its residents keep in order to grow corn and other subsistence products alongside their modern houses. This ambiguity, between the urban and rural elements, between its administrative denomination and its real spatial dynamic is not a new phenomenon. It is part of the very existence of the commune. In spite of an intense historical exchange with the city center, through the sale of its workforce and its access to public services, the inhabitants of Llano Grande have their own social fabric and sense of belonging. These are based on family ties (Dallemagne 2012) and on social and political struggles the community has engaged in against local power, the parish center, and the municipality (Rodriguez 2009). This sense of belonging was constructed even after the first waves of international migration: first in the 1980s to the United States and Canada and later in the 1990s and 2000s to Spain and Italy. It translates into endogamous relationships and marriages among the locals, even among the new generations of the community living today in Spain, the development of recreational activities and associations among Llano Grande natives in Madrid, and their gathering in a particular area of a peripheral Madrid neighbourhood: Alcobendas (Dallemagne 2012, Suarez-Navas 2012). This sense of belonging is also reinforced and transformed into an indigenous identity by a local political and intellectual elite in a process of ethnogenesis through which cultural difference and recognition as an “ancestral people” serves the community to demand certain concessions from the state (Gjmez 2009, Rodr&guez 2009). Lastly, this sense of belonging manifests daily in the activity of groups such as neigh-

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bourhood sports leagues or associations around business projects, experiences migrants reproduce in the destination place, in this case Madrid. In spite of this territorial sense of belonging by the local residents of Llano Grande, in the past ten years, the area has experienced unprecedented demographic, spatial, social, and economic transformations, which have turned the place into one of great mobility population-wise and where significant economic differentiation has occurred.

Migration trajectory and return: Labor and social insertion This section analyzes the labor insertion of returnees as it relates to the different forms of capital the migrant has accumulated, both during the migration experience and before it. Four different forms of capital are taken into account: formal cultural capital, social – the role of social and familial networks in the process of insertion – , financial – whether individuals had savings or assets of any kind when they returned – and, finally, mobility – the possibility to move or not to Spain, as allowed by having acquired permanent residence or Spanish citizenship and, therefore, certain civil rights that allow for movement between both countries, and even other countries.

Migration trajectories: Gender, social capital, and mobility The Commune of Llano Grande has a migrant network of over forty years, not only to Spain but also to the United States and Italy. The migration trajectories are well defined. In the case of Spain, migrants left from the beginning of the 1990s and, at this time, many have been able to legalize their immigration status early on and even attain Spanish citizenship. The majority of the individuals in the households interviewed have Spanish citizenship, and only two of them have lost their permanent residence status. Although in most cases migration circuits encompass the two countries only, there were also two experiences involving attempted migration to third countries: one to England and another one to the United States. In the first case, a couple traveled to London but the lack of a network that could provide initial shelter as well as the cultural and language barriers they encountered made them return to Spain a few months later. In the second case, a domestic worker tried travelling to the U.S. with the family she worked for twice, but she was unable to get a visa. The majority of Llano Grande emigrants in Spain, though, have remained there, and there has been little movement to other places in that country or to the rest of Europe. Due to the strength of family networks and belonging, which translate into

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additional resources and a comparative advantage versus other migrants, and to their early exit from Ecuador, these migrants did not have to move a lot in order to find work. Nor did they move around when the crisis hit, unlike the migration experiences registered in other works (Herrera 2012, Pedone 2006). Rather, the migrants’ testimony even shows residential concentration in certain areas of Madrid, a phenomenon that is not very common among other groups of Ecuadorian migrants (Dallemagne 2012, Suarez-Navas 2012). Another characteristic of the migration trajectories of Llano Grande migrants we observed is their ability to carry on cyclical and stationary migration processes, owing in part to the networks they have built, which allow a flow of people between the Ecuadorian and Spanish borders, and facilitated by their migration status. In most cases, this coming and going is part of the entire migration experience, with long periodical visits during vacations as well as transnational commercial family initiatives. Thus, many of the young women interviewed, who emigrated as girls or teenagers, would go to Llano Grande every summer vacation, sent by their parents; this led to two cases of romantic involvement, pregnancy, marriage, and return. In other words, social and familial connections with Llano Grande were intensely maintained and reproduced, which in turn positively impacted the process of social reinsertion. In the case of adults and adult couples, while visits were more limited – usually because of work – they were also frequent and were motivated by investments – houses or commercial spaces – or to more easily care for small children. This was the case of PS, who returned to Llano Grande after giving birth to her second child and stayed with her family for six months. One of the first characteristics of this population’s return migration is derived from this coming and going, which was sustained over many years of the migration project, and it has to do with a staggered return. In every case where the household returning included more than one person, the return migration experience, much like the exit migration, occurred by parts: first, the idea of returning is hatched during a visit; the wife and children follow, and, finally, the husband. In other cases, young children initiate the process, followed by the parents. Given than many of the cases studied are rather recent returns, several of the interviewees belong to families that can be identified as in the process of returning, that is, some family members are in Ecuador while others are still in Spain but intending to return. Thus, in three of the households analyzed, the arrival of more family members seems imminent. But in addition to being staggered, according to the interviewees, returning is not an event but a process that can take several months and sometimes even years, as formal, legal and occupational bonds still remain and are only resolved little by little. These include the repossession or not of apartments by the banks

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when the mortgage can no longer be paid, the sale of certain assets, obtaining permanent resident status or Spanish citizenship, the schooling of children: So we tried to return but without selling our apartment. We left everything, so we rented out the place and everything and we came. But we were already here for six months; we lived with my father-in-law. I had the house I made, my house up there (Cecilia, personal conversation, February 19, 2013).4 [The business] operated for a year and in the middle of that my husband left again for Spain. He left because he had to get some papers in order, I don’t remember, he had to go; so he stayed for a while. And I was alone with the children. There was the small child. I think he was just six or seven months old, small. So for me it was hard to start here… And I was here, operating the daycare. I already had teachers; it was more or less set up. And my husband left in the middle of that, we were alone, and then I felt it myself: “I’m leaving too!”… And I went with the children; we all went to live there again. But it so happens that the children didn’t want to be there anymore, didn’t like it, didn’t want it anymore. But really, they never wanted it. They were born here and everything, but from the moment we went there on vacation for a month, they got used to it better than me, and later, when we were here we stayed the whole school year because we had to, so it wouldn’t be cut short, because they didn’t want to be there, none of them (Marta, personal conversation, January 13, 2013).5

The migration trajectories do not show projects clearly defined toward return. Rather, what we found was a transnational living (Guarnizo 1996) facilitated by solid familial networks on both ends and by the possibility to move without legal limitations. One should also underscore that, on top of the attainment of residence papers or Spanish citizenship – mobility capital – , one can also perceive that these migrants have the financial solvency to travel between Ecuador and Europe, and that they prioritize travel to Ecuador over other activities in defining their lives. This is not necessarily a situation that can go on indefinitely. To 4 Original text: “Entonces intentamos volvernos pero sin vender el piso, dejamos todo, as& que dejamos arrendando y todo y nos vinimos. Pero ya est#bamos 6 meses aqu&, viv&amos donde mi suegro, yo ten&a mi casa que hice mi casa arriba” (Cecilia, comunicacijn personal, 19 de febrero, 2013). 5 Original text: “Funcionj [el negocio] un aÇo y en eso mi marido se fue nuevamente a EspaÇa. Se fue porque ten&a que arreglar papeles, ya no recuerdo, ten&a que irse; as& que se quedj algffln tiempo. Y yo estaba sola con los niÇos, estaba el niÇo pequeÇo reci8n, ten&a creo que 6–7 meses, pequeÇo. Entonces para m& fue duro igual empezar aqu&…. Yestuve aqu&, funcionando la guarder&a. Ya ten&a profesoras, estaba m#s o menos adecuado todo. En eso mi marido se fue, est#bamos solos y despu8s me cogij a m&, ¡que tambi8n me voy!… y yo me fui con mis hijos, nos fuimos todos a vivir all# otra vez. Pero resulta que los niÇos ya no quer&an estar ah&, no les gustj, ya no quer&an. M#s que todo, ellos nunca quisieron. Ellos son nacidos ah& y todo, pero al momento que hemos venido de vacaciones por un mes se han acostumbrado mejor que uno y luego, cuando estuvimos ah&, nos quedamos por el aÇo lectivo, obligados, para que los niÇos no corten, porque ellos no quer&an estar ah&, ninguno” (Marta, comunicacijn personal, 14 de enero, 2013).

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the contrary, the current crisis in Spain and their precarious jobs seem to point toward greater difficulties to sustain this translational living, though it may persist in the social imaginary. There is a case that illustrates an exception to this tendency. Carmela (personal communication, January 1, 2013), a mother who is head of her household, migrated while leaving her daughter in her parents’ care and worked in Spain as a live-in domestic worker for the same family for nine years. She travelled to Ecuador only twice a year. She managed to save and invest her money in a house, two commercial spaces, and an apartment in Llano Grande; she then lost her resident status and has no intention of returning to Spain. Here is a migration project with a planned return that was fulfilled. In this case, both the social and mobility capital are scarce, and this is a consequence of her status as a mother who is head of her household.

Occupational trajectories: gender, cultural capital, and crisis Occupational trajectories before, during, and after migration reveal several types of configurations of forms of capital and especially significant gender differences. On the one hand, occupational trajectories for women have not been linear. In all of the cases studied, entries and exits from the job market are not only linked to the reproductive cycle and the arrival of children but also to migration itself. Before migrating, these women had been students or had participated in unpaid labor. Later, all of them found some kind of work, with varying degrees of formality but mostly in domestic work and the care sector. Upon returning to Ecuador, only a few reentered the job market; most of them returned to unpaid domestic labor, with only occasional paid work and, in some cases, to study. This is to say that women frequently do not have a salary job when they return, and this, inexorably, pushes them into private spaces. While in Spain, many of these women experienced a certain amount of financial independence, which in turn translated into a better negotiating position in decision making within the household. However, this improved position seems at risk upon returning because ‘returning’ also means going back to “taking care of the home” under greater financial dependence. In other words, the gendered order and the sexual division of labor seem to suck women back into unpaid domestic and care work. Indeed, this rationale is explicit in one of the cases studied: the mother returned to take care of her youngest child and her mother-in-law, leaving her job in Spain behind. Similarly, in a different case, the women involved decided to return motivated by the desire to study once more, as they found this was not possible in Spain. In both cases, these women became, once again, financially dependent on their husbands while also primarily re-

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sponsible for the care of their children and of older adults. In contrast, men’s trajectories were more linear. Their occupation did not change much between origin and destination and upon return, that is, the migration experience and return does not seem to have put them in a more favorable position in the structure of the job market. In addition to gender, the stage of the life cycle during which migration occurs is a marker of difference for the outcome of return migration. Returnees who migrated as children and were schooled in Spain can generally access jobs requiring higher qualifications compared to their parents, both in Spain and upon their return to Ecuador. This is the case of Pedro, who migrated with his parents in the 1990s, studied in a high school and a technical college in Spain and worked as a machine operator ; then he returned to Ecuador and is now a qualified worker in Quito. His parents are still in Spain; they have been employed as a domestic worker and gardener by the same family for the past 19 years. On the other hand, his wife, who studied in a tourism and hospitality institute in Spain, was never able to work in her field while living there. She worked as a retailer in different stores without job stability. For this reason, deciding to return was not hard for her ; it was a long-standing wish of hers. She now works at a credit union. In this young family the cultural capital acquired in Spain plays a crucial role in their forms of insertion and in their plans for the future. There is observable intergenerational upward social mobility, but it is a project that only matured after they returned. In addition, this process of social mobility does not include leaving Llano Grande. To the contrary, it has led to the consolidation of their livelihood there with their extended family. Together with the cultural capital acquired abroad comes a sense of belonging: intergenerationally inherited social and cultural capital that also shapes projects of return and social insertion. In contrast, the situation of Marta and Gerardo (personal communication, January 14, 2013) is the opposite: the lack of cultural capital at the time of exit and of financial capital upon returning made insertion more precarious in destination as well as in origin once they had returned. This household migrated to Spain and inserted itself in Madrid in the traditional niches of Ecuadorian migration: Marta in domestic work and Gerardo in construction. These jobs let to savings, but their main motivation to return was the education of their youngest child, which they wanted to take place in Ecuador. While Gerardo, who worked as a qualified construction worker in Ecuador, still holds a similar position in Spain, Marta has now returned. She meets her financial needs with Gerardo’s remittances and takes care of her mother-in-law and children. For her, returning to Ecuador has also meant going back to her previous occupations, and she resents this. She is not fully satisfied with her life and worries about not

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having enough money for her day-to-day expenses. For this reason, she decided to work in a few houses in Quito as a domestic worker. In sum, although the study shows that migrants’ jobs were much better paid during their time in Spain compared to those before they migrated, this has not by itself meant upward social mobility in the place of destination. It has, in relative terms, in the place of origin. Migrants’ testimonies frequently refer to their inability to fully establish themselves and self-actualize in the place of destination, which most returnees have experienced. A major factor in migrants’ experience of return and reinsertion is how families experienced the crisis from 2008 onward. Those who have successfully dealt with the crisis are able to return on a more comfortable financial footing and can invest in assets that guarantee them a relatively stable income – retail spaces, rentals, work vehicles – while those who were impacted more directly – by losing their home, for example – delay or push forward their return depending to a great extent on job opportunities, pending debts, either in Spain or in Ecuador, and, above all, family obligations. In other words, the decision to return is connected not only to employment but to wider social reproduction processes, just like the decision to emigrate (Herrera 2008). In addition to their ability to save and the assets migrants acquire, job opportunities are a significant factor when returning as many migrants, especially women, suffer from an erosion of their job qualifications: Work is hard. What is more, I, for example, wanted to work again, but it had been so long since I’d worked in the field of my profession, so long since I’d had any experience… so, obviously… and also at my age, 40 years old, well, very difficult. It’s that I don’t have the experience. I don’t have papers to back me up. So there are younger people who have experience, who have been working for a longer time, and they prefer that (Cecilia, personal communication, February 19, 2013).6

In sum, the job opportunities of returnees in Llano Grande depend, to a great extent, on their own initiative, and the work experience or education attained in the destination country has not been of much service to them. On top of the limited access to education many of the migrants experience in both places of origin and destination, one should add that the structure of the Ecuadorian job market is also limited. While the unemployment rate is low, and much lower than in Spain, underemployment is very high, reaching 44 % of economically active 6 Original text: “El trabajo es dif&cil. Es m#s, yo por ejemplo quise trabajar nuevamente, quise trabajar pero hac&a tanto tiempo que no hab&a ejercido la profesijn, hac&a tanto tiempo que no ten&a experiencia… entonces, obviamente… y ya con la edad, 40 aÇos que tengo, pues muy dif&cil. Pero es que no hay experiencia, no tengo papeles que me respalden, entonces hay gente m#s joven y que tiene experiencia, que ha estado trabajando mucho tiempo y prefieren eso” (Cecilia, comunicacijn personal, 19 de febrero, 2013).

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population in spite of the country’s economic recovery. This is to say, access to formal, stable employment that fulfills the conditions of social reproduction is still scarce.

Social Insertion In contrast with labor insertion, the constant coming and going between Llano Grande and Madrid, as well as the relationships between relatives, neighbours, and acquaintances in both places, seem to facilitate a relatively fluid social integration. I was… I said: “a month to go, a week to go”…, then returning… because away from here, no… here I know what life is like, more calm, more relaxed. I knew what I was coming to. I was coming to my house. I was coming to my daughter. And it didn’t cost me much because you already had that mentality since you left that you were coming back and because my plans didn’t change, so I had no trouble (Carmela, personal communication, January 17, 2013).7 Yes, I am very happy with my friends here. It is very fulfilling talking to them, being with them, sharing with them. I am very happy. Over there, I didn’t have friends because it was… because life there is very different (Mercedes, personal communication, January 10, 2013).8

Now, this does not mean migrants do not notice changes or conflicts. We already indicated how women resent having lost their financial independence. Perceptions about the surrounding environment are varied as well: they tend to be positive regarding perceived physical transformations, but they do not always celebrate their connection with public services. Again, the perception of inhabited space at the time of returning varies according to the length of time interviewees spent away from Ecuador and the frequency of their visits while living in Spain. Before it was, as they say, a truly a town: now it looks like a city. There are impressive changes. There are schools, there are… now there are phone shops, pharmacies; there are police stations, medical dispensaries. Before there was none of this, only little stores, little 7 Original text: “Yo estaba… yo dec&a: ‘ya falta un mes, ya me falta una semana’…, entonces fue volver… porque de aqu& no… yo aqu& s8 cjmo es la vida, m#s tranquila, m#s relajada, sab&a a lo que ven&a, ven&a a mi casa, ven&a a mi hija y no me costj mayor cosa, porque como ya ten&as esa mentalidad desde que te fuiste que ibas a volver y como mis planes no cambiaron, entonces no tuve ningffln problema” (Carmela, comunicacijn personal, 17 de enero, 2013). 8 Original text: “S&, voy muy feliz con amigos aqu&. Me llena mucho el hablar con ellos, el estar con ellos, el compartir con ellos. Yo estoy muy feliz, all# no ten&a amigos porque era… porque all# la vida es bastante diferente” (Mercedes, comunicacijn personal, 10 de enero, 2013).

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corner stores is all we knew. Now there are retail stores, bakeries, and everything. Yes, it has improved a lot (Gerardo, personal communication, January 14, 2013).9 Llano Grande has improved greatly, lots, lots, lots, lots. In every sense, it has improved a great deal. I don’t know if it’s because of the houses here, because of we who live here, or there may be other reasons but… Or there also may be people who came back and started businesses, things; but it has improved a great deal compared to before, and as far as I’m concerned all the better (Gerardo, personal communication, January 14, 2013).10

At the same time, there are contradictory views on the growth of the neighbourhood. In this regard, some interviewees find that urbanization brings about significant losses for the landscape and for the quality of life of its inhabitants. A complete change. Imagine that this was a small town, more of a town. Now, up there, there are housing developments, but this all used to be a small town. It was just forest, ravine. There weren’t many cars. Not even this road was here. And when I came back, I didn’t know where I was… Mostly, many trees have been destroyed […]. When we were children, my cousins, the neighbours, and I would go to the forest just like that… Before there was sewerage, back here there was a ravine and clean water, down came a river with clean water. We used to go down there and play… this was a beautiful land (Pedro, personal communication, February 26, 2013).11

On the other hand, one of the negative perceptions repeatedly mentioned by interviewees is the loss of closeness and sense of belonging to a collective among family and neighbours due to of emigration but especially immigration and the fast urban development of the area. [The street] was a cobble stone road when I left. There wasn’t even a single shop, nothing. Wherever you went, the people you saw, you knew. You got on the bus and everyone knew you, and you knew everyone. Now, well, there are many developments 9 Original text: “Antes era, como se dice, pueblo mismo; ahora parece ciudad, hay unos cambios impresionantes, hay escuelas, hay… que ahora hay, locutorios, hay farmacias; as& hay retenes, dispensarios m8dicos. M#s antes eso no hab&a, hab&a solo tienditas as&, tienditas de barrio lo que se conoc&a, ahora ya hay tiendas, hay panader&as, y todo. S& ha mejorado mucho” (Gerardo, comunicacijn personal, 14 de enero, 2013). 10 Original text: “Ha mejorado mucho Llano Grande, mucho, mucho, mucho, mucho. En todos los sentidos, ha mejorado bastante. No s8 si es por las casas que hay ah&, por los que vivimos aqu&, o habr# otras cosas pero…. O asimismo abran personas que han regresado han puesto negocios, cosas; pero ha mejorado bastante a comparacijn de antes y para m& mejor” (Gerardo, comunicacijn personal, 14 de enero, 2013). 11 Original text: “Un cambio total. Imag&nate que esto era pueblo, antes era m#s pueblo. Arriba, ahora hay urbanizaciones, pero esto era todo pueblo, solo era bosque, quebrada, no hab&a muchos carros, no hab&a ni esta carretera y cuando yo volv& no sab&a djnde estaba…. Sobre todo, se han destruido muchos #rboles […]. Cuando 8ramos niÇos con mis primos, los vecinos, sal&amos al bosque as&…. Antes que llegue el alcantarillado, aqu& atr#s hab&a una quebrada y hab&a agua limpia, bajaba un r&o con agua limpia, sab&amos bajar all# a jugar…. Era tierra bonita esta” (Pedro, comunicacijn personal, 26 de febrero, 2013).

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everywhere, a great deal of cars. It’s all full of shops. It’s grown a lot (Carmela, Personal communication, January 17, 2013).12

Migrants have also experienced exclusion, and their sense of dissatisfaction in Spain reinforces their sense of belonging to their community and the idea that in Ecuador, on principle, they would not be excluded. The following testimony, of a young woman who was born and raised in Spain, is eloquent in this regard: Yes, I would like [to return] as well. I’ve only gone on vacation because I was born here [in Spain]. I’ve always practically lived here, but whenever I’ve gone there, I’ve liked it. It’s just that I am not very extroverted, so here it’s very hard for me to express myself, hard to be open and get along with Spaniards. And over there it’s not hard at all because they are also from my country (Vanessa, personal communication, February 6, 2013).13

Also important to these migrants, in comparing both places, is the sensation that their children are doing better, as their school experiences in Spain have not always been positive. This is the reason for returning, for example, of three of the young mothers interviewed, who were unable to finish their high school studies in Spain and, therefore, did not go on studying. Moreover, interviewees mention experiencing racism, a reason why arriving in Ecuador is viewed as positive. It was good for my son, true. My son likes it. He’s happy. Anyway… look… school [in Spain]: I didn’t like the teacher because she was kind of a jerk, a bit racist. The fact, for example, that she let the Spanish kids out first and the foreign kids last… not the foreign kids but the children of foreigners, she let out last… I’m telling you I’m very… I’m always on defense because indifference pisses me off. I get pissed about being treated that way : how they look at you as if you’re worth nothing, or as if you’re less of a person, and no. So no, why should you feel that way? You’re not worth less than those people… so they shouldn’t treat you that way (Adriana, January 30, 2013).14 12 Original text: “Era empedrado cuando yo me fui, no hab&a ni un local, nada. La gente donde tu sal&as ve&as ya la conoc&as. En el bus te sub&as y todo el mundo te conoc&a y conoc&as a las personas. Ahora pues hay un montjn de ciudadelas por todas partes, hay un montjn de carros, todo est# de locales, crecij bastante” (Carmela, comunicacijn personal, 17 de enero, 2013). 13 Original text: “Claro, s& me gustar&a tambi8n [regresar], solo he ido por vacaciones porque nac& aqu& [en EspaÇa]. Siempre he vivido pr#cticamente aqu& pero all& cuando he ido me ha gustado. Es que yo no soy muy extrovertida entonces aqu& me cuesta mucho expresarme, mucho abrirme y llevarme con los espaÇoles. Yall# no me cuesta porque tambi8n son de mi pa&s” (Vanessa, comunicacijn personal, 6 de febrero, 2013). 14 Original text: “A mi hijo le sentj bien, la verdad. A mi hijo le gusta, est# contento, igual… mira… la escuela [en EspaÇa], no me gustaba la profesora porque era un poco hija de su madre, era un tanto racista. El hecho de, por ejemplo, a los espaÇoles les sacaba primero y a los extranjeros al fflltimo… no a los extranjeros sino a los hijos de los extranjeros le sacaba al fflltimo… Yo te digo que soy muy, siempre estoy a la defensiva, porque me cabrea la indiferencia, me cabrea que me traten as& de esa manera, como que te ven as& que no vales nada o como que eres menos y no. Entonces no, ¿por qu8 te vas a sentir as&?, no eres menos que esa gente… entonces no tienen que tratarte de esa manera” (Adriana, 30 de enero, 2013).

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Conclusion Our findings suggest that return processes and labor and social integration are more closely connected to the cultural and social capital accumulated before migration than to the capital acquired during migration. This contradicts one of the current presuppositions of migration and return literature, which claims that the migration experience is a form of capital with positive effects on return migrants’ labor reinsertion. What we found in this case is that financial assets acquired through migration are relevant factors, but that they should be understood in the context of structural inequality into which these migrants have integrated in destination countries and in the context preceding migration. In fact, because the migrant population’s labor insertion is highly segregated and segmented within a few not very highly qualified niches, the financial capital that can be accumulated during this experience is limited. Furthermore, the crisis not only intensified an unfavorable labor insertion, but it produced, in several cases, the loss of the few assets that had been acquired once mortgages became impossible to pay. Thus, several returnees had their homes repossessed by banks and lost the savings they had invested in them. For this reason, the only safe assets in this situation were those acquired in Ecuador. Looking at migration trajectories in this case, one can identify at least three forms of return: staggered, temporary, and definitive. Findings suggest each of these is influenced by the greater or lesser degree of transnationality experienced by these families during their migration project. In other words, transnational living translates into social capital that is preserved in Spain, spatial or mobility capital – dual citizenship, which allows coming and going – and cultural capital by being able to navigate the cultural codes of two or more societies simultaneously. This greater or lesser transnationality, deployed in different forms of capital, is a factor that qualifies how social and labor insertion is produced and the shape return takes. This suggests big differences, for example, with processes of forced return resulting from deportation. Finally, for these migrants, reencountering their social surroundings and community of origin is emotionally ambiguous and is connected to processes of labor insertion. Women, by losing an income of their own, experience a loss of financial autonomy. It is left for future studies to explore if this has further consequences for gender relations within the family. On the other hand, this group’s social return seems facilitated by the intensity of its sense of belonging and by experiences of social exclusion or social dissatisfaction in the destination place. This does not mean that there is not a strong perception of changes in their surroundings among returnees; but this does not seem to be a factor that destabilizes their sense of belonging. However, returned migrants’ successes and

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disappointments with their place of origin ought to be more deeply analyzed: a task that is still pending.

Bibliography Boccagni, Paolo, 2011. “The Framing of Return from Above and Below in Ecuadorian Migration: a Project, a Myth, or a Political Device?” Global Networks 11(4), pp. 461–480. Boccagni, Paolo and Lagomarsino, Francesca, 2011. “Migration and the Global Crisis: ¿New Prospects for Return? The Case of Ecuadorians in Europe.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 30(3), pp. 282–297. Cassarino, Jean-Pierre, 2004. “Theorising Return Migration: The Conceptual Approach to Return Migrants Revisited”. International Journal on Multicultural Societies 6(2), pp. 253–279. Castillo Pavjn, Ana Luc&a, 2011. “Impacto socioeconjmico de la entrega del capital semilla del Programa Fondo Concursable “El Cucayo” a personas migrantes retornadas y a las expectativas de su proyecto de retorno”. (Tesis in8dita de maestr&a). Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, Quito. Cavalcanti, Leonardo, 2013. “El retorno re-significado. Una aproximacijn a las practicas transnacionales y de retorno como elemento estructurador de la experiencia migratoria”. In: Pedone, Claudia and Gil, Sandra (eds.): Pol&ticas Pfflblicas, migracijn familiar y retorno de poblacijn migrante latinoamericana a CataluÇa. Barcelona: Consorci Institut d‘Onfancia Mon Urba, pp. 27–32. Dallemagne, Gregory, 2012. “Familias transnacionales atravesando Ecuador y EspaÇa. La construccijn del parentesco y la reproduccijn de una comuna ind&gena de Quito”. Revista de Ciencias Sociales (Chile), 28, pp. 203–226. Durand, Jorge, 2004. “Ensayo cr&tico sobre la emigracijn de retorno. El principio del rendimiento decreciente”. Cuadernos Geogr#ficos 35, pp. 103–116. Glick Schiller, Nina, 2010. “A Global Perspective on Migration and Development”. In: Nina Glick Schiller and Faist, Thomas (eds.): Migration, Development and Transnationalization: a Critical Stance. Nueva York: Berghahn Books, pp. 22–62. Goldring, Luin, 2001. “The Gender and Geography of Citizenship in Mexico-US Transnational Spaces”. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 7(4), pp. 501–537. Gjmez Murillo, ]lvaro, 2009. “Pueblos originarios, comunas, migrantes y procesos de etnog8nesis en el Distrito Metropolitano de Quito. Nuevas representaciones sobre los ind&genas urbanos de Am8rica Latina” (Unpublished Master’s thesis). Flacso, Ecuador. Guarnizo, Luis Eduardo, 1996. “Going Home. Class, Gender and Household Transformations Among Dominican Return Migrants”. Center for Migration Studies Special Issue. Caribbean Circuits. New Directions in the Study of Caribbean Migration 13(4), pp.13–60. Hern#ndez, Kattya, Maldonado, Mjnica and Calderjn, Jefferson, 2012. Entre crisis y crisis: experiencias de emigracijn y retorno. El caso de los barrios populares del noroccidente de Quito. Quito: Abya-Yala, Ceplaes, Cooperativa Fondvida.

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Herrera, Gioconda, 2008. “States, Work and Social Reproduction through the Lens of Migrant Experience: Ecuadorian Domestic Workers in Madrid”. In: Bakker, Isabella and Silvey, Rachel (eds.): Beyond States and Markets: The Challenges of Social Reproduction New York: Routledge, pp. 93–107. Herrera, Gioconda, 2012. “Starting Over Again? Crisis, Gender, and Social Reproduction Strategies among Ecuadorian Migrant Families in Spain”. Feminist Economics 18(2), pp. 125–148. Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas y Censos del Ecuador (INEC) 2010. Censo Nacional de Poblacijn y Vivienda 2010. Retrieved from http://www.ecuadorencifras.gob.ec/censode-poblacion-y-vivienda/ [last call 17/03/2015]. Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (INE) 2014. Population statistics as of January 1, 2014. Estadisticas de Migraciones. Retrieved from http://www.ine.es/prensa/np854.pdf [last call 17/03/2015]. Moncayo, Mar&a Isabel, 2011a. “Migracijn y retorno en el Ecuador : entre el discurso pol&tico y la pol&tica de estado”. (Unpublished Master’s thesis). Flacso, Ecuador. Moncayo, Mar&a Isabel, 2011b. “El Plan “Bienvenid@s a Casa”: Estudio sobre la experiencia del Fondo “El Cucayo”.” Serie Avances de Investigacijn 51. Madrid: Fundacijn Carolina-CeALCI. Pedone, Claudia, 2006. Tu siempre jalas a los tuyos. Estrategias migratorias y poder. Quito, Abya Yala. Peris-Mencheta, Juan, Ljpez Olivares, Susana and Masanet Ripoll, Erika 2011. Entre dos tierras. Dilemas sobre la permanencia y el retorno en la poblacijn ecuatoriana en EspaÇa. Quito: Secretar&a Nacional del Migrante. Prieto, Victoria and Koolhaas, Mart&n, 2013. “Retorno reciente y empleo: los casos de Ecuador, M8xico y Uruguay”. In: Gandini, Luciana and Padrjn, Mauricio (eds.): Poblacijn y Trabajo en Am8rica Latina y el Caribe: Abordajes Tejrico-Conceptuales y Tendencias Emp&ricas Recientes. Serie Investigaciones 14 Montevideo: Red de Poblacijn y Trabajo, Asociacijn Latinoamericana de Poblacijn, pp. 327–368. Rivera S#nchez, Liliana, 2011. “¿Qui8nes son los retornados? Apuntes sobre el migrante retornado en el M8xico contempor#neo”. In: Feldman-Bianco, Bela, Rivera S#nchez, Liliana, Stefoni, Carolina and Villa Mart&nez, Marta In8s (eds.): La contruccijn social del sujeto migrante. Quito: Flacso-Ecuador and Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Clacso), pp. 309–339. Rodr&guez Maeso, Silvia, 2009. “Ciudadanos ind&genas, racismo y luchas pol&ticas en una comunidad de la periferia de Quito”. E-cadernos CES, pp. 94–123. Sayad, Abdelmalek, 1998. “Le retour, 8l8ment constitutif de la condition de l’immigr8”. Migrations et Soci8t8 10(57), pp. 9–45. Schramm, Christian, 2011. “Retorno y reinsercijn de migrantes ecuatorianos. La importancia de las redes sociales transnacionales”. Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals 93–94, pp. 241–260. Suarez-Navas, Liliana, 2012. “Kichwa Migrations across the Atlantic Border Regime: Transterritorial Practices of Identity and Rights within a Postcolonial Frame”. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 17(1), pp. 41–64.

Lara Jüssen

Animating citizenship through migrant labor struggles. Latin American household workers and creative protest in Madrid

Introduction In this paper it is considered how migrants’ “act” of border transgression and their activities of installation within a place precipitate their emplacement, enactment, and embodiment of citizenship. This view requires a conceptualization of citizenship from the agents’ spatialized practices that includes bodily involvement. Both “acts of citizenship” (Isin 2009) that require engaged involvement, such as in (migrant) protest movements, and ontological ways of being and becoming within a place are part of the route to citizenship. Migrant household workers, who establish as citizens in Madrid, show diverse strategies of emplacement of citizenship through extending their networks of solidarity and support against the odds: against national labor and migration regimes, precarization through the Spanish economic crisis, inequalities they face as women who end up in jobs with low social and cultural prestige. Against loneliness, insecurities, inequalities, injustices, precarities, risks, dangers and abuses, Latin American household workers in Spain fortifie and redress, searching and struggling for good life (buen vivir) and liveable working conditions. It is also displayed how citizenship and the experience of precarity, as well as of mindful empowerment is embodied and ultimately needs to be enacted, be it by (staged) protest articulation or new laws. In short, practices matter, space matters, body matters! For my fieldwork in Madrid (spread across eight months in the years 2011 and 2012) I used an ethnographic approach (Bohnsack 2000, Giebeler 2007, Spradley 1980), following the routes of interviewees through participant observation, semi-structured narrative interviews with workers, and more open, narrative interviews with expert informants, such as staff of migrant organizations, NGOs, trade unions and activists. While searching for evidence of how citizenship articulates within workplaces and with reference to labor, the need to adopt a bottom-up perspective became manifest: socio-cultural dynamics based on praxeology (de Certeau

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1988, Hörning 2004) proved to be closer to lived experiences of migrants in Madrid than written laws and labor and migrant rights, which can be highly restrictive, bewilderingly incomplete and antiquated, and are usually designed from a state-centered, managerial perspective. Meanwhile, “benevolent” legislations often remain unrealized or difficult to implement. However, along with the praxeological approach to citizenship presented here, enhancements and implementations of rights for household workers and the care sector remain important claims. While sociocultural, political, and legal spaces are redefined by migrants’ movements, citizenship and the ascription of rights are animated, too, and need to be adjusted accordingly, permitting democratic approaches that inhere in migrants’ agency. In any case, citizenship’s raison d’Þtre is and has always been democracy and is traceable with Hanna Arendt to its’ pure form, the “right to have rights”. In this sense, ir/regularised migrant household workers are regarded as already citizens who emplace their dignity, beauty and prestige against exploitative capitalist and legal regimes within new spaces of living and working, and evidence a need to animate conservative conceptualizations of citizenship (as ascribed by the state to individuals or groups). By conceptualizing citizenship based on emplacements, embodiments and enactments, it opens up and is enriched by allowing for more inclusivity, as the cases of politically organized migrant household workers presented further down exemplify. Their diverse strategies of voicing demands are founded on thorough self-analysis and include lobbying, cooperativism, and staging of political theatre in urban public space. But first, some insights from debates on citizenship will be summoned, and the contextual conditions of household work in Spain will be explained.

Citizenship Citizenship is a concept that has been employed in very variable ways, having different meanings in different contexts. It obtains special relevance in migration studies, as citizenship conditions of migrants are discussed in scientific and public debates. Usually, it is held to designate hierarchy, exclusivity, and, more generally, a regulatory view within which citizenship is based on membership, and is denied to migrants. From this perspective, citizenship is based on the idea of migrants having to “integrate” into a “new society” first, before being assigned citizenship. Citizenship then is regarded as something static, a “status” obtainable in view of the state. In juridical regard, many states design citizenship as obtainable through the pursuit of a formal job which conditions the handing out of residence permits or nationalities. On this basis, only people who are able to finance their living on formal grounds – in other words, whose employers are

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willing to pay Social Security – are eligible for residence permits, which, however, don’t entail equal political rights. This view exposes citizenships’ and the migrant workers’ commodification, while it is based on a managerial, governmental, and regulatory perspective of citizenship as something ascribable by the state. Evelyn Dagnino (2005, 2006) presents a different perspective: in Latin America, human rights movements and struggles for the ‘right to have rights’ (Hanna Arendt) have been linked to processes of democratization and constituted important movements toward broad-based, inclusive citizenship from below. Then, the citizen becomes an “active bearer of effective claims against society via the state” (Turner 1990: 200). Movements in Latin America as elsewhere, though, are contested through neoliberal particularizations of citizenship: Aihwa Ong (2005), too, describes citizenship as long disentangled from the idea of legal status (as opposed to irregularity and statelessness), while she exposes neoliberal market forces as main excluding dynamics from extensive, relevant citizenship rights for large parts of the global population. This population enjoys, if at all, attributions from (charitable) non-state entities like NGOs or religious institutions. Reflecting on migration, Saskia Sassen (2002) posits everyday practices as a point of departure for the debate on postnational and denational citizenship opened up by Yasemin Soysal (1997) in the 1990s. Soysal ascertains that “a more universalistic model of membership comes to contest the exclusive model of citizenship anchored in national sovereignty” (Soysal 1997: 8), which is based on universal, deterritorialized rights, contradicting the bounded, territorialized nation-state. The proposal to regard citizenship from the perspective of everyday practices, such as living in a place, going to work, shopping, networking, spending time, struggling, suffering and rejoicing, etc., position un/documented migrants as citizens. Then, the question of state-ascribed membership becomes disentangled from the conceptualization of citizenship – this, though, does not imply that the life situations of the agents of migration were not restrained by a lack of ascription of rights. As shown, citizenship is split into two dimensions: citizenship from above is ascribed by governing bodies through legal frameworks, laws, rules, regulations, state politics and policies and implemented through public officers and officials who, however, sometimes take considerable leeway for decision making and/or rules implementation. On the other hand, citizenship from below is connected to embodiment, emplacement, and the enactment of practices and of self. In any case, it is misleading to think of citizenship as fixed and inflexible, while, rather, the social and cultural context of citizenship’s evolution matters (Turner 1990, 1993). Thereby, in a circular process, embodiments, emplacements and enact-

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ments of self, rights, and citizenship lead to changes of government assignments, ascriptions, and “legitimate” ways of being. To conceptualize citizenship from an agency-centered perspective permits to show how excluded groups heave themselves into sociocultural imaginaries and into the process of democracy formation. Their struggles and contestations make them no longer avoidable, no longer depreciable. This can happen through micropolitical agency : when working conditions are negotiated, when migrants procure “the papers”, or speak up to discrimination. It can also happen through large-scale, organized social movements, like the indignad@s and 15M in Spain since 2011. “By starting from spaces located outside dominant citizenship, the politics of difference challenge factual forms of representation, and create the conditions for a transversal representation” (Tsianos and Papadopoulos 2006). Then, sociocultural policies and rights and law are aligned and adjusted, as happened by animation through black civil rights movements since the 1960s, feminist movements since the 1970s, ecological movements since the 1970s, indigenous movements since the 1990s, and queer and LGBT movements since the 1990s, as well as numerous forms of overlappings and intersections within and among movements. The multitude, as a decentralized, networked, or rhizomatic swarm of highly multiple, differentiated and creative constituents challenging biopower (Hardt and Negri 2005, Pieper 2007) can be regarded as an assemblage of the highly diverse claims of social movements for “real democracy”, as the indignad@s worded it. The notion of biopower, introduced by Michel Foucault (2004), indicates how life itself is subordinated to technologies of control and the exercise of power, standing in opposition to biopolitics as potential to resistance. To think of citizenship as an inspiration of biopolitical potential highlights variabilities within ontological multiplicities of self and (everyday) practices, claiming of rights, and “acts of citizenship”. For groups acting from a position of excluded alterity, their public visibilization is a way of counteracting exclusion, and an initial point from which to start more articulate claiming. Resources for articulations of un/documented migrants might be limited, but the act of border transgression, the migration movement, the shere presence in a place, the pursuit of everyday practices, as well as struggles for survival and improvement of their and their families’ life situations depict the emplaced and embodied nature of citizenship. As extension of (routinized or everyday) practices, Engin F. Isin (2009) conceptualizes “acts of citizenship” as engaged articulations, usually of public character, within which citizenship is redressed through visible and active vocalizations, speech acts, and other enactments. Through “acts of citizenship” shortcomings of the social and cultural order are named, visibilized and criticized, calling attention to a grievance, usually within public spaces, the agents becoming “activist citizens”. With a slightly different emphasis, citizenship is

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also explained as an ontological way of being (political), of being already citizen, and therefore also already political (Isin 2005, Mezzadra 2012). Individuals and groups, then, symbolically, discursively, actually, and materially animate their citizenry. In times of globalization, recolonization, and neoliberalization, people from “the global South”, determined to aspire for well-being and good life, decide to migrate against all odds, risks, and threats, and manifest a multiplicity of adaptabilities along the way (Federici 2012). Migration regimes, as an angle from which to observe the arrangement of the submission of labor to capital, propose a specific viewpoint from which to regard class composition. Flexibilization and precarization of labor conditions intervene, making the empowerment of un/ documented migrants ever more important, especially in the context of politics of (border) control. Becoming an un/documented household laborer constituted an opportunity for many Latin American women to establish themselves in Madrid and support family members. However, global social inequalities and the low prestige of this job precarize life and work, while the Spanish economic crisis aggravated the situation. The Theatre of the Oppressed (1989), particularly through its variant, Legislative Theatre (1998), provide examples of how citizenship can be enacted, emplaced, and embodied. With the Theatre of the Oppressed, its inventor, Augusto Boal, developed a series of performance techniques which he rehearsed and staged together with interested groups in Latin America, Europe, and beyond, typically performing in public spaces. The common attribute of the performance techniques is to unmask an oppressive situation in order to redevelop it in a democratic way. Characteristically, the audience is involved, either willingly or without their knowledge, if groups of actors intervene in everyday situations in public spaces. The sketches and plays combine the motivation to challenge and animate the audience to resituate themselves as citizens. This democratizing intention by use of the poetic form culminated in what Boal called Legislative Theatre, when Boal himself was persuaded to stand as a candidate for the Rio de Janeiro city parliament. In his campaign, he and his supporters used strategies of the Theatre of the Oppressed, respectively Legislative Theatre, to reveal social grievances, and Boal ended up elected. It will later be shown in more detail how Territorio Dom8stico’s intervention through the Fashion Walk of Precarity in 2011 appears as an example of Legislative Theatre: in order to denounce the exploitation of migrant household workers and to claim for a change in legislation in line with the then just-agreed-upon ILO-Convention 189, the enactment in urban public space did indeed precede new legislation for household work, decided upon few months later.

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Doing household labor in Madrid Global social inequalities operate in intersectional ways, confronting household workers with racism, sexism, and classism simultaneously (Anthias and Lazaridis 2000, Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003, Jüssen 2013, Lutz 2008). The commodification of migrants’ “working bodies” (McDowell 2009) refines debates on “feminization of migration”: Concepts like global care chains1 or multiple care deficits2 tackle some effects of the commodification of care. With reference to An&bal Quijano’s “coloniality of power” (Quijano 2005), Encarnacijn Guti8rrez Rodr&guez (2010) describes household labor as imbued by a “coloniality of labor” in order to describe inequalities un/documented migrants confront in European contexts. Encounters between employers and employed in households can take on forms that recolonize workers’ bodies if workers face racist, sexist, or classist insults, presumptions, depreciations, paternalism or maternalism. Meanwhile, legal and political labor and migration regimes present “borders” difficult to surmount and add to the pressure to put up with oppressions and endure (Anderson 2000, Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001, ParreÇas 2003). Through these social dimensions of inequalities and restrictive labor and migration regimes, Latin American women came to be regarded as part of the cheap cleaning and caring forces in Madrid. While some were incorporated into households as un/documented workers directly, others were canalized into the job as contingent workers (Gil Araujo 2006), most starting out as live-ins (living in the house they work in). The isolation of the household means a relative safeguard from persecution through public authorities, while simultaneously the workers’ confinement to a private space of employers’ authority intensifies intersectional oppressions. Starting out from this situation with low social negotiation power makes it hard for workers to redress and empower themselves.

1 Within global care chains (Herrera 2012, 2013, Hochschild 2003, [2002]), or global chains of affects (Precarias a la deriva 2004), a “care drain” from former colonies to rich countries takes place, through which love and emotional resources are extracted from the first and re-embedded through affective labour in the latter. A care-workers affection with her prot8g8 functions as a sort of replacement for the affections she has with her own, far-away relatives. Within global care chains, affluent women’s children are raised by “two mommies”, while women migrants’ children are often most disfavoured, being deprived of their mothers’ everyday expressions of love, while cared for by grandmothers, other relatives or maids – the latter, in turn, having to leave their children to be looked after by somebody else. 2 The first care deficit is the failure of governments to attend to household work and the care sector. On the household level, there is another care deficit due to the fact that men do not or are only beginning to take over care work. Womens’ progressive incorporation into the work force led to a third care deficit that was filled in northern countries with migrant women, accepting to work in others’ households.

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However, migrant workers enmesh to establish good relations with employers as they depend on them for “getting the papers”. In the following, relevant regulation for houshold work in Spain will be briefly referred to. In spite of remaining oppressions and injustices, feminist movements since the 1970s have managed to achieve considerable improvements with regard to women’s rights. However, laws and regulations fail to re/configure the private sphere as a protective space for all, including household workers. In particular, the relevant legislation privileges the family’s “intimacy” before workers’ rights. Before the 2011 reform, that followed the adoption of ILOConvention 189 on decent work for household workers in Geneva, household work was regulated by the Real Decreto 1424/1985, which established a special regime for household workers, the R8gimen Especial de Trabajadores del Hogar3, distinct to the general regime for workers that established a certain level of workers’ rights within a welfare state since the transition to democracy from Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 onwards. However, the Real Decreto from 1985, regulating household labor in decades to come, comprised no more than two pages. The minimum regulation provided could hardly be regarded as “protective” at all. It left an extensive degree of unregulatedness and considerable room for negotiation of labor conditions on personal bases, thereby favouring the interests of employers and neglecting those of workers. Another factor adds to this pressure on the workers: the state leaves the organization of cleaning and caring in private homes unregulated – it is one of the few domains in which there is no legislation. So the households that decide to employ a worker, which are very often heteronormative families, profit from this situation (Gutierrez Rodriguez 2010). So, while the special regime was valid, employers could feel themselves to be “doing right” even though they might have been providing very little protection and respect to their employees. Most notably, household workers did not have the right to unemployment benefit or to a pension. They could be dismissed with only seven days’ advance notice, and the salary of live-ins could be reduced by 45 % in exchange for providing housing and meals, and that of live-outs by 20 % for providing lunch. Although usual working time was determined at 40 hours weekly, the employer could impose hours of presence, which could sum up to a legally covered workload of 14 hours in a day (BOE). Some employers expect that on a daily basis – especially live-ins report suffering long working hours that 3 Social Security affiliation was split into six different regimes, the R8gimen General being the most important, in which a high diversity of job types, and by far the highest numbers of workers, are included. The second most important regimes include autonomous, agricultural, and domestic workers, while the lowest numbers of workers are included in the regimes of sea and carbon. Among these, the special regime for household work was the one with the most precarious rights.

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start at e. g. 7 o’clock in the morning and last up to 1 o’clock at night or later, employers expecting presence during often more than six and a half entire 24hour days. Some interviewees reported having been sacked from one moment to another, and without local contact persons would have become suddenly homeless. This is a severe problem, particularly if migrants are alone or rather new in Spain and do not (yet) dispose of an extended social network that offers informal support for overcoming the first nights. The R8gimen Especial de Trabajadores del Hogar, which existed until January 2012, enabled some developments in the sector to be observed. There were about 300,000 people affiliated to this special regime in June 2011 – capturing, of course, only formal work relationships – while there is an estimated total number of about 700,000 household workers in Spain, of which about 90 % are women, mostly migrants, who seem less likely to have a formalized work relationship. Due to the crisis, overall affiliation to Social Security fell from 2007/8 onwards, among both migrants and non-migrants. Notably, affiliation to the special regime of household workers remained rather constant, even increasing for migrant household workers! For the latter, numbers went from 153,000 (January 2008) to 184,000 (June 2011) in the midst of the crisis situation.4 This does not necessarily indicate job creation, as it is likely that more work relationships were formalized. However, it might also be assumed that the demand for contract household work and the additional formal employers are rather unaffected by the Spanish economic and labor-market crisis, as it is rather demanded by upper classes, who are simply unaffected by the crisis. Along with that, care work is independent of macroeconomic developments: the need for cleaning, cooking, and nurturing both the young and old remains constant, irrespective of the economy’s ups and downs. But as the crisis proceeded, middle-class Spanish women began to lose their jobs and went back to doing household care work themselves. Moreover, the crisis did have a wage effect for

4 Affiliation of total household workers remained around an average of 280,000 in 2008, and 294,000 in 2010 (Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracijn n.y.b). Note that migrants who have adopted Spanish nationality count as non-migrants, and therefore reduce the number of migrant household workers, which still rose disproportionately. So it shows that most increases within the R8gimen Especial de Trabajadores del Hogar are due to increases in the numbers of migrants’ affiliations. Remember that in total about 1.5 million jobs were destroyed, most in construction and, to a lesser extent, in the manufacturing industry, while among all migrants affiliated to Social Security a loss of more than 250,000 work places can be observed from January 2008 to June 2011 (Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracijn n.y.b). However, job losses disproportionately affected male, extra-communitarian, and especially Latin American people, as they were very likely to do temporary work in construction. As Miguel Pajares (2010) shows, most job losses affected temporary jobs, provoking a “betterment” in the relation of temporary to unlimited jobs.

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household work, falling from 750–900 E down to 500–700 E, while legally, the interprofessional minimum wage of 641, 40 E in 2011 is binding. The main origin countries of household workers are Bolivia (37,500), Ecuador and Romania (17,000 each), Columbia, Paraguay, Morocco (13,000 each), and Peru (10,000), among the total number of approximately 184,000 foreign domestic workers affiliated to social security in June 2011 (Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracijn 2011). So, compared to their total numbers of migrants in Spain, Bolivians and Paraguayans were the dominant nationalities that year, reflecting the origins of major migration source countries at the time. Alternations in predominant nationalities of household workers develop parallel to the recentness of dominant immigration flows, reflecting how many women use the sector as an entry to the labor market and, once regularized, tend to go on to other occupations. In the Autonomous Region Madrid about 56,000 household workers were registered with social security in 2011, of which 46,000 (82 %) were migrants, making Madrid rank first among all Autonomous Regions (Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracijn 2011). With the reform agreed upon in mid-2011, the special regime of household workers is successively included into the general workers’ regime from 2012 until 2019. Since this began, a written contract is required; Social Security payments are reorganized so that they are no longer based on a fixed quantity but depend on hours worked; access to a pension is provided; and sick leave is paid for from the 4th day (by the employer, then from the 9th day by the corresponding Social Security institution) instead of, as formerly, from the 26th day onward (a regulation that had pressured workers to continue to work even in cases of severe illness). These new rights still don’t match, on an egalitarian basis, as, most notably, household workers continue to be excluded from unemployment benefits. Therefore, household workers continue to demand equalization of their work and employment conditions with those of other workers. However, the introduction of the reform did lead to some improvements. The following chapter shifts back to the level of politically organized workers, their agency and struggle to overcome precarization, to empower themselves, and to impose their beauty.

Collective enactments of citizenship There are diverse ways in which Latin American household workers emplace, embody, and enact citizenship, visibilize their work situation, and claim higher social prestige and rights. For the newly arrived, migrant networks helped to establish and emplace in Madrid and settle in the city. However, the strength that had to be mobilized to make life acceptable was extreme. As an interviewed

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Spanish social worker believed, many of the fruits of migration were more to be enjoyed in home countries, where remittances arrived and houses were built, than in Spain, where struggles prevailed in pre-crisis times and have continue on more forgotten grounds since. The interviewed workers disclosed multiple ways of handling embodied experiences of labored and life precarities. Many were weary of speaking up to devaluation, discrimination, and disrespect in a situation of widespread fear of being affected by crisis and unemployment. On top of border, legal, political and social regimes that restrain possibilities to advance and generate economic stability, many keep quiet, accept and endure exploitations and everyday stress. All kinds of affects directed from the employer to the worker have to be handled, and if these are repeatedly negative or stressful, they accumulate and, without any form of release, stay with the worker, eating her up from inside. Confrontation with oppressive (labor) environments penalize- the worker and lead into a deadlock of self-accusation, lack of self-confidence, and loss of personal, emotional, and psychological stability. Many household workers talked about their psychiatric or therapeutic treatments due to depressions. In Madrid, NGOs, migrant organizations, social workers, activist groups, doctors, lawyers, and educational institutions come to be important contact points intending to provide solidarity and hope, some of which are directly linked to Spanish feminist movements, while all social groups and institutions profit from feminist achievements. The various groups and organizations supportive of (women) migrants have different thematic orientations. Some orient activities toward sociopolitical issues, others toward education and professional specialization; some work in problem-focused ways, while again others engage in cultural activities like football, dancing, or theatre. As assembled groups they provide spaces of encounter that enable people to break with everyday routines, do something else, go out, meet, exchange and alleviate their tension. Alina, an irregularized Mexican live-in household worker who had lived in Madrid for six years at the time of interview, commented on how she was frustrated with her life, isolated, and uninformed about relevant legislation, before getting in touch with the associations: I felt saturated because I didn’t do anything, you didn’t see anyone, you don’t talk to anyone, you remain on the spot, like your world doesn’t work anymore, you don’t know so many people, like for instance me with the associations: you don’t participate, you don’t get informed about the changes in rules that there are because nobody tells you. Household work is a job that isolates you from the world (Alina, Mexico, 26, comunicacijn personal).5 5 Original text:“Me siento saturada porque no hac&a nada, no ves a nadie, no practicas con

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Through getting in contact with the migrant organization Asociacijn RumiÇahui she got informed about rules and laws concerning her life and labor, as well as becoming emotionally empowered. This gave her strength and new opportunities to “act” when confronting employers. Staging micropolitical as well as collectivist “acts of citizenship” is oriented toward enhancing respect for rights and oneself as citizen. The Asociacijn RumiÇahui organizes weekly meetings for household workers in the suburban municipality of Alcorcjn, where workers meet and do activities together such as courses in jewellery, rights education, or first aid. As the association’s vice-president and leader of the group, Suzanna Pozo, emphasizes, the main gain for workers is emotional and psychological, as workers often suffer low self-esteem, loneliness, and depressions. Meeting, exchanging, socializing, and networking with others who are in comparable situations is a way to intervene. Migrants understand each other’s personal and family situations, cultural, political, and social mindsets deeply shaped in origin countries, experiences of the migration project, its protracted effects, and feelings of nostalgia, loss, loneliness, resistive power, thriving strength and hopes. Servicio Dom8stico Activo (Sedoac) a group of self-organised domestic workers organizes in a similar way, engaging in lobbying as well as approaching interested workers through informative workshops in parishes, NGOs or Madrid’s municipal migrant centers CEPIs. A workshop I could presence at the CEPI Hispano-Americano in San Sebasti#n de los Reyes, an outer barrio of Madrid, was mainly attended by live-in workers from rural houses of remote areas, whose isolation was even more intense than that of live-ins in the central city. The workers shared experiences of violations of rights and discriminations, inquired about how to handle and confront these situations and discussed possibilities of enhancements. The analysis with friends, the family or in migrant groups, is a first step to understand how discriminations function in order to defy and manage to speak up to them. During the protests of the indignad@s in spring 2011, a joint event took place in Madrid’s Retiro park in July, the primary purpose being to provide analysis and information on the situation of household workers for participants and interested visitors of the park. Household workers assessed how organizing and sharing in a group helps to get the mind off work, breaking with the ordinary routine and reassessing inequalities that affect the worker’s body : The exchange with fellow migrants with whom experiences are shared, discriminations are ridiculed, and ways of reacting are analyzed is of irreplaceable value in order to nadie, te quedas como estancada, como que tu mundo deja de caminar, no conoces a tanta gente, como por ejemplo yo con lo de las asociaciones, no participas, no te enteras de los cambios de los reglamentos que hay, porque nadie te lo dice. O sea el empleo de hogar es un trabajo que te aisla del mundo” (Alina, Mexico, 26, comunicacijn personal).

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regain the force necessary to get up every morning and confront the troubles of going to work, having to evade racist police raids at metro stations, putting up with employers’ good or bad moods, handling racist, sexist, and/or classist discriminations, managing disgust with others’ dirt, doing heavy work in spite of being tired, confronting the risks in the workplace, and maintaining care for and attention to their own family, as well as for those being cared for on the job. So, assembled collectivities, networks, and social contact points empower workers to regain the self-esteem and self-confidence that is so difficult to maintain when confronted with everyday discriminations at the workplace, in the street or in official contexts. As Rafa, from the household worker activist group Territorio Dom8stico, explains, organizing collectively has an important function for her, concerning respect and rights: Through this association I can fight for my rights and that of many companions so that each of us who are doing care work and working in household services will have her rights respected, so that they pay us what they ought to pay us and so that our work be valued (Rafa, Dominican Republic, comunicacijn personal).6

During the mobilizations around the 15M movement, people and activists met to debate in streets and plazas. Household work was primarily discussed in the subcommissions on migration and mobility7, and feminism, both founded within the heydays of the movement. At the mentioned event at the Retiro-park the primary purpose was to inform one another, interested citizens, and passersby about the situation of household workers. For instance, de-professionalization of household labor was criticized, while raising awareness of the limits of regulation, like meals that meet employers’ tastes, or babies that must not cry. Also, confusions of affection and work were discussed. The group Territorio Dom8stico engaged in the assembly by presenting political theatre, which is a widespread strategy of activist groups displaying political grievance and disgrace in Madrid. At the occasion in the Retiro, small sketches were presented. For instance, one scene was about how a worker, in need of “the papers”, agrees to everything the employer demands in the job interview, followed by a scene in which empowered ways of entering a job interview and strategies of asking for rights were displayed. Another sketch illustrated how a sick worker visiting the doctor was phoned up repeatedly by the stressed, helpless employer asking 6 Original text: “Desde esta asociacijn yo puedo luchar por los derechos m&os y de muchas mas compaÇeras para que cada una de nosotras que ciudemos y que trabajamos en el servicio domestico sea respetada sus derechos, nos paguen lo que tienen que pagarnos y que seamos valoradas” (Rafa, Dominican Republic, comunicacijn personal). 7 The working group on mobility and migration of the 15M included interested public and migration professionals, many themselves migrants, making the working group an ideal platform for connecting organizations and networks active in migration.

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questions concerning the management of her own household: where are the washed trousers of her husband? When does she have to fetch the children from sports activities? When is the worker coming back? Afterwards, the group discussed how these situations lead to a devaluation of one’s own feelings, in spite of sickness, bodily pain, uneasiness, and insecurity about the possible diagnosis when going to the doctor, while minor issues of the employer’s household get prior attention and are overvalued. Art’s resistive power, understood as its capacity to lastingly transgress sociopolitical limitations and oppressions (e. g. RanciHre 2008), articulates in political theatre in a particular way, especially when performed in urban public space. Political theatre is used by artistic and activist collectivities in Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere in order to bring attention to certain political grievances by exposing them. The aim is the re/enactment, emplacement, and embodiment of citizenship and the citizen in transposition between the performers and the audience. If displayed in urban public space, political theatre develops engaged immediacy that resignifies the senses of the street and social uses of that place: the streets that inhabitants use every day get redefined as cultural, political, and poetic places of resistance in which theatre interventions enter into dialogue with the interested public and passers-by, street noise and other interferences becoming part of the material upon which is acted. When the play enters into dialogue with the city, the environment is not always friendly, as sociocultural tensions, poverty, exclusions and violence are part of Latin American and, in usually less intense but still definite ways, European cities. In this context, ruptures with everyday routines and habits of urban character incite spectators to reconsider precisely these issues, animating them to rethink the social fundament upon which societies are organized altogether. So, theatre in the streets makes a social, cultural and political offer to urbanites and urban walkers to reconsider the cities’ scenery and resituate themselves as citizens (Carreira and Vargas 2010). Since the 1970ies, with his Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal (1989, 1998) approached very different kinds of people and groups in Latin America, Europe and beyond, with the intention to animate people – untrained or trained, actors and spectators – to develop political agency through theatre. In the variant of Forum Theatre, Boal rehearses a scene of a certain political struggle which participants of a theater group self-define, then they perform in public and ask people from the audience to remodel different solutions to the oppressive situation in more democratic ways, making the citizen express his/her desires. But this is only one way in which Boal proposes to use theatre as a tool of resistance and unmask injustice. Forum Theater was later developed into Legislative Theatre, when Boal ran as a candidate for the city council of Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s, and supporters used political theater as a means of campaigning.

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The ways in which Territorio Dom8stico intervenes and performs in public space sometimes approaches Boals’ ideas: the group staged their Fashion Walk of Precarity at a plaza in front of a theatre in Madrid’s central barrio Lavapi8s on May 8th 2011. Soon afterwards, in a somewhat coincidentally symbolic succession of events, the abolition of the special worker’s regime for household labor in Spain was announced. This, of course, has to be seen in the broader context of long-lasting engagement of household work activists pressuring for the adoption of the ILO-Convention 189. So, in order to bring workplace realities of household laborers from the private into the public space, the group Territorio Dom8stico goes out into Madrid’s streets and takes the plazas, communicates manifestos, and realizes demonstrations and political performances. Territorio Dom8stico meets every second Saturday in the Eskalera Karakola, a communitarian and feminist squat in central Madrid. Then, household workers, feminists, migrants, activists, and supporters meet to discuss, share, develop, and style their issues into poetic forms which they then stage out in the streets, enacting their life realities to bring them to public attention. In a joyfully ironic “act of citizenship” the women seize the street, tell their story, claim their rights, and resist the inconveniences and discriminatory framework of the special regime for domestic workers, by performing their Fashion Walk of Precarity : the women are all disguised with exaggeratedly colorful aprons, glasses and hats. A manifest for household workers’ rights is proclaimed in which the abolition of the special regime is demanded. Then, women “models of precarity” walk a red carpet rolled out on the asphalt pavement. The household worker model “without papers” exploited by her boss sets out to showcase, followed by the model “octopus”, who does everything at once, being everywhere at once, hurrying to fulfill the employer’s wishes, before the model “you owe me life because I got you papers” appears, who depends on the goodwill of her boss and is told not to be ungrateful, then the “transnational” model who has her children in Ecuador and became a second mother to her bosses’ children, and the model “you are part of the family”, who is “exploited with lots of love” and who just can’t refuse to go on vacations with her boss even though the family’s vacations means work to her. After that, an “employer” walks the red carpet, dressed as a policeman who portrays the detainment of his beloved household worker while raiding. He is followed by the model of the “stressful and annoying employer”, and then an “empowered employer” acts out, characterized by respectfulness and understanding, before finally the “empowered worker” walks up and the women started chorusing jointly for their rights. The public space obtains special importance within the “fight for attention” (Schroer 2007), especially if the aim is to overcome everyday reclusion. Besides live-in worker’s reduced access to privacy in the space of employers’ private

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homes, and due to the isolation of the household, labor remains “invisible”, as Rafa criticizes: In public we manifest our demands with activities like the fashion walk, with demonstrations and with denunciations, interviews with the media, but really always going out onto the streets with all colleagues in order to have voice among all of us. Because this domestic work has no visibility. It is a work that does not come out as most of us who do it we are women, and additionally immigrant women. It is a hidden work. As we do it in homes it is always hidden. It does not come to light. It does not trespass. It does not trespass to be known because no importance is given to this work. Care is never given importance. Because it has been put that we the women are the ones to care. So we care but we are not paid enough and not valued (Rafa, Dominican Republic, comunicacijn personal).8

Rafa relates household labor to spatial isolation, being a woman (gender), and being a migrant (ethnicity), as well as to low social esteem and receiving low levels of respect (class). She is conscious of how the characteristics she evokes describe marked variants within socially relevant variables of intersectionality, conferring an inherent logic of social inequality to household labor. As she says, she wishes for more public attention for this “hidden work”. Presenting short theatre plays was also a method used by household workers from the Day-Care Centre for Latin American Women – Pachamama, at the I Thematic World Social Forum of Madrid (I Foro Social Mundial de Madrid Tem#tico, under the motto Alternativas a los mercados, from 6–7 May 2011). Here, presented sketches focused on medical care and the specificities migrant women face when going to the doctor. The Day-Care Centre for Latin American Women – Pachamama, supported by the municipality, and offers social and juridical counseling focusing on gender violence. The day-care centre’s labor department provides a good example of how to support women in the job search, as the women’s individual situations are thoroughly analysed, training courses are offered, and the centre’s networks in the labor market activated in order to place the worker in a preferably non-domestic job. Through the Day-Care Centre for Latin American Women – Pachamama, I came into contact with Mar&a (54, from Ecuador). She recounts another way of 8 Original text:“Frente al pfflblico manifestamos nuestras demandas con una actividad como la pasarela, con manifestaciones y con denuncias, entrevistas con los medios de comunicacijn pero realmente siempre salir a la calle con todas las compaÇeras para tener voz entre todas. Porque este trabajo de servicio dom8stico no tiene visibilidad. Es un trabajo que como lo hacemos la mayor&a somos mujeres, y con el aÇadido de mujeres inmigrantes, no se nos da salido. Es un trabajo que est# escondido. Como lo hacemos en la casa siempre est# escondido. No tiene luz. No traspasa. No traspasa al que se conozca porque es un trabajo al que no se le da importancia. Los cuidados nunca se le dan importancia. Porque nos han puesto de que nosotras las mujeres somos las que tenemos que cuidar. Yentonces cuidamos pero no se nos paga ni se nos valora” (Rafa, Dominican Republic, comunicacijn personal).

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“acting” to overcome exlusionary legislation: she was part of the cooperative Las Victorias, a way for its four workers to jump the special labor market regime for household workers, and thereby access enhanced rights within the general labor market regime, such as to unemployment benefits, enhanced conditions regarding health, and even pensions. When the cooperative took up its work in May 2010 the Spanish new regulation on houshold labor, adopted in 2011 and introduced in 2012, was not yet in place, so that household workers’ labor conditions were still regulated by the Real Decreto 1424/1985. Meanwhile the economic crisis in Spain was reaching its first peak. Within this context, in October 2009, the cooperative Abiertos hasta el Amanecer, which originally engaged in organizing night sports activities for youths, offered training on how to found and run a cooperative so that the employees and workers are their own employers. Many women were interested, ready to plunge into the adventure of enhancing their working life situations, though only a few eventually managed to implement the cooperative work modality, due to social but also financial and political constraints that precondition its establishment: personal empowerment was indispensable for this step, as the conviction of the employer was necessary, who had to be willing to increase social security payments. With the founding of the cooperative, workers who used to be employed by private households became employees of the cooperative. Mar&a recounted how they had to learn to take over responsibility for their working and social situation, how they had to learn to manage the cooperative, and the extra administrative effort it poses. Obtaining access to enhanced rights by jumping the workers’ regime through the cooperative is a powerful example of how migrant household workers resist exploitation and empower themselves for citizenship.

Conclusion With the example of Latin American household workers in Madrid, it was shown how the development of agency as activist citizens can lead to political innovations that improve life and work situations for individuals and groups in spite of exclusivist legal and social borders and regimes. The analysis was based upon three axes (practices, space, and body), that explain how and where citizenship concretizes: Practices matter for anthropologization of citizenship through micropolitical everyday practices and “acts of citizenship”, while enactments include public articulations, law implementations, or staged theater representations that incite spectators to resituate themselves as citizens. Space matters in migration studies (migrants as space-crossers), with regard to migrant networks’ emplacements, at the workplace as hierarchized space of intersectional bodies, or regarding urban public space and its exclusivity (gen-

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trification) or inclusivity (space of encounter). Body matters as an intersectional and embodied power-matrix of gender, ethnicity/race, class, influences affects and affectedness (as pre-personal sensations or energies that manifest upon the body), and therefore the potential to biopolitical empowerment. Besides Territorio Dom8stico’s urban interventions; Servicio Dom8stico Activo’s engagements in lobbyism were presented; the Day-Care Centre for Latin American Women – Pachamama, and their holistic approach to supporting women in, as far as possible, all relevant aspects of their lives; the Asociacijn RumiÇahui and their empowerment through meeting and exchanging by occasion of a weekend course; as well as the cooperative Las Victorias and their collectivist form, which enabled those involved to access the same rights on equal grounds as general workers by “jumping” from a situation of legal precarization of an entire occupational sector to legal equality. All these diverse activist groups of citizens had a stake in empowering themselves for the change of the worker’s regime, with which a step towards justice was achieved. However, it should not be forgotten, that the general labor market reforms which were being discussed due to the crisis simultaneously restricted and precarized workers’ rights and opened the doors for further neoliberalizations. In order to emplace as citizens in bodily ways, migrant household workers develop high creativity to enact their citizenry, while Spanish and international feminist citizenship movements involve in support and as companions in solidarity. To put each other together, assemble, share, exchange and analyse is strengthening in itself, and helps to enter the workplace in more empowered ways. Theatre plays and sketches prove as suitable tool for raising awareness of both subtle and blatant forms of everyday oppressions, primarily for household workers themselves, for whom the method provides a way to self-empowerment, but also for broader publics, the enactments aiming to influence the imaginaries about household workers and eventually administrative and governmental decision-makers. Within this next step the articulate “act of citizenship” aims to raise attention so that specific addressees take notice. A lobby group like Sedoac might of course choose other strategies and addressees than activist groups like Teritorio Dom8stico, whose dramaturgic aestheticism addresses the face-to-face urban public in the first instance, but was a way of putting the agenda for a broader public through media coverage in a second, more far-reaching instance. With the governmental decision to integrate the special regime for household work progressively into the general workers’ regime, an important success was achieved, with the diverse ways of struggle of household workers leading the way.

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Herrera, Gioconda, 2012: “Repensar el cuidado a trav8s de la migracijn internacional: mercado liberal, Estado y familias transnacionales en Ecuador”. Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales 30(1), pp. 139–159. Herrera, Gioconda, 2013: “Lejos de tus pupilas”. Familias transnacionales, cuidados y desigualidad social en Ecuador. Quito, Ecuador : Flacso Sede Ecuador. Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 2003, [2002]: “Love and Gold”. In: Ehrenreich, Barbara and Russell Hochschild, Arlie (eds.): Global woman. Nannies, maids and sex workers in the new economy. London: Granta Books, pp. 15–30. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette, 2001: Dom8stica. Immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence. Berkeley : University of California Press. Hörning, Karl H., 2004: “Soziale Praxis zwischen Beharrung und Neuschöpfung. Ein Erkenntnis- und Theorieproblem”. In: Karl H. Hörning and Julia Reuter (eds.): Doing Culture. Neue Positionen zum Verhältnis von Kultur und sozialer Praxis. Bielefeld: transkript, pp. 19–39. Isin, Engin F., 2005: “Engaging, being, political”. Political Geography 24, pp. 373–387. Isin, Engin F., 2009: “Citizenship in flux: The figure of the activist citizen”. Subjectivity 29, pp. 367–388. Jüssen, Lara, 2013: “Eine interesektionale Analyse translokalisierter Arbeit. Klassifizierung, Ethnisierung und Vergeschlechtlichung von LateinamerikanerInnen durch Bau und Privathaushalt in Madrid”. In: Cornelia Giebeler, Claudia Rademacher and Erika Schulze (eds.): Race, class, gender, body in Handlungsfeldern der Sozialen Arbeit. Theoretische Zugänge und qualitative Forschungen. Leverkusen: Budrich, Barbara, pp. 261–276. Lutz, Helma (Ed.), 2008: Migration and domestic work. A European perspective on a global theme. Aldershot, England, Burlington, VT: Ashgate. McDowell, Linda, 2009. Working bodies. Interactive service employment and workplace identities. Chichester : Wiley-Blackwell (Studies in urban and social change). Mezzadra, Sandro, 2012. “Capitalismo, migraciones y luchas sociales. La mirada de la autonom&a”. Nueva Sociedad 237, pp. 159–178. Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracijn (2011). “Afiliacijn a la seguridad social”. Online at: http://www.tt.mtin.es/ [last call 20/05/2016]. Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracijn (2011). “Afiliacijn a la seguridad social”. Madrid. Online at: http://www.tt.mtin.es/periodico/seguridadsocial/201107/afiliacion_junio_ 2011.pdf. [last call 20/05/2016]. Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracijn (2011). “Data of the R8gimen Especial de los Trabajadores del Hogar”. Madrid. Online at: http://www.tt.mtin.es/periodico/segur idadsocial/201107/AFILIADOS%20EXTRANJEROS%20JUNIO%202011pdf.pdf. [last call 20/05/2016]. Ong, Aihwa, 2005. “(Re)articulations of Citizenship”. Political Science and Politics 38(4), pp. 697–699. Pajares, Miguel, 2010. “Inmigracijn y mercado de trabajo. Informe 2010”. Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracijn (Documentos del Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigracijn, 25). ParreÇas, Rhacel Salazar, 2003. Servants of Globalization. Women, Migration, and Domestic Work. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

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III. Constructing identities and belonging across borders

Eva Youkhana

Migrants’ religious spaces and the power of Christian Saints – the Latin American Virgin of Cisne in Spain1

Introduction Religious institutions such as the Catholic Church are gaining in importance again in the wake of the economic crisis in Spain. They act as reference points and meeting place that keep the faith community together. Tangible assistance is offered and transnational communication structures and family bonds are sustained. With its patron saints, the Catholic Church serves as a place of remembrance to produce and reproduce senses of belonging that date back to the early colonial era. Social relations of migrants are manifested in a space which symbolizes the power and glory of the former Colonial regime. Taking the example of the congregation of San Lorenzo in an immigrant neighbourhood in Madrid, I discuss the role and agency of religious artefacts in re-producing collective identities and allocating social and financial resources. By focusing on the object itself, the functions and cultural meanings of the figure in different historical contexts become apparent. The religious staging around the representation of the saint show spatially and chronologically comprehensive chains of interaction which reflect deep seated power relations between the immigrant and the host communities. The hypothesis here is that politics of space and place were established during the colonial period by means of evangelization and for the purpose of controlling and exploiting land and population. By adopting a material perspective, and using a concept of space that is understood in terms of networks it is shown, with reference to a recent conflict about the dominance of interpretation over the figure of the Virgen del Cisne how and by whom ideas about belonging are produced both today and in the past. The continuities in power relations and claims by the Catholic Church become apparent and are activated in the diaspora by means of the figures of the local patron saints.

1 A german version of the paper was published in 2014 in Peripherie 134 / 135, pp 149–174.

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Theoretical approaches: Place-making and the agency of thing Human and material dispositions are represented in cultural imaginations and ideological reflections that are based on repetitive practices, rituals and institutions around which power relations accumulate (cf. Althusser 2010/1970: 71f). Interdisciplinary approaches that integrate the complex interrelations between material, discursive and symbolic principles of life are rarely available. Beginning with a concept that defines space as a differential unit (Belina 2013, Lefebvre 2006/1974, Schmid 2005) – and thus as a hybrid product of articulations of heterogeneous actors and their interactions – provides a good starting point for an alternative understanding of the communitization, identity constructions and related politics. These politics concentrate on social locations where people live, move, work and materialize their notions of the real as well fill with meaning (de Certeau 1980: 218, cf. Leitner et al. 2008: 161). Schroer (2008) stresses the importance of place-making, processes of forming and negotiating space in times of crisis when there is an increase in social exclusions and discrimination of lifestyles and positionings of immigrants. The study of place-making processes (Belina 2013: 107f) seems to be particularly productive for the analysis of conflicting identity politics when the relationality of the observed interactions (Pierce et al. 2010: 56) is involved. This treatment of spaces and places – in terms of the practices, productions and representations, reveals different interests and agencies behind the single actors (cf. de Certeau 1980). The study of the relationships and practices of religious actors and their materializations in certain places may indicate both the continuities and the ruptures of notions in belonging and the (re)formation of social groups in situations of migration (Latour 2005). In this article, objects and the intentions of social actors behind them come to the fore. Alfred Gell (1998: 13f), in his influential work on “Art and Agency”, provides the basis for the investigation of a new scientific field in which objects merge with human beings through the existence of social relations between humans and things, and between humans through things such as art works or artefacts. According to Gell a cognitive process (abduction) is initiated by an interactive process (human being – thing – human being) that allows interpretations about specific intentions of a social actor. The object becomes the bearer of agency (patient) that was ascribed to it by the social agent. Assigning this image to an artefact or art work, the producer of this work, the painter, sculptor or technician would be the agent, who transfers agency and thus his intentions. The object with its ascribed material dispositions (indices) then assumes the role of the agent when being observed. As a consequence of this causal chain, the observer in turn becomes the patient, the one to whom the intention is targeted, and so on. This causal chain shows that power over actions

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can be transferred through things, so called secondary agents (ibid: 17), those agents whose ability to act act upon human beings depends upon human beings. Symbolically laden art works such as the figures of saints are part of an interactive system that deduce intentions from the appropriation and production of objects. This system relies on the recipient and his expectations of the prototype, in Gell’s terminology for the social and political function which the object gains. This deduced intentionality leads Gell to conclude that things also have agency, and can therefore strongly influence social relations. “I view art as a system of action intended to change the world” (Gell 1998: 6). Humans can achieve and legitimize power over other humans through sacralized objects. Certainly, Gell’s concept of agency withregard to objects can only be understood in relation to the intentions of human actors and is therefore context specific. This means that things cannot be self-sufficient agents. This correlation between objects and power is evident in studies on religion where social institutions are legitimized by placing the objects within the reference framework of a holy cosmos (cf. Berger 1988: 33). By means of symbolic acts, rites and processions (Bell 1997: 91f), power is produced and maintained. The appropriated spaces, the sacralized objects within them, and their owners and servants merge in symbolic representations that are used by political rulers, for example for decisions about social inclusion or exclusion (Knott 2005: 19).2 In order to explain the hidden mechanism of power, Bourdieu (1992: 82) refers to the execution of “symbolic power” which does not emerge at the level of physical force rather as an unconscious but accomplice-based relationship, remaining beyond any critical questioning.3 Representations of local patron saints gain the position of a powerful object through their means of production and through the practices and representations of the immigrants, by which the curative and punitive forces ascribed to such artefacts have become even more powerful in the diaspora. Despite their transnationalization they maintain their local anchoring, and take on a more stronger traditionalized appearance, as is shown by Odger Ortiz (2007: 29f) giving the example of the veneration of saints by Mexicans in the United States. The analysis of the relevance of an art work,in this case the figure of the Virgen del Cisne to the production and performativity of belonging in different spaces of representation in the migration of Latin Americans to Spain, deals with power negotiations by means of an artefact that comes into action laden with different intentions. This paper analyses a conflict between the Ecuadorian/Latin American community in Spain and the Catholic Church over gaining control of 2 According to Knott, his approach has its roots in the 1930s and van der Leeuw’s phenomenological typology of sacralized spaces. 3 Gell’s concept of abduction is applied to this cognitive but unconscious process.

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the symbolically charged artefact which represents local, national and religious relations in a different way. The study is based on field research, qualitative and expert interviews, participatory observations and interviews in front of the church and literature research from 2010–2013 which was realized in the framework of the Research Network on Latin America: Ethnicity, Citizenship, Belonging.4

Colonial ties between Spain and Latin America and the role of the Catholic Church In the first decade of this century, Latin America underwent a change from having a net immigration balance to having a high level of emigration, above all due to a series of economic and financial crises (Kreienbrink 2008, Steinhauf 2002).5 In part promoted by bilateral treaties, migrants from Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia provided the Spanish economy with workers for the expanding construction, agricultural and services sectors (Gil Araujo 2009: 107, Stroscio 2010). In addition to economic pull and push factors, these developments in Latin American migration to Spain should also be considered in terms of the historical ties between Spain and Latin America, their shared colonial history, the administrative and political similarities, economic developments, and transcultural dynamics. Since colonial times, religious ties and the conception of a shared tradition of faith have been key components of a relationship which has expressed itself in transnational institutions, bilateral treaties and economic dependencies, and migration dynamics. The missionary work of the Catholic Church has had considerable influence on the social, ethical and political foundations of Latin America. The colonization of large parts of the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese (in addition to other European powers) led to the widespread extirpation of indigenous populations and the destruction of their cultures. The successful evangelization of large parts of South and Central America by the Catholic Church is closely linked to the figure of the Virgin Mary, which became an important instrument in the religious, economic and political con4 Some of the results were presented in the project’s Working Paper Series (http://www.kom petenzla.uni-koeln.de/wp.html) and in project’s anthologies (http://www.kompetenzla.unikoeln.de/publ.html). 5 Spain, previously known for its net emigration balance, has within this short period experienced an increase in immigration. Whereas in 1998 only 1.6 % of Spain’s population were of non-Spanish origin, according to the National Statistics Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estad&sticas (INE) the figure had increased by 2009 to 12.08 %.

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quest. The veneration of saints and their figures agreed on by the Council of Trent in the 16th century was subsequently propagated by the Jesuits, who played a crucial missionary role in particular in the Andes region.6 Held in four periods in Trent and Bologna from 1545–1563, the Council was a reaction of the Roman Catholic Church to the teaching demands of the Reformation, but the humanistic reformatory demands also served the Jesuits as a vehicle for the development of Christian missionary work (Schubert 2003). Agreed upon in the third period held in Trent, the decree on the veneration of the saints was created as a tool for promulgating the Church’s teaching. In fact, as the example of Guadalupe shows, it also contributed to the domestication and control (Favrot Peterson 1992: 40) of the indigenous population groups.7 The populations of the southern Andes region, who in part were still nomadic, were particularly affected by this domestication. At the same time as the destruction of the temples, religious statues and symbols of the indigenous population, replacement figures and places of worship were offered to meet their religious needs (Zires 1994: 285 after Nutini and Bell 1980). Local ties were created, which were also important to provide a workforce during the mining boom for gold and silver (Crain 1990: 44, Riofr&o 1996). The various images of Mary were adapted phenotypically to the regional population groups. Commissioned in part by Christianised elites and in part the work of colonial sculptors, figures of identification were created which embodied both the European Mother of God and also native mother deities. Through political alliances between interest groups on both sides, the native religions could thus be incorporated into the colonialization project through the figure of Mary and by the reinterpretation of existing mother deities. By means of their active participation in the lively ceremonies in honour of the Virgin Mary, the bodies of the indigenous populations themselves were colonised (Farrel 1982, Nadig 2008: 253, Prien 2007: 125).8 To this day, the Virgin Mary serves as a link between the Amer-indian and the European worlds and is thus a product of the trans-Atlantic migration dynamics and transcultural processes. By means of association with their country of origin, she serves as the patron saint of Latin American emigrants (Nabhan-Warren 6 In the third period of the Council, a decree was passed on the veneration of saints and their relics, as well as the veneration of images of Christ and the Virgin Mary. 7 Favrot Peterson (1992) shows the role played by the figures of the patron saints in the aggressive indoctrination, and how the iconography reacted to the social realities of racial “mixing”. As a syncretic symbol of the Conquista and also of the liberation, the Virgen de Guadalupe symbolises the Marian veneration in Latin America. 8 A central demand of indigenous social movements from Latin America today is the “Decolonisation of the body” by means of alternative cultural practices as a contribution towards the forging of a new identity.

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2006: 246). She is, according to Chamorro (2012: 15), part of an autochthonous collective and territorial identity. The religious locations characterised by her are perceived by believers as islands in an endless sea of foreignness (Jansen and Keval 2003: 44), a focus for their dreams, wishes and expectations of life in the new country.

The origins of the Virgen del Cisne and socio-spatial practices and politics in the colonial period The Virgen del Cisne in Loja province, Ecuador, is one of the most venerated religious figures of Latin America. Like the Virgen del Qinche (Quito) it was created by Don Diego Robles, a Spanish sculptor of the colonial period at the end of the 16th century9. Historical records and oral accounts provide two explanations for its origins. It is said that the residents of El Cisne commissioned the figure to be made by Don Diego Robles, who was supposed to have been in Loja at this time. Others assume that the Virgen del Cisne was produced in Spain, in the wake of the decision of the Council of Trent to promote the veneration of patron saints. The name of the Parish of El Cisne can be traced back to the Knight Order of the Swan, originally founded under the Franciscans in Brandenburg, Germany, in 1440. Fraile Ljpez de Sol&s, Bishop of Quito in the middle of the 16th century was a member of the Order and is said to have founded El Cisne in 1560 after having undertaken a tour of inspection of the region with Alonso de Mercadillo, the conqueror and founding father of Loja. According to legend he found the region inhabited by the semi-nomadic Palta tribe so attractive that he founded El Cisne there.1011 The indigenous worshippers of the Virgen del Cisne attributed supernatural powers to her, both positive (such as being able to prevent epidemics) and negative. For example, she caused a hurricane in order to punish her followers after they had tried to remove her image from the appointed place. “The indigenous people thought that it was a curse of the Holy Virgin because they tried to move her from her designated location of El Cisne, so that they returned to the place, despite the resistance of the authorities. They finally understood that God

9 From: http://www.vivaloja.com/content/view/339/155/. 10 Cf. www.vivaloja.com. 11 The Palta tribe only survived this intervention for a few generations, and it remains a mystery to historians why no traces remain of their social organisation, economic order, and heathen beliefs (cf. Castillo and de los Angeles 2008: 21); cf. also Wikipedia (https://es.m.wikipedia. org/wiki/Paltas).

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would not allow El Cisne to be deserted and the image moved from its original location.”12 Despite all the missionary work and the colonialization, the resistance of the indigenous population tot colonial rule persisted in the relationships to the images of the Virgin Mary. This is also reflected in the continued veneration of Pachamama, the Earth Mother of the Andean region (Rösing 2006: 70). The combination of the divine abilities of the Pachamama with the life-giving powers of the Virgin Mary resulted in a special religious identity. In the context of Latin American, the Virgin Mary today can be interpreted not only as a symbol of subjugation but also of the opposition of the faithful. According to Favrot Peterson (1992: 47), she equally symbolizes victory and defeat, liberty and oppression. Studies of Amer-indian beliefs come to the conclusion that the Andean people are only Catholic by name, despite rather than because of their passionate veneration of the Virgin Mary, which emphasises both their resistance and the ability of Catholicism to absorb resistance (Prien 2007: 219f after Harris and Bouysse-Cassange 1988). There can be no doubt that the Catholic Church, with the aid of the Marian veneration introduced from Europe, established a religious hegemony in Latin America, although this is now being challenged by new denominations such as the expansive Pentecostal movement. To this day, the Virgin Mary represents the dreams, desires and expectations of a large proportion of the population in Latin America itself as well those of its diaspora (Nabham-Warren 2006: 243f). Marian veneration by Latin American migrants is a social resource for the construction of collective identity, but it is also an instrument through which institutions can improve the integration of immigrants in the host countries (Garc&a 2005, ItÅaina 2006).

The Catholic Church and Latin American immigration to Spain Latin America is the region with the largest proportion of practising Catholics worldwide.13 Catholicism also dominates the cultural and religious lives of the Latin American migrants. According to the Spanish Episcopal Conference, the presence of Latin American Catholics in Spain makes it possible for the Catholic Church to present itself as an institution which understands the complex and problematic situation of the immigrants in the face of increasing xenophobia, 12 Text taken from http://www.ivecuador.org/index (translated by the author). 13 90 % of the residents of Madrid who come from Latin America say they are Catholics (according to Wikipedia: Colombia 90 %, Argentina 90 %, Bolivia 92 %, Ecuador 72.3 %), but with increasing membership of free churches and other denominations.

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racism, violence and discrimination. The immigrants are regarded as a reserve force for a doctrine which is under threat in Spain. “The presence of the immigrants provides the Church with an opportunity to see this as a blessing which helps the Church to meet its vocation as a sign, factor and model of Catholicism for our society in the concrete life of the Christian communities” (Conferencia Episcopal EspaÇola 2007: 19).14 This perception of the immigrants is the result of the fundamental changes which Spanish society is undergoing. Much to the concern of the Catholic Church, its importance as a religious authority has declined considerably in some population groups in recent years. Although 77 % of Spaniards identify with Catholicism according to official statistics, only 17 % of the population are practising Catholics (Collado-Seidel 2008: 301ff). The failure of past Catholic initiatives for the re-evangelisation of the Spanish population explains why the presence of the Latin American immigrants is seen as an opportunity and a blessing for the Catholic Church (Conferencia Episcopal EspaÇola 2007). However, the acceptance of Latin American Catholicism by the Catholic Church in Spain is not as straightforward as it might at first appear. Some continue to view the religious practices in Latin America as inferior, populist, superstitious, and primitive. According to Garc&a (2005), there are no Latin American priests or chaplains in Spain, which leads him to conclude that the Catholic Church in Spain finds it hard to accept migrants from this region as Catholics with their own views on faith, liturgy and religious practices (cf. Conferencia Episcopal EspaÇola 2007: 12).15 Despite these reservations, the Catholic Church fills an emotional gap felt by the Catholic migrants in times of increasing economic difficulties in Spain and a tightening of migrations policies. In the few clerical documents which address the strategies with regard to migrants, the Catholic Church presents itself as a haven for immigrants.16 With this image, according to Callado-Seidel (2007: 310), the Church was countering the secularisation of the Spanish population after the Franco era, in which the church and state were ideologically and institutionally intertwined by a “national Catholicism.”17 By occupying the topic of migration, the Spanish Catholic Church had once again established itself in the 14 “La presencia de los inmigrantes ofrece a la Iglesia una oportunidad y ha de ser vista como una gracia que ayuda a la Iglesia a hacer realidad esa vocacijn de ser signo, factor y modelo de catolicidad para nuestra sociedad en la vida concreta de las comunidades cristianas.” 15 Conferencia Episcopal EspaÇola, 2007, “La Iglesia EspaÇola y los inmigrantes”, XC Assamblea Plenaria 52, p. 12; Paola Garc&a, “La inmigracijn: un nuevo reto para la Iglesia catjlica espaÇola”, in Anuario Americanista Europeo, No. 3, Redial-Ceisal, 2005. 16 Documento final del VI Congreso Mundial de la Pastoral para los emigrantes y los refugiados, Vaticano, s.e., 2010. 17 Art. 6 of Fuero de los EspaÇoles, 1945.

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public sphere, according to ItÅaina (2006: 1471f). He goes on to state that the Catholic Church legitimized its dominance in the public sphere by various strategies to support immigrants, (for example providing help with job seeking) and establishing open houses. By playing an active role in the establishment of standards and values and exerting influence on the integration programmes, the Church was able to redefine its position in Spanish society (ibid: 1481).

The Sunday mass in Lavapiés Every Sunday, people crowd into the small Church of San Lorenzo in Lavapi8s, a traditional poor quarter in the heart of Madrid. In particular Ecuadorians and Paraguayans, but also Colombians, Bolivians, and Dominicans fill the narrow streets in the neighbourhood as they hurry arrive at the church in time to get a seat. Hundreds of Latin American Catholics converging for the Sunday midday mass brings everything to a standstill. Up to 500 worshippers manage to squeeze into the church, where the young Spanish priest conducts the services with rituals and sermons comparable to those found in Latin America. A survey conducted in front of the church, which first had to be authorized by the priest –, showed that the Latin American worshippers had travelled from all over the city to attend mass, some of them from outlying districts. A few Spaniards from the neighbourhood attended because they liked the colourful activities.18 Interviewees gave a variety of reasons for their regular attendance. A 30-year-old Ecuadorian woman from Loja said that in the church she felt as if she was back home – in Ecuador. A 40-year-old man, also from Loja, Ecuador, said that the church was a place of prayer and reflection, really just a place like any other, but it had “something of home pasture”. Another Ecuadorian man mentioned the opportunities offered by the church for Latin American rituals and ceremonies, for example celebrations of the Quinceanˇeras.19 The church and the priests offered a 50-year-old Ecuadorian woman comfort in a time of need: “When my mother died in Ecuador and I could not travel there to say a last goodbye, it was the priests who offered me consolation.”20 She emphasized that 18 Many of the 60 interviewees worked in the construction sector (52 % of the men interviewed) or were domestic helps (54 % of the women interviewed). Only 20 % said they were unemployed. This is lower than the official figures, according to which more than 35 % of immigrants are jobless (with an upward trend) (inquiry made in April 2011). 19 This is a rite of passage celebration for 15-year-old girls, who are entering into a marriageable age and adulthood. 20 Texto original: “Cuando murij mi mama en Ecuador, no pod&a ir para despedirme. Pero pod&a encontrar apoyo espiritual en la iglesia. El padre me ayudj, estuvo a mi lado en un tiempo m#s dif&cil”.

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the priest catered particularly for the South American worshippers and their customs in the mass, and unified them by bringing effigies of various patron saints. A Paraguayan woman (25 years old), whose patron saint has also found a home in San Lorenzo, drew attention to the organization of the parish, which could in part explain the high level of attendance: “The priest sends out messages with invitations to the important events”.21 These text messages go out automatically to everybody who has registered their phone number, informing them regularly of upcoming events and services. The responses of the worshippers suggest the various functions of the church community for meeting spiritual needs and the wish for belonging and entertainment. At the same time, the church acts as a point of reference and an interface between two worlds – one in each immigrant’s now distant home country – whether Ecuador, Paraguay, or Bolivia and the other in Spain. The priest pays visits to the homes of the parish members, accompanies communication processes, and both reawakens and soothes the longing for the home country, and the parish provides a forum for exchange, with a sense of belonging. Religious traditions and rituals can be acted out together, while offering a semi-public cultural meeting place in the middle of Madrid which is highly visible in times of social displacement (Youkhana and Sebaly 2014). One reason why the formerly deserted church has become so crowded goes back to 2005, when for the first time in Madrid the figure of a Latin American patron saint, the Virgen del Cisne (Virgin of the Swan) was presented in a Catholic Church. The “Asociacijn Virgen del Cisne”, founded by the Ecuadorian immigrant Carmen Ballag#n and her husband in Madrid, brought a replica of the Virgen del Cisne to Spain. The couple ran a bar in Lavapi8s which was frequented by many of the Ecuadorians living in the immigrant quarter at that time. They said that their aim was to establish new religious customs in the Spanish capital with the help of the effigy – namely Catholic processions with Latin American patron saints. Carmen Ballag#n, Chair of the Association, explained in the 2010 documentary film “La Churona, History of a migrating virgin” that she wanted to show Spaniards more of the rich Ecuadorian art and culture.22 The first procession in honour of the Virgen del Cisne took place on 10th September 2005. Tens of thousands of worshippers came together. “Previously,23 the only Virgin to have been on the Plaza Mayor had been the patron saint of Madrid, the Virgen de Almudena”24, explained Ballag#n. The event marked the beginning of a new 21 Texto original: “Los padres mandan mensajes para invitar a ciertos eventos.” 22 Mar&a Cristina Carrillo, dir., La Churona. Historia de una virgen migrante, Quito, Ecuador para largo, 2007. 23 i. e. before September 2005. (Author’s note). 24 Texto original: “Antes, la fflnica virgen que hab&a entrado a la Plaza Mayor era la patrona de Madrid, la Virgen de Almudena”.

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era for the San Lorenzo parish, because after the procession the Virgen del Cisne found a new home there. According to the church’s priest at that time, the Latin Americans filled it with new life. A young Spanish woman who regularly begged in front of the church on Sundays said: “You cannot imagine how abandoned the church had been. A handful of people would come, no more!”25 As the title “History of a migrating virgin” suggests, the documentary draws an analogy between the Virgin Mary and an immigrant woman. According to the film’s director, Mar&a Cristina Carrillo, the intention is to show the importance of the Ecuadorian national patron saint for the immigrant community and to reflect their social ties to their home country and their emotions in a foreign one. The film also shows the conflict between the Association and the parish over the question of who should have control of the statue.

The conflict about the statue of the Virgen del Cisne Accounts of the conflict26 indicate that the two sides could not agree about what should be done with the replica statue of the Virgen, and they accused one another of trying to gain an advantage, according to the journalist of the Spanish migrant newspaper “Latino”, Soraya Constante, in the documentary “La Churona”, because the statue became a commercial resource for both parties. On the one hand the Sunday masses revitalised a deserted parish and money was generated for church projects. On the other hand, the Association collected donations for the development of educational projects in Loja, the original home of the veneration of the Virgen del Cisne in Ecuador. Carmen Ballag#n said the “Asociacijn Virgen del Cisne” aimed not only to venerate the Virgin, but also to support the community in Loja. According to reports from the Universidad T8cnica Particular in Loja27 the money collected during the processions in Madrid was used to fund a hospital in Loja. This form of cooperative development aid is common, along with individual money transfers, as a way of providing targeted support for the home communities of migrants. The annual blessings by the mayor for the migrated family members and the faithful in the diaspora at the processions in honour of the Virgen del Cisne in Loja28 are a sign of good networking and mutual recognition. The donations became an issue of dispute not least because the two sides 25 Texto original: “No te puedes imaginar que abandonado estaba la iglesia. Hab&a un punˇado de personas, es todo.” 26 http://www.elcomercio.net/mundo/ecuatorianos-en-el-mundo/Churona-salio-bar-nuevacasa_0_131388047.html. 27 [http://www.utpl.edu.ec/comunicacion/2006/07/virgen-de-el-cisne-venerada-en-madrid]. 28 Cf. the processions in the documentary “La Churona”.

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could not reach an agreement about how the money should be divided between them. The priests felt that the Association was taking advantage.29 “The Association and its founders want to profit from the Holy Virgin and her Ecuadorian venerators. They organise celebrations with the Virgin in order to collect money.”30 According to one of the priests, the Marian statue had only been brought back to the church several days after the second procession in September 2006, in breach of the agreements that had been reached. “The couple31 wanted to keep the money and thus control the parish”.32 33The Association had also locked the Cisne with a collection urn, for which they had kept the key. They had offered to divide up the donations as a way of resolving the conflict, but under these circumstances the church had not felt able to house the statue any longer. Subsequently, the priest travelled to Loja in order to bring another replica to Madrid, with the official authorisation of the Archbishop of Loja. This brought the conflict to an end. The parish church, as the owner of the second replica, was the legitimate home for the patron saint and established itself as the religious centre for the Ecuadorian Catholics. In addition, it ensured its entitlement to all rights regarding the use of the Virgen del Cisne and the income generated by donations. The elder of the two priests summed up the situation in April 2011 as follows: “We help the immigrants. Why shouldn’t the immigrants also help us?”34 35 The younger priest regularly travels to Loja in order to learn more about the traditions and customs of the Catholic celebrations in Latin America.36 By setting up a Christian network, which includes personal visits to the families of members of the parish, the Church has established itself as a communications medium and an interface between migrants in Spain and their home communities in Ecuador. The Asociacijn Virgen del Cisne disappeared from sight in the neighbourhood and the parish. As shown in the film “La Churona” it later resumed the veneration of its patron saint in Ciudad Lineal. The Association not only organised the procession of the Virgen del Cisne in the following year (2008) but also a “Miss Ecuador in Spain” contest, as well as an arts and crafts fair, for 29 Accessible in the achives of El Pa&s, El Universal y p#ginas ecuatorianas [en.Latino.com; elcomercio.com; especu.com]. 30 Texto original: “La Fundacijn y sus fundadores quer&an aprovecharse de la Virgen y los ecuatorianos. Organizaron fiestas para la Virgen donde recolectaron dinero” Interview, 17 April 2011. 31 Founding member of the Fundacijn. 32 “La pareja quer&a quedarse con el dinero y as& quer&a dirigir a la parroquia.” Interview, 17 April 2011. 33 Interview with Father Juan Jos8, 7 April 2011. 34 Texto original: “Estamos ayudando a los inmigrantes, ¿por qu8 los migrantes no deber&an ayudarnos a nosotros tambi8n?” 35 Interview with Father Don Emilio, 19 April 2011. 36 Interview with Father Juan Jos8, 2011.

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which an admission fee was charged and in the course of which real estate was offered for sale.37 The epilogue of the documentary “La Churona” mentions Carmen Ballag#n’s entrepreneurial spirit: “In September 2009 she organized the second Miss Ecuador EspaÇa contest. On this occasion there was no homage to the Virgen of El Cisne”. The attempt of the Asociacijn Virgen del Cisne to occupy a religious space, to organise its own ceremonies, to create alternative places of identification with their own religious symbolism and then to generate and control resources for charitable and / or commercial purposes failed due to the opposition of the local Catholic parish, acting in consultation with the Archbishopric of Madrid according to the parish priest. The similarities between the recent conflict about the Virgen and aspects of the history of its origins highlight the autocratic character of the Catholic Church. Since the conflict, the organisation of the annual processions for the Virgen del Cisne in Madrid has been supervised by the parish priest of San Lorenzo. On the other hand, the conflict also casts light on the intentions of entrepreneurially-minded actors who utilise religious symbols such as the Virgen del Cisne in order to create representational spaces in which to bring together the Ecuadorian community and in this way to strengthen their own position.

Politics of place and the production of belonging by the Catholic Church The example of the Virgen del Cisne in San Lorenzo shows places of religious encounters used as spaces of remembrance and devotion in which meaning is produced through social interactions and symbolic offerings. Individual experiences, appropriations and perceptions transform the church building into a symbolic reference point for the production of belonging in migration. The example shows that place-making involves both a material and a discursive component, whose elements impart identity (Bürkner and Zehner 2012) and authenticity (Belina 2013: 111f). The analysis of place-making by the institution of the Catholic Church and the association of the Ecuadorian migrants provides us with the example of the conflict over the Virgen del Cisne with regards to its historical and spatial relations, making it possible to draw conclusions about the production of belonging and related politics of belonging (Anthias 2013, PfaffCzarnecka 2013, Youkhana 2015, Yuval-Davis 2011). It becomes apparent that notions of belonging by the Latin Americans visiting San Lorenzo can be formed

37 Cf. The documentary “la Churona”.

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by an institution defending claims to power and property and is thus trying to affirm a domineering position within the migrant community. The historical review illustrates that not just the religious doctrine but also the recourse to other subdomains of social life, administration and education that maintains Catholicism as an integral part of Latin American societies. By the syncretism of Christian/Catholic and pre-Columbian symbolism, notions of belonging were developed that now accompany migrants to Europe and Spain. The conflict over the Virgen del Cisne in San Lorenzo indicates the continuity of notions of belonging that were ideologized in Christian terms during the Conquista to support and legitimize feudalism and Catholicism. The attempts by the ‘Asociacijn Virgen del Cisne’ to (re)appropriate a religious figure with local as well as national (Ecuadorian) and probably trans-regional significance, draws attention to identity politics of the Catholic Church in Spain, which found it necessary to return to its own history by making powerful religious symbols available once more, in response to the needs of Latin American immigrants. The acts of the association can be interpreted as an attempt to become independent from the hegemony of the Catholic Church in Spain. The empowerment of the members of the association by organized processions and the appropriation of the Virgen del Cisne, which, to use Alfred Gell’s term can be considered as a ‘strong partner’, was an affront for the Catholic Church. In order to break with the empowerment of the association and to claim back the religious terrain, the Church had to regain the interpretative predominance over the figure. While increasingly losing space in Spain, the Church’s intervention in both the religious practices and the politics of migration is all the more important for the attempted reconstitution of its claims to power.

Conclusions This study of socio-spatial processes of appropriation and immigration shows the conflicts which can arise when the wish for a higher profile, greater participation and the desire to improve living conditions in both Spain and Ecuador comes up against established power and claims of ownership, for example by the Catholic Church. To improve the basis for negotiations, recourse was taken to assigned classifications by means of a representational figure, subdividing people of a specific territory into social groups and thus generating inclusion and exclusion mechanisms. Considering the access to the figure of the Virgen del Cisne, the transport of the object to Spain, and the associated intentions, it could is possible to shown how territorial belongings and social demarcation lines were established historically and have been maintained to this day. Interest groups confront one another with claims of different goals (annunciation by the

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Catholic Church vs. commercial interests of independent migrant associations), but in both cases the figure is used to reproduce and strengthen local ties and allocations. Both parties in the conflict used the figure of the Virgen del Cisne to justify their intentions, to bring together the followers in their own interests, and thus to create emotional and cognitive identifications by symbolic valorization (place making) (Bürkner 2006). The Virgen del Cisne is used as an economic and political resource, and is also employed representationally for the politics of belonging in each case. The sacralised object, the Virgen, its changing owners (the Asociacijn Virgen del Cisne and the Catholic Church) and its Latin American worshippers come together for symbolic representations (processions of veneration) in order to legitimate their various claims. This symbolic power is based on repetitive practices relating to the Virgen del Cisne and the establishment of an object-human relationship through which the worshippers unconsciously internalize the wills of both institutions. It has been shown that the investigation of an event such as this conflict and its underlying historical links and relationships provides a good starting point for migration studies that aim not only to focus on the material foundations of social relationships, but also to draw research away from groupist ideas of the social in order to concentrate more on practices and situations and thus on the empirical base. As this study shows, the critical consideration of social and religious communities, rather than taking these to be natural and given as in methodological essentialism (cf. Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2006), can open up new perspectives for research on transnationalism and into processes of communitization.

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Rodrigo Fidel Rodr&guez Borges

Denotar, connotar, criminalizar la inmigración. Cómo los medios de comunicación hacen cosas con palabras1

Abstract The intensity of the economic crisis in Europe endangers the role of the wellfare state constructed during the last 60 years. The renationalization of the political discourse and the shielding of national borders converted into flagships of the extrem political right that acuses irregular immigrants for taking jobs from the local population and for grabbing social security. The immigration appears to the public as an enemy that needs to be tackled. Within this extremely problematic context, the media are facing a severe responsability because they way to deal with migration has a direct and relevant influence on the opinion making of the citizens. Based on a comparative study of headings in Spanish newspaper between 2005 and 2014, the paper analyses the nature of journalist discourses on migration.

Introducción La dureza de la crisis econjmica que Europa viene atravesando desde 2007 amenaza la continuidad del estado del bienestar construido en los fflltimos 60 aÇos. La precarizacijn de las condiciones de vida de millones de personas, la destruccijn de servicios sociales b#sicos, el desempleo y las incertidumbres sobre el futuro han provocado una reaccijn de desasosiego y temor entre los europeos, que observan con creciente desafeccijn las actuaciones de las instituciones comunitarias. En este contexto, asistimos al reforzamiento de un discurso pol&tico que reclama el regreso a una visijn de la pol&tica en clave reductivamente nacionalista. El blindaje de las fronteras nacionales frente al ideal cosmopolita de la Unijn Europea se ha convertido en el estandarte de una extrema derecha que avanza y gana adeptos en todos los pa&ses europeos. Es lo

1 El presente trabajo forma parte del Proyecto de I+D Justicia, Ciudadan&a y Vulnerabilidad. Narrativas de la Precariedad y Enfoques Interseccionales, del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacijn. Plan Nacional de Investigacijn.

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que Saskia Sassen (2013: 205) ha calificado del “s&ndrome de la Fortaleza Europa”. En ese caldo de cultivo nacionalitario, que busca infeccionar a las opiniones pfflblicas con el peligro de la inseguridad creciente y el desempleo desbocado, la inmigracijn extracomunitaria ha reaparecido como un enemigo que debe ser combatido y conjurado. M#s que el miedo a la p8rdida de la identidad nacional y cultural, es la crisis econjmica y su impacto en el empleo lo que mejor explica las actitudes de la opinijn pfflblica sobre los inmigrantes: “Disfrutar de una buena posicijn econjmica y laboral propicia la tolerancia o actitud de apertura a la inmigracijn, mientras que lo opuesto coadyuva al rechazo” (Cea D’Ancona et al. 2013: 14). Resulta muy sintom#tico que en la reunijn de ministros de Interior de la UE celebrada en Cracovia en febrero de 2014, el control de la inmigracijn figurara en la agenda del encuentro junto a lucha contra el terrorismo internacional y la delincuencia organizada. Dos semanas despu8s, en una reunijn en Madrid con la asistencia de los ministros del Interior de Francia, Portugal, Marruecos y EspaÇa, el orden del d&a era pr#cticamente el mismo: problemas migratorios y lucha contra el terrorismo y las redes de narcotr#fico. De nuevo, el fenjmeno migratorio aparec&a asociado y, por ello, irremisiblemente contaminado, por asuntos de naturaleza abiertamente delictiva. A despecho del aliento transnacional que marcj el diseÇo original de la UE, el nuevo fantasma que recorre Europa es el de la xenofobia y el racismo: en Francia, el Frente Nacional, encabezado por Marine Le Pen, ha popularizado entre amplias sectores sociales el lema “Les franÅais d’abord” para defender la preferencia de los nacionales a la hora de ocupar un puesto de trabajo o conseguir una plaza en una guarder&a. En Alemania, los euroesc8pticos de Alternative für Deutschland han seÇalado a los inmigrantes extracomunitarios como personas que practican una suerte de “turismo social” para beneficiarse de las ayudas sociales. El brit#nico Partido de la Independencia, de Nigel Farage, ha logrado arrastrar al ala m#s conservadora de los tories de Cameron a una pol&tica de restricciones y hostigamiento hacia los inmigrantes; en tanto que el Partido de la Libertad holand8s, que encabeza el l&der xenjfobo y anti-musulm#n Geert Wilders, ha propuesto abiertamente que Holanda abandone la Unijn Europea. En EspaÇa, si bien es cierto que hasta la fecha no existen partidos de ideario xenjfobo con una implantacijn significativa, eso no ha evitado que se hayan producido episodios – algunos muy graves- de rechazo a la poblacijn inmigrante. Durante los fflltimos veinte aÇos el fenjmeno de la inmigracijn ha irrumpido con enorme fuerza en el pa&s, transformando una sociedad tradicionalmente emisora de emigrantes en receptora de personas que buscaban un futuro mejor (Oliver 2006, Rodr&guez Borges 2009). Esa nueva realidad sorprendij a las autoridades y representantes pol&ticos, circunstancia que explica

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que se produjeran algunos acontecimientos muy llamativos y de no f#cil gestijn. Especial gravedad revistij la llamada “crisis de los cayucos” que se vivij durante el aÇo 2006 en las Islas Canarias. En pocas semanas llegaron a las costas del archipi8lago m#s 32.000 inmigrantes a bordo de pequeÇas embarcaciones salidas desde Senegal, Mauritania y S#hara. A la enormidad de este 8xodo sin parangjn en la historia reciente de la UE, se aÇadij un nfflmero sobrecogedor de inmigrantes desaparecidos en el mar, que algunas organizaciones estimaron en m#s de 6.000 (SOS Racismo 2007: 43). La llegada de estos inmigrantes tuvo un impacto muy significativo en la opinijn pfflblica de Canarias, debido a las peculiaridades que caracterizan este territorio: su fragmentacijn en siete islas, una estructura econjmica enormemente fr#gil y dependiente del exterior (33 % de su poblacijn est# actualmente en paro) y una localizacijn geogr#fica muy peculiar (a m#s de 1.500 kiljmetros de Madrid, pero a apenas 100 de la costa de ]frica). Durante aquellos meses de 2006 las Islas Canarias se convirtieron en un laboratorio socioljgico en el que fue posible observar en accijn – pr#cticamente en tiempo real- todas las fuerzas y actores con el poder necesario para intervenir en la construccijn social y medi#tica del discurso pfflblico sobre la inmigracijn: partidos pol&ticos, instituciones pfflblicas, medios de comunicacijn, organizaciones no gubernamentales, fuerzas de seguridad, etc. (Rodr&guez Borges 2010). Posteriormente, el estallido de la crisis econjmica ha supuesto un punto de inflexijn en el nfflmero de inmigrantes que llegan a las costas canarias y espaÇolas. Los datos del ministerio del Interior espaÇol ilustran palmariamente este cambio de tendencia: en 2006 los inmigrantes irregulares llegados por mar a EspaÇa fueron 39.180, de los que 31.678 lo hicieron a Canarias.2 En 2012 su nfflmero se desplomj hasta los 3.804, de los que apenas 173 arribaron por las costas del archipi8lago; en conjunto, una disminucijn del 90 %. Pero, a pesar del evidente efecto disuasorio de la recesijn econjmica y el reforzamiento de los controles en las fronteras de la UE, en los fflltimos meses la inmigracijn irregular ha regresado al primer plano de la actualidad. La terrible tragedia de la muerte de m#s de 300 inmigrantes en las aguas de la isla italiana de Lampedusa, en octubre de 2013, seÇalj el retorno de este asunto a la agenda pol&tica europea, confirmado por los sucesos que en 2014 se vivieron en las ciudades espaÇolas de Ceuta y Melilla, enclavadas en territorio marroqu&, o la m#s reciente crisis de los refugiados sirios. Es justamente en estos contextos de crisis migratoria cuando los medios de comunicacijn se enfrentan a una grave responsabilidad 8tica: decidir si van a 2 Se puede acceder a la estad&stica oficial en: http://www.inmigracionclandestina.eu/wp-content/ uploads/2010/11/Balance-M.Interior-lucha-inmigraci%C3 %B3n-irregular-2012.pdf. Consulta: febrero 2014.

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informar a la opinijn pfflblica de manera ponderada, contribuyendo a la gestijn de una cuestijn delicada y pol8mica o si, por el contrario, prefieren alimentar el miedo y las pulsiones xenjfobas de la ciudadan&a. En las p#ginas que siguen diseccionaremos el tratamiento que los medios est#n dando a la inmigracijn irregular para tratar de responder a esta cuestijn. Para ello, centraremos nuestro an#lisis en un estudio comparativo de una seleccijn de titulares de prensa, aparecidos en perijdicos espaÇoles entre 2005 y 2014.

¿Qué significa hablar (de inmigración)? Aunque a Alicia, la protagonista de Through the Looking-glass and what Alice Found There, de Lewis Carroll, le sublevaba la idea, lo cierto es que las palabras no tienen nada de inocentes. A poco que observemos qui8nes acaparan la escena social, qu8 dicen, cjmo lo hacen y con qu8 grado de influencia, veremos emerger toda una econom&a de la produccijn social del discurso y de las relaciones de poder que se siguen de 8l. As& se encargj de hac8rselo ver a Alicia Humpty Dumpty, peculiar&simo experto en sem#ntica y pragm#tica: “Cuando yo uso una palabra, esa palabra significa exactamente lo que yo quiero que signifique. Ni m#s ni menos”. “La cuestijn est# – replicaba Alicia – en si usted puede hacer que las palabras signifiquen tantas cosa diferentes”. “La cuestijn est# -zanjaba aquel personaje con forma de huevo- en qui8n es el que manda. Eso es todo”. Una reflexijn bastante similar, aunque expresada de manera m#s acad8mica, es la que nos propone Pierre Bourdieu: en general, dice el socijlogo franc8s, los procesos de comunicacijn nos remiten a una econom&a de los intercambios lingü&sticos en la que se expresan relaciones de poder simbjlico. Por esa razjn, los textos comunicativos representan algo m#s que una coleccijn de signos destinados a ser comprendidos o descifrados. En interacciones comunicativas como las de la accijn pol&tica o la comunicacijn de masas, los discursos constituyen cristalizaciones del poder, expresiones y signos de riqueza destinados a ser apreciados y valorados, al tiempo que cre&dos y obedecidos: Los discursos sjlo cobran su valor (y su sentido) en relacijn con un mercado, caracterizado por una ley particular de formacijn de precios: el valor del discurso depende de la relacijn de fuerzas que se establece concretamente entre las competencias lingü&sticas de los locutores, entendidas […] como la capacidad que tienen los diferentes agentes que actfflan en el intercambio para imponer los criterios de apreciacijn m#s favorables a sus productos (Bourdieu 1985: 40f).

En efecto, el discurso tiene una eficacia probada para construir simbjlicamente nuestra realidad. En ese contexto, el poder para nombrar y calificar emerge como una operacijn b#sica del lenguaje y una forma privilegiada de interven-

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cijn en el mundo. Una manera, en suma, de hacer cosas con palabras, por decirlo a la manera de John L. Austin (1982). De ah& que todos los agentes sociales pugnen por ejercer ese poder de nombrar y de hacer el mundo nombr#ndolo; lo que equivale a afirmar que el sueÇo de cualquier agente es convertirse en “una autoridad simbjlica en tanto que poder socialmente reconocido para imponer una cierta visijn del mundo social” (Bourdieu 1985: 66); a ese status de “autoridad simbjlica” socialmente reconocida es al que aspiran los medios de comunicacijn de masas. Los media tienen, por tanto, la voluntad de modelar el mundo conforme a la visijn que trasladan a su pfflblico. Su labor no es meramente la de relatores de la realidad, sino que, en cierta medida, la crean, la modelan al semantizarla y tratan de influir en las representaciones simbjlicas (ideoljgicas) que de esa realidad tienen los otros actores sociales (Bourdieu 1985: 149). Como nos enseÇj Walter Lippmann, los media se ocupan de acercarnos realidades lejanas de las cuales no podemos tener experiencia directa. Son ellos los que, sobrevolando las fronteras, nos ponen en contacto con personas y hechos que de otra forma no podr&amos conocer, pero con frecuencia ofreciendo informaciones parciales, imprecisas o manifiestamente incorrectas y contaminadas con sus propios prejuicios ideoljgicos (2003: 53). Por otra parte, no todos los medios de comunicacijn poseen la capacidad de estar presentes en lugares distantes u ocuparse de cuestiones de inter8s minoritario. El ecosistema informativo internacional est# dominado, en realidad, por un nfflmero muy reducido de proveedores de informacijn (agencias de noticias, grandes cadenas de televisijn y cabeceras period&sticas de primer nivel), que ejercen de primary definers, conformando la agenda informativa mundial y eligiendo los temas que merecen conocerse, de acuerdo con sus intereses particulares. Sabemos, adem#s, que estos grandes medios no se limitan a seleccionar unos asuntos en vez de otros, sino que adem#s imponen el encuadre desde el que deben ser considerados. As&, resaltan determinados aspectos y omiten otros, promueven una determinada visijn, proporcionan interpretaciones causales o evaluaciones morales y recomiendan ciertas soluciones (Entman 1993: 52). De esta manera, cuando los medios de comunicacijn m#s modestos o de alcance local adquieren y difunden entre su audiencia las noticias que los grandes proveedores de informacijn les suministran, est#n reproduciendo una determinada visijn (ideoljgica) de la realidad. Es as& cjmo en cuestiones especialmente pol8micas como las migraciones, los prejuicios y las expresiones de rechazo se propagan, bajo la apariencia de noticias objetivas, alimentando el miedo en las opiniones pfflblicas. Estos sesgos ideoljgicos del discurso informativo a gran escala pueden detectarse tambi8n en el interior de cada relato informativo. A poco que nos adentremos en la estructura de los mensajes period&sticos, advertimos cjmo

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toda su organizacijn interna y las vigas maestras que apuntalan el edificio obedecen a un diseÇo estrat8gico, fruto de d8cadas de experiencia acumuladas por la profesijn. En el caso de la prensa, la redaccijn de los t&tulos, antet&tulos y subt&tulos, la elaboracijn de la entradilla de la noticia y orden en que se van proporcionando al lector las macroproposiciones del texto, imponen de forma inadvertida una visijn de los acontecimientos (Van Dijk 1985: 69f). El modo de presentar la informacijn afecta a la compresijn de la noticia y activa en el lector modelos para explicar y explicarse los acontecimientos de la vida social (Entman 1992, 1993, Semetko and Valkenburg 2000, Valkenburg et al. 1999). En este ejercicio prescriptivo que cada d&a realiza la prensa con sus lectores ningffln elemento es m#s importante que los titulares que encabezan cada noticia, pues la inmensa mayor&a de los consumidores de perijdicos se comportan m#s como ojeadores de titulares que como lectores exhaustivos de informaciones: La funcijn comunicativa de los titulares es clara: Llaman la atencijn (tanto debido a su longitud como al uso o no de las negritas), resumen la macroestructura del texto, y por lo tanto sirven como una seÇal para el proceso de toma de decisiones estrat8gicas de los lectores, en cuanto a si desean o no leer el texto. Adem#s, los titulares son la informacijn m&nima sobre los diferentes asuntos que trata la noticia, de forma que constituyen una parte b#sica del proceso de ojear el perijdico (Van Dijk and Kintsch 1983: 242).

En la lectura cotidiana de los perijdicos, la mayor&a de los lectores se conducen como “avaros cognitivos” que aunque olvidan el contenido detallado de las noticias al poco de leerlas, s& retienen los aspectos m#s impactantes y ciertos modelos de explicacijn que acostumbran a aparecer – expresos o sugeridos – en los titulares. As&, lo que dicen los titulares sobre la inmigracijn, por ejemplo, ser# lo que con mayor probabilidad les sirva de base para enjuiciar y valorar el fenjmeno, guiar sus conversaciones cotidianas y desarrollar actitudes y comportamientos (Igartua 2007). De ah& la importancia que tiene el titular elegido para encabezar una informacijn, pues como seÇala Van Dijk: El titular de una informacijn es usado tambi8n para activar en la memoria del lector el conocimiento relevante necesario para comprender la informacijn de prensa. Por eso, tan pronto como la palabra disturbios se use en un titular, se activar# en el lector el conocimiento general relevante sobre los disturbios, es decir, lo que podemos llamar “guijn sobre disturbios”. Este guijn controlar# la interpretacijn de los detalles del resto del texto (Van Dijk 1991: 50).

A partir del estilo redaccional de los titulares, se puede determinar si un perijdico observa la actualidad con una voluntad de objetividad o si adopta una perspectiva sensacionalista (Grijelmo 2008: 447f). Desgraciadamente, con mayor frecuencia de lo deseable los titulares de la prensa sobre la inmigracijn se aproximan a un patrjn sensacionalista, como se aprecia en estos ejemplos: “Las

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riadas de inmigrantes no cesan”; “Inmigracijn: Canarias se siente desprotegida”; “Oleada masiva”; o “El Sur de Tenerife recibe una nueva avalancha de irregulares”.3 Otro de los rasgos de estilo caracter&sticos de la prensa sensacionalista es la utilizacijn de titulares no-motores, en los que el verbo no figura expreso, sino omitido. Este recurso tambi8n fue usado con profusijn por la prensa durante la crisis migratoria vivida en 2006. Veamos algunos ejemplos: “Canarias, al borde del colapso” (14 de marzo); “Al borde del desastre” (17 marzo); “Canarias desbordada” (14 de marzo); o “Tenerife, en emergencia” (15 de marzo).

La narrativa criminalizadora de la inmigración: Términos, cifras y metáforas Como hemos dejado dicho, designar, etiquetar o categorizar no son meras decisiones t8cnicas sin consecuencias. Nombrar es una operacijn cognitiva, una manera de semantizar la realidad, que sirve para explicarla al tiempo que nos ayuda a construirla. Los conceptos que empleamos para describir la realidad ayudan, al tiempo, a crearla discursivamente porque tienen una eficacia que va m#s all# de lo que se desprende de su definicijn en el diccionario. Por eso, no resulta en absoluto indiferente referirse a una persona como “extranjero”, “inmigrante”, “inmigrante irregular”, “inmigrante ilegal” o, simplemente, “sin papeles” (Gil 2007: 230). Los medios de comunicacijn de masas se encuentran entre los pocos actores con la capacidad para impregnar el discurso social con sus enfoques y valoraciones y para proponer los temas que se han de considerar socialmente relevantes (Van Dijk 1993). En el asunto de la inmigracijn, los media disponen del suficiente capital simbjlico como para ejercer como autoridades que definen cjmo debe la sociedad percibir e interpretar el fenjmeno. Uno de los caballos de batalla de las organizaciones de inmigrantes ha sido la utilizacijn por los media del t8rmino “ilegal” para referirse a aquellos inmigrantes que se encuentran en el pa&s en situacijn no regularizada. Este uso favorece la criminalizacijn de estas personas porque les transfiere abusivamente lo que sjlo puede predicarse de una conducta o situacijn. En otras palabras: una persona puede realizar una conducta ilegal, pero una persona no puede ser “ilegal”. Por desgracia, sin embargo, el uso de esta expresijn es una pr#ctica comffln en los media a la que se ha referido Van Dijk (1998: 259): 3 Todos los titulares que se citan en estas p#ginas aparecieron, en los perijdicos espaÇoles El Pa&s, El Mundo, La Vanguardia, El D&a, La Opinijn de Tenerife, Diario de Avisos, Canarias 7 y La Provincia, entre 2005 y 2014.

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No es sorprendente que el adjetivo m#s difundido en el discurso oficial sobre los inmigrantes es que son “ilegales”. La estrategia de representar a los inmigrantes como gente que quebranta la ley implica, al mismo tiempo, que son criminales y los coloca fuera de la sociedad civil; de esta manera, las restricciones a la inmigracijn, la expulsijn y la negacijn de los servicios sociales a los inmigrantes se convierten en leg&timas.

A pesar de todo lo que se ha dicho y escrito sobre el tema, la resistencia de los medios de comunicacijn a deshacerse de este uso perverso resulta llamativa. No fue hasta abril de 2013 que la agencia Associated Press modificaba su Gu&a de estilo para eliminar el t8rmino “inmigrante ilegal” y decisiones similares han sido adoptadas en fecha reciente por el diario USA Today. Un caso singular es el de The New York Times, cuya defensora del lector avalaba el uso del t8rmino “inmigrante ilegal” porque lo consideraba claro y preciso, hasta que una peticijn firmada en abril de 2013 por miles de lectores llevj al diario a recomendar a sus redactores que tratasen de introducir otros t8rminos alternativos (Delcljs 2013). En EspaÇa, el uso del t8rmino “ilegal” para designar a los inmigrantes irregulares est# largamente acreditado en los media (Nash 2005, SOS Racismo 2006), aun cuando perijdicos como El Pa&s hace aÇos que excluyeron de sus gu&as de estilo la expresijn “inmigrante ilegal”. Tambi8n la televisijn pfflblica andaluza Canal Sur se ha pronunciado contra el uso de estas expresiones en su Libro de Estilo (2004: 137): Queda descartado cualquier t8rmino de connotacijn peyorativa, el m#s frecuente inmigrante ilegal o simplemente ilegal. Cualquiera de los dos es impropio y errjneo: una persona nunca es ilegal, si acaso lo ser#n su conducta o sus actos, y sjlo si se enmarcan en un determinado corpus jur&dico. Usaremos en su lugar inmigrantes indocumentados, inmigrantes sin papeles, incluso inmigrante irregular o inmigrante clandestino. Pero es preferible, por encima de cualquiera, decir simplemente inmigrante, sin adjetivos, porque tampoco aqu& el periodista ejerce de juez, polic&a o fiscal.

Durante la crisis migratoria de 2006, en los medios de comunicacijn fue habitual la composicijn de titulares en lo que se tildaba a los inmigrantes de “ilegales”: “Cien ilegales huyen de Las Ra&ces en dos d&as” (24 de septiembre); “Ceuta y Melilla tambi8n piden ayuda ante la crisis de los menores ilegales” (7 de octubre); o “La Delegacijn del Gobierno central env&a a 80 ilegales al acuartelamiento de Las Ra&ces” (15 de marzo). Adem#s de la terminolog&a que usan los medios de comunicacijn para designar a las personas migrantes, otro aspecto muy significativo son las palabras que emplean para calificar algunas de sus acciones. As& ocurre, por ejemplo, con las formas verbales que describen la llegada de inmigrantes a las fronteras del pa&s. En un contexto como el actual, de intensa recesijn econjmica, resulta f#cil que las opiniones pfflblicas tengan la percepcijn de que los inmigrantes son una

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fuerza perturbadora que pone en peligro la supervivencia de la sociedad de acogida. As&, los inmigrantes que tratan de entrar al pa&s acostumbran a ser calificados como “intrusos” que han venido a perturbar la tranquilidad id&lica de nuestra comunidad imaginada (Anderson 1991, Balibar and Wallerstein 2000). Por ese camino, los media colaboran al fortalecimiento de un discurso identitario que hace de la discriminacijn del “otro” una forma de afirmacijn propia (Bello 2008). Como sucedij en las Islas Canarias durante 2006, en los fflltimos tiempos las ciudades espaÇolas Ceuta y Melilla, localizadas en la costa africana de Marruecos, se han convertido en otro de los puntos de destino para centenares de personas de origen subsahariano que pretenden entrar en territorio de la UE. La dureza de la pol&tica de fronteras que el gobierno espaÇol ha puesto en pr#ctica en esos enclaves ha merecido la reprobacijn y censura no sjlo de las organizaciones humanitarias, sino tambi8n de responsables de la UE: a finales de 2013 la comisaria europea de Interior, Cecilia Malmström, expresj sus dudas sobre la instalacijn de rejas rematadas con cuchillas en la frontera melillense. Apenas dos meses despu8s, la Comisijn Europea volvij a pedir explicaciones a EspaÇa por el dram#tico incidente en el que murieron al menos 15 inmigrantes que trataban de llegar a nado a Ceuta y a los que la polic&a espaÇola repelij con pelotas de goma y cartuchos de fogueo que provocaron el p#nico en personas agotadas y que apenas sab&an nadar. Los repetidos incidentes registrados a lo largo de los aÇos en esa frontera caliente nos dan ocasijn para observar cjmo los principales perijdicos espaÇoles – con independencia de lo que prescriben sus libros de estilo – sucumben a esa obsesijn seguritaria de la que han hablado Enzensberger (1992) y Bauman (2006). Veamos algunos ejemplos recientes: en otoÇo de 2013 El Pa&s titula: “Dos avalanchas de inmigrantes logran cruzar las fronteras de Ceuta y Melilla” (17 de septiembre). Ese mismo d&a el perijdico El Mundo escribe: “Asaltos masivos en Ceuta y Melilla, donde unos 200 inmigrantes logran entrar” (17 de septiembre); en tanto que otro de los perijdicos espaÇoles de prestigio, La Vanguardia, opta por este encabezado: “Decenas de inmigrantes entran en Ceuta tras asaltar una playa en grupo” (17 de septiembre). Este ramillete de titulares de prensa nos da la oportunidad de destacar algunos elementos caracter&sticos del discurso medi#tico sobre la inmigracijn cuando se organiza desde la ljgica seguritaria y policial. Rep#rese, en primer lugar, en la utilizacijn de los t8rminos “asalto” y “asaltar”, que en su primera acepcijn en castellano significa “acometer repentina, impetuosamente y por sorpresa una plaza o fortaleza”. Los inmigrantes son protagonistas, pues, de una intentona de intrusijn, una irrupcijn violenta en el territorio. Ese es el marco de interpretacijn que proponen esos titulares y que se activar# en la mente de los lectores. La visijn del territorio nacional como una fortaleza en peligro de ser

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asaltada ha dado lugar a titulares de prensa en los que la inmigracijn aparece como un peligro que hay que interceptar, parar, neutralizar, frenar, detener, capturar, en suma, conjurar : “Interceptados 77 inmigrantes que navegaban a bordo de tres barcos”; “La UE ultima su despliegue para parar la llegada de cayucos”, “Capturan una patera con 16 inmigrantes cerca de Gran Tarajal” o “La UE activa un plan para frenar la llegada de cayucos este verano”. En segundo lugar, resulta llamativa la utilizacijn del adjetivo “masivo” para hablar de un grupo de 200 personas. La utilizacijn de este tipo de recurso sensacionalista est# lejos de ser excepcional en perijdicos sedicentemente serios, que tampoco han dudado en calificar a los inmigrantes de “hordas” y “ej8rcitos” que tratan de asaltar nuestras fronteras empleando “t#cticas militares” (Nash 2005: 50, Aierbe 2006: 194). M#s grave por criminjgeno resulta el titular aparecido en El Pa&s el 17 de febrero de 2014, apenas unos d&as despu8s de que murieran ahogados 15 inmigrantes subsaharianos en la costa de Ceuta. El diario abr&a en primera a cuatro columnas de esta manera: “30.000 subsaharianos preparan el salto a Europa por Ceuta y Melilla”, afirmacijn que respaldaba con un informe secreto de los servicios de inteligencia espaÇoles. Citando a la misma fuente imprecisa, el subt&tulo de la informacijn aÇad&a: “Los intentos de entrada desestabilizan y crean alarma social”. Las referencias a esos 30.000 subsaharianos preparados para el salto a Europa merecen comentario aparte porque abundan en una circunstancia ya conocida. De partida, sorprende que el perijdico lo lleve a su portada, dando por buena esa cifra de potenciales asaltantes proporcionada por una fuente oculta y, obviamente, interesada. Pero m#s sorprendente affln es la coincidencia casi exacta con otra portada que este mismo diario ya publicj el 13 de octubre de 2005, en la que se le&a: “Bruselas alerta de que 30.000 africanos esperan para saltar a Ceuta y Melilla”. La magnificacijn de las cifras es uno de los pecados habituales de la prensa cuando habla de la inmigracijn, adoptando para ello los usos propios de la crjnica negra. Este fenjmeno se ha detectado en perijdicos de B8lgica, Gran BretaÇa, Alemania o Austria (Van Dijk 1993), y, como hemos podido comprobar, tampoco es infrecuente en la prensa espaÇola, en la que se han podido leer titulares de este tenor alarmista: “100.000 ilegales esperan para viajar en Senegal”, o “Miles de personas buscan en Senegal un cayuco”. Un tercer elemento merece destacarse en estos titulares: la identificacijn de un grupo de inmigrantes con una “avalancha”, esto es, una gran masa de agua que se desprende por una vertiente, precipit#ndose por ella. Con el uso de esta met#fora, la inmigracijn irregular es despose&da de su condicijn de hecho socioeconjmico para convertirse en una suerte de fenjmeno natural, absurdo e incomprensible, y contra el que nada cabe hacer, salvo defenderse. En suma, esta

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presentacijn naturalizada de una realidad pol&tica fomenta aquel s&ndrome del mundo cruel del que nos ha hablado George Gerbner. Quienes se apuntan a estos modelos de explicacijn de la realidad no parecen reparar en el efecto que puede tener sobre las opiniones pfflblicas la identificacijn metafjrica entre inmigracijn y cat#strofe natural. No debemos subestimar el poder de las met#foras porque no son meros juegos literarios inocuos. Como han seÇalado Lakoff y Johnson (1980: 156), las met#foras que empleamos para hablar y entender los hechos que conforman nuestra vida social tienen un gran poder de impregnacijn de nuestras percepciones y se convierten en gu&as para nuestras acciones futuras: Por id8ntica razjn tambi8n resultan desafortunados los titulares de prensa en los que se establece una conexijn metafjrica entre la inmigracijn y una masa incontenible y arrolladora de agua, tal como se advierte en los siguientes ejemplos correspondientes al aÇo 2006: “Continffla la marea de inmigrantes irregulares” (4 de marzo); “Una marea mortal que no cesa” (5 de agosto); “La oleada de irregulares, imparable” (17 de mayo); “Nueva oleada de pateras a Canarias” (12 de marzo); “Es la mayor avalancha de inmigrantes llegados en un solo d&a a las costas de Tenerife” (14 de mayo); o este fflltimo: “Avalancha imparable” (14 de marzo).

Conclusiones El Segundo Seminario de Expertos Europeos sobre Integracijn de los Inmigrantes, celebrado en Viena en febrero de 2011, insistij en la necesidad de promover activamente la integracijn de los inmigrantes, a trav8s de la promocijn de una imagen positiva de la inmigracijn. As&, se instaba a los actores pol&ticos y sociales a enfatizar su positiva contribucijn a la econom&a y se exhortaba a los medios de comunicacijn a evitar las im#genes negativas de la realidad migratoria (OBERAXE 2011). Sin embargo, en una encuesta realizada conjuntamente por el Centro de Investigaciones Socioljgicas (CIS) y el Observatorio EspaÇol del Racismo y la Xenofobia, el 43 % de los encuestados valoraba la imagen de los inmigrantes ofrecida por los media como negativa o muy negativa, frente al 23 % que la consideraba positiva o muy positiva (OBERAXE 2011: 327). Se advierte, pues, que los avances obtenidos en este terreno son affln claramente insuficientes, como corrobora tambi8n el an#lisis de la prensa que hemos propuesto. No parece tampoco que los medios de comunicacijn est8n atendiendo suficientemente a las recomendaciones propuestas por Send&n e Izquierdo (2008) en la Gu&a pr#ctica para los profesionales de los medios de comunicacijn, que aconseja “Evitar la generalizacijn y simplificacijn de la in-

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migracijn, poniendo especial cuidado en el empleo de t8rminos que pueden ser degradantes o que generen una falsa alarma, como por ejemplo: ilegales, sin papeles, avalancha, oleada, etc.”. En conclusijn, el an#lisis del tratamiento informativo de la inmigracijn en la prensa espaÇola arroja elementos que mueven a la preocupacijn. A pesar de las reiteradas recomendaciones de los expertos, la narrativa period&stica sobre la inmigracijn adolece del uso reiterado de unos patrones discursivos que cooperan para que sea percibida como un problema y los inmigrantes como individuos situados al margen de la ley, cuando no como meros delincuentes. Seguramente en muchas ocasiones por inadvertencia de los profesionales, m#s que como resultado de un propjsito deliberado. El peso de las rutinas informativas, la presijn por cumplir con los plazos de edicijn y la dura competencia entre las empresas explican, en parte, la tendencia de los media a utilizar titulares sensacionalistas y expresiones indirectamente incriminadoras, con las consecuencias que hemos indicado. Como ha seÇalado la organizacijn SOS Racismo (2007: 136), “el encuadre negativo de los medios de comunicacijn respecto a la inmigracijn ha influido en una percepcijn ciudadana del fenjmeno que revelj un racismo simbjlico creciente hacia los inmigrantes”. AÇ#dase a ello que la investigacijn emp&rica acredita que en muy escasas ocasiones los inmigrantes aparecen como fuente principal en las informaciones de los medios sobre la inmigracijn, confirmando su exclusijn del discurso pfflblico como interlocutores reconocidos y legitimados para hablar (Rodr&guez Borges 2010: 279). Se cierra as& sobre los inmigrantes un c&rculo diabjlico: expulsados de sus lugares de origen por la persecucijn pol&tica o por una econom&a global que los fuerza a marcharse (Sassen 2015), criminalizados en los pa&ses de recepcijn por las fuerzas pol&ticas y sociales m#s reaccionarias, tienen que soportar tambi8n un tratamiento inicuo a manos de los medios de comunicacijn, que apenas les dan la palabra para intervenir en la discusijn pfflblica y que, por el contrario, contribuyen – deliberada o inconscientemente – a alimentar los prejuicios contra ellos. Pero no podemos imputar en exclusiva a los periodistas la imagen negativa de la inmigracijn en la opinijn pfflblica. El documento base del Programa de Estocolmo Una Europa abierta y segura que sirva y proteja al ciudadano apenas dedica un par de l&neas a destacar la necesidad de “fomentar los valores democr#ticos y la cohesijn social en relacijn con la inmigracijn y la integracijn de los inmigrantes, y promover el di#logo intercultural y los contactos a todos los niveles”. Este olvido ha suscitado las cr&ticas de muchas de las organizaciones internacionales que han hecho aportaciones al Programa porque, a su juicio, la Comisijn Europea reduce la cuestijn migratoria a un problema de seguridad, control de fronteras y lucha contra la irregularidad. Ese planteamiento olvida que la inmigracijn es un proceso en el que intervienen personas con identidades

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y trayectoria vitales que no pueden someterse a los intereses pol&ticos, econjmicos y sociales del pa&s receptor (Sassen 2013: 185). A este respecto importa, y mucho, recordar las atinadas palabras de Kant en La paz perpetua: “nadie tiene originariamente m#s derecho que otro a estar en un determinado lugar de la tierra”. Ese mandato moral emplaza no sjlo a las instituciones europeas, sino a todos nosotros como ciudadanos.

Bibliografía Aierbe, Peio, 2006. “El asalto de los inmigrantes subsaharianos en los medios de comunicacijn”. En: SOS Racismo Informe anual 2006 sobre el racismo en el Estado espaÇol. Barcelona: Icaria, p. 193–197. Anderson, Benedict, 1991. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Austin, John L., 1982. Cjmo hacer cosas con palabras. Palabras y acciones. Barcelona: Paidjs. Balibar, Etienne y Wallerstein, Immanuel, 2000. Race, nation, class. Ambiguous identities. London: Verso. Bauman, Zygmunt, 2006. Liquid fear. Cambridge: Polity. Bello, Gabriel, 2008. “La emigracijn y la periferia moral europea. Deshumanizacijn de baja intensidad”. Claves de Razjn Pr#ctica 185, p. 18–22. Bourdieu, Pierre, 1985. ¿Qu8 significa hablar? Econom&a de los intercambios lingü&sticos. Madrid: Akal. Cea D’Ancona, M. ]ngeles Valles, Miguel y Eseverri, Cecilia, 2013. Inmigracijn. Filias y fobias en tiempos de crisis. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. Entman, Robert, 1992. “Blacks in the News: Television, Modern Racism and Cultural Change”. Journalism Quarterly 69(2), p. 341–361. Entman, Robert, 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm”. Journal of Communication 43(4), p. 51–58. Enzensberger, Hans M., 1992. Die Große Wanderung. Dreiunddreißig Markierungen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag. Gil, Sandra, 2007. “Discursos pol&ticos sobre la nacijn en las pol&ticas catalanas de integracijn de inmigrantes”. En: Zapata-Barrero, Ricard; Van Dijk, Teun (eds.): Discursos sobre la inmigracijn en EspaÇa: los medios de comunicacijn, los parlamentos y las administraciones. Barcelona: Fundacijn CIDOB, p. 223–268. Grijelmo, Alex, 2008. El estilo del periodista. Madrid: Taurus. Igartua, Juan Jos8, 2007. “Efectos cognitivos y afectivos de los encuadres noticiosos de la inmigracijn”. En: Igartua, Juan J.; MuÇiz, Carlos (eds.): Medios de comunicacijn, inmigracijn y sociedad. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, p. 197–232. Lakoff, George y Johnson, Mark, 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lippmann, Walter, 2003. La opinijn pfflblica. Madrid: Langre. Nash, Mary, 2005. Inmigrantes en nuestro espejo. Barcelona: Icaria.

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Oberaxe, 2011. “Evolucijn del racismo y la xenofobia en EspaÇa”. Informe 2011, http:// explotacion.mtin.gob.es/oberaxe/inicio_descargaFichero.action?bibliotecaDatoId= 216 [consultado el 10/10/2015]. Oliver, Josep, 2006. EspaÇa 2020: un mestizaje ineludible. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya. Rodr&guez Borges, Rodrigo F., 2009. “Inmigracijn, demograf&a y pol&tica econjmica. La situacijn de las Islas Canarias en el contexto espaÇol y de la UE”. Cosmopolis. Rivista Semestrale di Cultura IV/ 1, p. 247–261, http://www.cosmopolisonline.it/20090522/ borges.php [consultado: 10/10/2015]. Rodr&guez Borges, Rodrigo F., 2010. El discurso del miedo. Inmigracijn y prensa en la frontera sur de la Unijn Europea. Madrid: Plaza y Vald8s. Sassen, Saskia, 2013. Inmigrantes y ciudadanos. De las migraciones masivas a la fortaleza europea. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Sassen, Saskia, 2015. Expulsiones. Brutalidad y complejidad en la econom&a global. Madrid: Katz. Semetko, Holli y Valkenburg, Patti, 2000. “Framing European Politics: A Content Analysis of Press and Television News”. Journal of Communication 50(2), p. 93–109. Send&n, Juan C. e Izquierdo, Patricia, 2008. “Gu&a pr#ctica para los profesionales de los medios de comunicacijn: tratamiento medi#tico de la inmigracijn”. Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales, http://explotacion.mtin.gob.es/oberaxe/inicio_de scargaFichero.action?bibliotecaDatoId=50 [consultado el 10/10/2015]. SOS Racismo, 2006. Informe anual 2006 sobre el racismo en el Estado espaÇol. Barcelona: Icaria. SOS Racismo, 2007. Informe anual 2007 sobre el racismo en el Estado espaÇol. Barcelona: Icaria. Valkenburg, Patti, Semetko, Holli y de Vreese, Claes, 1999. “The Effects of News Frame on Readers’ Thoughts and Recall”. Communication Research 56(5), p. 550–569. Van Dijk, Teun (ed.), 1985. Discourse and Communication. New Approaches to the Analysis of Mass Media Discourse and Communication. New York: de Gruyter. Van Dijk, Teun, 1991. Racism and the Press. London: Routledge. Van Dijk, Teun, 1993. Elite discourse and Racism. London: Sage. Van Dijk, Teun, 1998. Ideology. A multidisciplinary approach. London: Sage. Van Dijk, Teun and Kintsch, Walter, 1983. Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. London: Academic Press.

Marisa Ruiz Trejo1

A feminist anthropology approach to the “Transnational Radio Field”. The case of Latino Radio in Madrid

Introduction This article is based on a field diary, and is an ethnographic insight into the radio field of Latin American communities in Madrid; it is a “situated” approach, by a feminist anthropologist, to the construction of the Latino commercial identity in Spain through different technologies of power, such as radio stations. At the same time, it is a work about resistances, negotiations, social uses, and refunctionalizations of the radio as an alternative communication channel by migrants. This paper aims to explain my relations with the paradoxes of nonmainstream, specialized, commercial and small radio stations in Madrid that self-label as “Latino” by sharing my own experiences as a Latino migrant female student in Spain. I analyze the communication practices of some journalists, broadcasters, disc jockeys and listeners that contribute to improving citizens’ participation. This article identifies the power asymmetries reflected within these relations concerning the benefits that media and agency directors have due to these new technological opportunities. I propose feminist tools of research that I have analyzed extensively in my PhD thesis. I used “participant articulation”, “activisms” and “affections”, as a way to work in connection with the “subject-object” of my research (Ruiz Trejo 2015). These tools were created as an original way to break with the androcentric and ethnocentric traditional techniques which reproduce hegemonic masculine values and subordinate other methodological knowledges. These feminist anthropological approaches (Haraway 2004, Harding 1996, Lorde 1984, 1988, Mendoza 2014a, Mendoza 2014b, Sandoval 2000, 2005, Segato 2010, Tzul Tzul 2015) imply the creation of a significant rupture with the dominant logics of the scientific society, which are produced by a hegemonic male consciousness that distorts the analysis, and are

1 Posdoctoral Researcher at the Gender Studies Program. Universidad Nacional Autjnoma de M8xico. [email protected].

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criticized for representing the “object”, rather than articulating with a “subjectobject”.

Framing the topic I started to work on this research in 2010, as a legal Mexican migrant woman, a student with a scholarship in Madrid, in the middle of the European political and economic crisis. At the turn of the 20th. Century, in the late nineties, Spain went from a country of emigration to a country of reception of migrants. At that time, the first contemporary flows of migrants increased through Spain and Latin America, and I identified the emergence of Latino radio stations in Madrid (Ruiz Trejo 2014). When these stations began to appear in the media sphere, they implied the experience and practices of working-class migrants from Latin America. Migrant Journalists and broadcasters started to produce new discourses in a different way than Spaniard mainstream media professionals. “Latinos” and “Latinas” became a target group for media owners and advertising agency directors. Latin American migrant listeners in Spain started to consume Latino contemporary media in a transnational way, and a new “Latino” market niche appeared2. This market created a new field of study : the transnational political economy of love (Ruiz Trejo 2015: 234). Promoting Latino pride, the nostalgia for homeland and nations of origin and love for partners and family members that stay in the countries of origin, radio stations became an important transnational media between Spain and Latin America. From the outset, Latino radio stations have been a political, economic, and cultural arena in which journalists, broadcasters and networks of working-class listeners interact with their family, friends, and government authorities back in their homeland, and created interconnections with the “new” place of residence (Madrid). These events represented a shift in the politics of representation of Latin American migrants in Spain and in the anthropological analysis of minority migrant media (Gaya 2002, Georgiou 2005). It supposed a change in the way of analyzing the participation of minority migrant groups usually excluded from the media sphere. Latino radio stations in Spain attracted Latino communication professionals. For the first time, Latin American migrants became the 2 Some decades ago this “Latino” market started in the United States, a country with an old tradition of migration between Mexico and United States. D#vila (2001) worked about the marketing industry power and its role in the making and commodification of U.S. Latinos. She argues that marketing discourse become an important terrain where Latinos debate their social identities and public standing. She also studied Latino Media in USA and their production, circulation, consumption, and political economy (Davila and Rivera 2014).

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owners and producers of media in Spain. This translated into a transformation in the production, circulation and consumption of media3. The appearance of the “Latino/Latina” category in the Spanish society would not have been possible without the Latino radio stations, and their musical and advertising industry. “The Latino radio of Madrid”, “The voice of Latinos in Spain”, and “The official voice of the people” are some of the slogans that Latino radio stations use to introduce themselves. As a result, the impact that some Latino radios have on migrant communities is part of the process of consolidation of a Latino market segment in Spain. This segment has used sound pedagogies of ethnicity (Ruiz Trejo 2015) to increase its market niches. These pedagogies operate through the use of methods, techniques and practices in a process of teaching and learning “Latino identity”; the interaction between broadcasters who speak through the microphone and listeners who listen and make calls to the radio. This process of marketing strategies influences the decision-making of the people in identifying themselves as “Latinos”. Butler (2001) calls this process the “subjected-subjects”, which means that the same radio discourses that subordinate the power, through the interpellation of the “Latino subject”, contribute at the same time to building their subjectivity and agency. The “Latino subject” is “simultaneously formed and subordinate” (Butler 2001: 17). For that reason, the objective of this paper is to analyze what is being mobilized by radio fields within Latin American migrant communities. According to Fisher and Bessire (2013), radio seems to be everywhere, but surprisingly this type of technology has been little studied by anthropologists (2013: 2). According to Casillas (2014), scholars have largely ignored the radio as a “modern tool of globalization” (ibid: 8) and, often, “radio is generally seen as an archaic medium” (ibid: 9). Also, the roles of radio within migrant communities in Spain have been poorly analyzed within the discipline. Latino radio stations are usually analyzed as a circuit of production and consumption for ethnic / cultural products of marginal migrant industries. Nevertheless, the potentials of Latino radios could be vast in mobilizing migrants, their citizenship, identity construction, culture, religion, and the use of Latin American accents and indigenous languages, among other elements. Furthermore, some talk shows, which involve the participation of migrant broadcasters and listeners, mobilize migrant memories, and this is an important symbolic element for the daily lives of migrants. I use the term “transnational radio field” (Ruiz Trejo 2014) to explain how radio becomes a space of social action, communication practices, and influence 3 You can see the process of creation and the historical development of Latino radio stations in Madrid in Ruiz Trejo 2014.

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in which migrants interact. This unity of analysis becomes important between Spain and Latin America for understanding how the neoliberal model impacts on the mass media, how media directors profit and seek their own economic benefits, and how Latino radio stations reproduce dominant forms of representation. With this notion, we can appreciate simultaneously the economic media interests that try to build a homogeneous Latino commercial identity (through information, music, advertising, lifestyles, etc.) through the consumption of different products and services. But also it allows us to analyze how people simultaneously react against media power dynamics, and how they transform, resist, and resignify the seduction of Latino commercial identity and its homogenization and control. My methods are based in the methodological work of certain feminist theorists, such as Sandoval (2000) who proposes the notion of a “differential oppositional consciousness”. This is a complex mode to break with the dualisms that the “colonialiality-modernitiy” of Science (Segato 2010) has built. In that sense, I propose new and original feminist tools. “Participant articulation” does not mean “participatory observation”, but refers to practices of knowing/doing close to the people intended to create “articulation” as a way to guide my research, through a personal experience by my own status as a Latin American migrant student and feminist. “Activisms” refers to involving myself in protests, and “affections” refers to developing emotions and taking care of people. I experienced daily life with people in going to their festivals, visiting their relatives and friends, listening to the people talking about their nostalgia, in being away from their homelands; and sharing their sorrows and difficulties, which increased with the economic crisis. In addition, I had discussions with radio journalists and listeners; they expressed their views and I learned about their problems and issues. This has been one of the most important “articulations” of my work, and many of these conversations are part of something that I called epistemologies out of the field – the surplus items, which remain outside the writing process but which also have an important value for my research. Often, methodological rules do not allow the inclusion of such information. In that sense, the knowledge that in the process of writing is not recorded for various reasons may include: laughter, tears, hugs and sorrows; fears, dangers, frustrations, disappointments, nerves, the burdens, despair, uncertainty, anger, reconciliations, desire, pleasure, abuses of power and violence, etc. The epistemology out of the field is also part of the research process and of my own transformation as Latin American migrant.

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Methodology: from observation to articulation For this work, I have used a feminist methodology and anthropological methods, or “articulation” as a political-theoretical tool (Ruiz Trejo 2015: 107) that could help us give a “partial”, “responsible” and “situated” version of the world (Haraway 1991: 321). From 2010 to 2014, I engaged in different types of fieldwork. I used a research tool that I called “participatory articulation” (Ruiz Trejo 2015: 148). This tool has allowed me to show, from the point of view of a “situated knowledge” (Haraway 1991), not how the public image of the “Latino” communities in Spain is, or how transnational and social uses of the radio occur, but rather my way of constructing these relations. I have participated in some radio shows addressed to the “Latino” audience: “The alarm”, “All Latino news”, “Ibero American news”4, etc. In this process, I built the first adaptations of my “subject-object”; this implies a creative production of articulation that “transforms it and simultaneously transforms me” (Ruiz Trejo 2015: 124). My “subject-object” consists in my articulation with communication professionals (directors, journalists, broadcasters, technicians, etc.) of Latino radios and some of their listeners; men and women from diverse backgrounds, legal and undocumented migrants, low and middle-class, with and without university education, professional experience in media, residents of the city of Madrid. I built ethnography through fieldwork, and interviewed journalists, broadcasters and listeners. I also recorded more than 100 hours of radio programs, analyzing information, songs, and advertising. The radio stations are marginalized in the public media sphere. I found myself broadcasting on air, reading the news, promoting concerts, stores, or answering the phone on air. Also, I found myself looking for sponsors, broadcasting from different places, interviewing people on the streets, and hanging out at Latino discotheques and bars5. This could be called “participatory observation” in a traditional way, but for me it is “participatory articulation” in a creative way of sharing, participating and taking part in the decision-making and the process together with other people. I followed the work “Listening to the Salsa” by Francis Aparicio (1998) which makes use of “mixing deconstruction with dancing”. The aim of this method is not only to examine the radio station content with academic rigor, but also to become an “ethnographer listener” and to use original and creative research modes: dancing, sharing feelings, affections, and meanings, and resignifying Latino music that is also part of our 4 In this chapter, I use pseudonyms to refer to the radio shows in order to maintain the anonymity of the people involved. 5 The Latino nightclubs are among the most important sponsors of Latino radio stations. They often play the same songs that Latino radios broadcast on air. Some radio station directors also own Latino nightclubs.

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“musical culture” and which activates emotions, memories, and feelings. To put it bluntly, adapting one of Emma Goldman’s most famous quotations: “if I can’t dance, it’s not my investigation!”.6

Approaching the field I usually listened to Latino radio stations in the kitchens of ethnic restaurants, Latino stores, Latino bars and discotheques in Usera or Cuatro Caminos, two of the most popular Latin American migrant neighborhoods in Madrid. This paper focuses on Latino radio stations in Madrid, and on the Colombian and Ecuadorian journalists and listenership practices. The radio is a tool for me to analyze Latino commercial identity and to study media, race, gender, and citizenship with an intersectional method. Latino radio stations are not an object of study, but an object of articulation that allow me to appreciate the processes of transformation in the model of communication, participation, citizenship, and the political culture. One of the features of these migrant radio stations is that their contents and programs are rebroadcasted in the places of origin of migrants in Latin America, through the Internet and local stations. In these radio stations, we usually listen to Latin American voices, and that means different and marginal accents and languages (different Spanish accents, Guaran& from Paraguay, Kichwa from Ecuador, and Portuguese from Brazil) in the media sphere. The listenership works predominantly in the low-level service sector in Madrid: domestic and care work, construction, transportation and distribution. They often work as domestic workers and caretakers, babysitters, cleaning personnel, butchers, bakers, movers, keepers, farm hands, trailer drivers, handymen, and bricklayers. My first hypothesis is that the precarious Latino radios7, the advertising industry and their ethnic marketing strategies contribute to the construction of a Latino commercial identity in Spain, as well as other technologies of power (Latino media, songs, mainstream media, movies, laws, policies, and scholarly discourses). The term “Latino”, in reference to a common experience of migration from Latin America and a kind of marginalization in Spain, has been used for the first time in the voice of broadcasters and listeners. “Latino” became a new ethno-cultural identity that would change the relations of representation

6 Original text: “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution!” 7 Latino radio stations are in a marginal position compared to the dominant Spanish radio stations, and they have precarious infrastructures because they have low revenues from advertising (only small and medium entreprises).

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for diverse groups and communities with heterogeneous histories, traditions, and ethnic identities. Latino radio stations is the term that people usually use to refer to these “imperfect medias” (Salazar 2004). These “imperfect radio stations” (Ruiz Trejo 2015: 172) have inconsistencies and contradictions. In that sense, my second thesis is that these “imperfect radio stations” are used by listeners as a way to cope with and to live in a new country, far from their homeland. These radio stations allow us to witness some communities that are looking at themselves and are contributing to the transformation of their own image. At the beginning of my research, more than 20 Latino radio projects were broadcasting in Madrid.8 These kinds of radio stations have a variety of forms, purposes, heterogeneous objectives, budgets, interests, and target groups.9 In Europe, Madrid became the first city outside Latin America to be broadcasting these stations 24 hours a day. Hundreds of Latin American migrant voices appeared in the minority migrant media sphere. How did they end up on the radio? How did the radio shape the new emergent subject that radio stations built? Broadcasters and listeners talking on air represented an act of discovering themselves as migrants, and this supposed an imaginative act that an identity implies. Latino radio stations are evidence of the active job of representation of migrants and their capacity of creation of an identity. Their positions of enunciation were multiple, but they put in the center of the debate the construction of Latino subject in Spain. Hence, the Latino identity became a form of enunciation for Latin American migrants in Madrid. At the moment of their arrival in Spain, they discovered themselves as “immigrants”, “Latinos” and “Latinas”, and also as “Sudacas”, a term that Spanish society commonly uses in a pejorative way to refer to those people coming from South America. Even I discovered myself as “LatinAmerican”, term that I had never heard of before as an identification in my childhood in Chiapas, before my own migration from Central America to Spain. This discovery would not have been possible without the intervention of mainstream and minority media, music, law, ethnic businesses, advertising, scholarly discourses, activisms, and other discourses that contributed to the 8 Super Q 105.1, Latina Stereo 901.1 FM, Radio Tentacijn 91.4 FM, Fiesta FM 102.7 FM, Radio Estrella 101.6 FM, Ecuatoriana FM 88.4 y 96.7 FM, Radioactiva Europa 103.7, Corazjn Tropical 102.1 FM, Euro Caribe FM 101.6 FM, Radio RKM 94 FM, Rohayhu Paraguay Radio 104.3 FM, Dinamys Radio 103.2 FM, Top Radio 97.2 FM, Radio 12 90.5 FM, Factory 102.4 FM, Radio Centro 95.6 FM y 107.7 FM, Radio Pueblo Nuevo 89.5 FM, Radio Imagen Latina 94.7 FM, Radio Elegancia 94.6 FM, Radio RTC 94.2 y 103.2 Fm, Radio Gladys Palmera, Radio E, La Nuestra FM, La Suegra FM, etc. 9 Sometimes these radio stations are addressed to Ecuadorians, Colombians, Peruvians, Bolivians, Dominicans and Paraguayans, but there is a tendency of the media directors to construct their target group as “Latinos”.

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construction of the Latino identity in Spain; this meant new consumers, new citizens, and a new reconceptualization of Latin America for the world in a transnational dimension. In this regard, what meaning could be found in popular cultural productions such as minority migrant radio stations? What kind of subjects to these radio stations try to interpellate? The character of the capitalistic commercial cultural consumption and the advertising industry of these radio stations give rise to another question: to what extent could we accuse these minority media projects of being commercial capitalist companies that reproduce the power-domination logics under an economy of Latino identity? Should we maintain an opposition to and criticism of the free market? Were these radio stations absorbing migrant struggles? The key was to focus on the people and their practices that were driving the changes. Owners, managers, journalists, broadcasters, and technicians of minority migrant radios were involved in some sort of battle in order to visualize alternative contents that did not fit on mainstream media and were changing the dominant imaginary of migrant communities. The mainstream media usually represents migrants as a synonym for unskilled people, workers without professional experience and only suitable for the lower-paid job positions. How, from a postcolonial feminist viewpoint, could we ignore the importance of some Latino radio shows in which Latino broadcasters and listeners, especially domestic workers, are participating? Listeners include migrant women in a postcolonial context, and we need to understand their situation. They migrated from the ex-colonies in Latin America to Spain, the old metropoli. Every day, Latino migrant communication professionals and listeners are broadcasting through the Latino radio stations, gaining ground, speaking loudly on air and sharing music, information, and their experiences. Are these radio stations naming and representing the excluded voices of the mainstream media space? The sign reading “On Air” in radio studios turns on, and broadcasters start to receive calls. They describe their experience of mobility from Latin America to Spain and, in that way, they create a significant change in the cultural policy of Latin American migrants in Spain. Some migrant listeners generally use Latino radio shows to communicate different issues and events; to talk on the phone with Latino broadcasters; to denounce racist controls and raids on the streets; to ask for help in finding people who have lost contact with their family members in the origin country ; to talk about repatriations, family reunification or juridical assistance; to have a conversation and seek advice among migrants; to exchange opinions as a way of public participation; as well as to find company in their journey of solitude, far from their native land. Simultaneously, they participate and interact transnationally, with people in the country of destination (Spain) and with people in the places of origin (Latin America). People in the countries of

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origin also participate, calling in to the Latino radio stations in Madrid. These listeners share and distribute messages, music, styles, ideas, feelings, and symbols. Sometimes they discuss the Spanish political decisions, the emergence of new social movements, the struggles against racism, the political strategies in the transnational private sector, their traditional celebrations, masses, dances, holidays, Latin American national meals, concerts by their favorite singers, cultural activities, etc. In some ways, this cultural policy resists the power of representation of the mainstream media which places Latin American migrants in a marginal position; this position ranges from the absence or the marginalization of immigrant experience to the objectification and fetishization, simplification, and stereotyping. Songs, music, advertising and fan club radio stations, newspapers, magazines, associations, churches, clubs, restaurants, sports clubs, artistic and theater groups, become spaces to subvert and challenge imaginaries where the migrants had usually been the “objects” and rarely “subjects” of practices of representation. A symbolic transformation has been generated by dozens of journalists, broadcasters and media professionals from Latin America being incorporated into Latino radio stations. That fact effects the transition from “being in the picture” to “making the picture” and from “listening to the radio” to “talking on the radio”.

Diaries of the field Imperfect radio stations In 2011, I visited “Radio Super Latina”. The studio was located in a building in Gran Via, one of Madrid’s main avenues, next to Plaza de EspaÇa. Alberto10, a Colombian journalist, invited me to talk on his radio show about my dissertation. The program started with a voice in off: We start off this morning with information and entertainment. We have the most complete information about Spain, Latin America and the world. We are a professional team. Welcome to All Latino news! (Fieldnotes, Madrid, November 11th, 2011).

With the show in progress, I explained on air the subject of my research work: to analyze the role Latino radio stations play in Madrid, and what contribution they make to the constitution of migrant communities. Alberto told me, on air, that on these radio shows we listen to words that we do not usually hear in other media: “We are closer to our audiences because we invite migrants to partic10 In this article, I use pseudonyms to preserve the anonymity of the people involved.

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ipate”. Then, Alberto proceed to make advertising announcements: a dental center, a law firm, a store selling Colombian clothing, a mechanical shop, a bakery from Antioquia, an agency of houses in Ecuador, and a Colombian shipping agency. The phone rang. Karla, an Ecuadorian listener, a domestic worker, was calling from the house of their employers in “Boadilla del Monte”, a rich neighborhood of the city. She came to Madrid seven years ago and in this short span of time, she had forgotten some words used in Ecuadorian Spanish. When she discovered these Latino radio stations, she felt happy to be reminded of memories with her family from Guayaquil, her place of origin. Soon after her, we received another call. This time, a Colombian man who had lived for several years in Madrid sent his greetings from his new home in Bern, Switzerland. After the economic crisis in Spain, he was forced to relocate himself there. He expressed a sense of nostalgia when recalling his friends and “Latino people in Madrid” through the radio. Another listener made a comment about politicians, stating “they are ‘maricones’ [‘fags’, pejorative slang for homosexuals].” Marga, another broadcaster, an Ecuadorian journalist, interrupted him saying that “fags” were not guilty for the way in which politicians proceed. She said that “All Latino news” program was open to all and different opinions, and so she would also express her view about homophobia. In short, she didn’t agree with it. Alberto then played the song “Latin America” by Toto La Momposina, Susana Baca and Calle 13, three of the most popular singers in the Latino music industry. Latin America is a heterogeneous place, but in this song the representations of the struggles against colonialism and neocolonialism are a point in common for the different Latino American folks. Even if the idea of “one Latin American community” is commodified by the Latino musical industry, for some listeners with whom I talked and shared many moments, this song represents a sort of empowerment of migrants against the Spanish dominant society. I went to many concerts and dancing places, for example in “Cubierta de Legan8s” or in Latino discotheques in “Usera”, and I realized how important music is, in the process of public participation, for Latin American migrants. When music is sung, danced, and played collectively, it could be synonymous of a group recognition and a reappropriation of the uses of music against the social contradictions and the daily difficulties. It is not just a demonstration of self-determination and self-identification with a cultural element of “difference”, against the power of the hegemonic culture in the Spanish context known as “espaÇolitud” (Spaniardhood) (Izquierdo and Arroyo Calderjn 2011), but it is also an experience of enjoyment and pleasure, a vibrant affirmation of life and opportunities despite the dispossessed conditions of the “undocumented people”. The exercise of collective bodily action forms a com-

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munity in a specific time and place, swinging to the rhythm of music that is a tactic and a strategy of those living in precarious conditions. After the song, Adriana, a Guaran&-speaking woman from Paraguay, and domestic worker who was listening to the radio program, called and said: La radio es mi compaÇ&a, aqu& escucho informacijn de mi pa&s, porque nosotros, los latinos, tenemos una idiosincrasia distinta. A m& me gusta escuchar nuestra mfflsica en fechas especiales, nosotros venimos de la Am8rica Morena, no Am8rica Latina, sino Morena. En estos medios nosotros podemos hablar nuestro idioma, as& es m#s comprensible, m#s dulce, m#s conexijn. Es interesante porque hay muchas radios, no solo estas, por ejemplo, hay radios argentinas, paraguayas, otras radios latinas. Sirven para ayudar a las personas, a los compatriotas, la gente que hace trabajos de limpieza en casa. Los medios siempre sirven.11

Later on, there was another caller ; a Colombian listener explained his perspective. He said that it seems Alberto’s radio program sold a certain political view because he often talked about the PP (the Popular Party) in a negative way and encourages people not to vote for them. For this listener, that was not right. Maria, a listener of the show, introduced herself as “a Colombian migrant” and said that political representation of migrants in Spain is minimal. She criticized the bipartisan political system, claiming that political candidates were unreliable saying “they do not represent us”. The year 2011 was one in which many social movements joined the “15-M”, “Indignant Movement” or the “Anti-Austerity Movement in Spain”. This movement claimed that the political representative system doesn’t promote a participatory democracy, and denounced the bipartisanship (Socialist Party and Popular Party) and the dominance of banks and corporations as a dictatorship. Alberto shared these kinds of ideas with the “indignant” activists and with his last listener. He used to criticize the current division of power ; it seemed to him that the current political system was not really democratic. Migrant movements were not so perceivable within the “15-M” movement. From the first mobilizations of this movement, the few migrants that participated in the public squares, mainly in “Puerta del Sol” in Madrid, denounced the “whiteness” of the movement. They questioned the activists’ privileges of un11 Translated by the author : Radio is my companionship, I listen to information about my country, because as Latinos we have a different idiosyncrasy. I like to listen to music on our special dates… we come from the brown America, not from Latin America, but brown. In these kinds of media we can speak our language; in that way it’s more comprehensible, sweet, there is more connection. It is interesting because there are a lot of radio stations. For example, there are Argentine, Paraguay and other radio stations that are all Latino. They serve for helping people in their basic needs, compatriots having troubles, people who work cleaning houses, who take care of children, who work in agriculture and construction in this country and in our countries. Media is always useful (fieldnotes, Madrid, November 16th 2011).

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labeled bodies, practices and desires. A majority of participants of this movement were non-stigmatized because they were “European”, “legal”, “middleclass”, “male” or “heterosexual” (Ruiz Trejo 2012). This means that when they were in the streets during the massive protests, public assembly or public speech, they were safer than others. In that sense, migrant women, lesbians, and indigenous persons that participated in the “indignant movement” denounced the vulnerability of “undocumented migrants” who cannot occupy the public space in the same conditions than Spanish, “legal migrants”, men, and educated activists (Ruiz Trejo 2013). Those indignant struggles did not make the streets safe for women, gender and sexual minorities, including trans people, whose public appearance is too often punishable by both legal and illegal violence. Migrant women, undocumented domestic workers, lesbians, and indigenous persons are more exposed to violence and death. Their bodies, practices, desires, and lives cannot be in the scene because they are at risk, and the danger is presented precisely by those bodies on the street. In this way, some Latino radio shows, such as “All Latino news”, “the Alarm”, and “Ibero-America 360”, became alternative channels of communication and discussion for migrants to participate in the public debates. Regarding the same ethnography mentioned above, at the end of the transmission, Alberto said goodbye to the audience, and the light behind the “On Air” sign turned off. We left the studio. I pressed the elevator button but Alberto expressed a desire to walk down the stairs from the sixth floor. I was amazed to see that on each floor of the building, there were cyber-cafes, travel agencies that offered flights to many parts of Latin America, and Colombian clothing stores, with “Latino” brand names. Alberto explained that these businesses were created several years ago and for that reason people started to call this building: the “Latino building”. We went to a market, “Los Mostenses”, located right next to the “Latino building” and also close to “Plaza de EspaÇa” and “Gran V&a” which indicates the centrality of Latin American businesses and market activities in the city. Alberto told me that some years ago, the owners of the businesses in the market were Spanish people, but, progressively, “We Latinos, we took over this ‘place’”, he said.12 At the entrance of the building, a man was handing out flyers promoting an Ecuadorian restaurant. He greeted Alberto. “How is it going? Did you

12 Markets lost ground in Madrid but were re-evaluated, in the case of “Mostenses”, by Latin American entrepreneurs. The Santo Domingo neighborhood, a near area to this market, was one of the various zone of Madrid, where Latin American migrants settled in cheapest apartments. In that zone the houses prices fell and Spanish people, with a greater acquisitive power, moved to other richest areas.

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already finish the radio program? I was listening to you [showing his phone and headphones]. Is she [pointing at me] the student from the university?”, he asked. We walked by a place with a big neon sign displaying the words “Exquisiteses Latinas” (Latino Delicacies); there were some posters with flags of different countries from Latin America. The place offered traditional cuisine. Next to the Peruvian flag appeared: “papa a la huanca&na”13, “ceviche”14, “papa rellena”15, “queso fresco”16. Alberto showed me that in the market we could even find tropical fruits from different Latin American countries. There were people in line waiting for their turn to buy at the fruit and vegetable stores, butchers, and fish markets. This shift in the ownership of businesses and the fact that migrant stores increased is related to the cultural diversity of the city of Madrid and the transformation of the neighborhoods around the market. At the same time, the centrality of the market shows the importance of migrants in the city. Pointing at the new owners of the stores, Alberto pointed out “citizens from Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Dominican Republic”. From some of the stores, we could listen to several Latino radio programs and songs. I enjoyed the visit to the market to buy “Goya Nativo” cornmeal. If we talk about a “political economy of nostalgia” (Hirai 2009), the analysis of this brand, which sells ethnic Latin American products in Spain, is an important point because these products are part of the basic purchases of many “Latino” migrants, including me. I noticed that I also had several of these products in my kitchen and I enjoyed cooking food from Latin America because it makes me remember my youth in Chiapas, my birthplace in the South of Mexico. Soon after, I observed several brands of cola: “Inca Kola”, “Tropical” (“puro sabor nacional”17 from Ecuador), guarana, coconut, and guava drinks. Next to this store, I saw a point of distribution of a Latino newspaper, a cyber-caf8, and calling cards compatible with making cheap phone calls to Latin America. Then, we sat down in a small cafe. Luz Maria, another Colombian broadcaster of the “All Latino news” program, joined us. Reciting the names of the different types of foods, we could choose from: “buÇuelos18, arepas19, pl#tanos fritos20, dulce de ariquipe21”, etc. All these products are part of the market of nostalgia (Hirai 2009). 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Huancaina-style potato. Dish of marinated raw fish or seafood, typically garnished and served as an appetizer. Stuffed potato recipe. Fresh cheese. Pure national flavor. Doughnuts. Corn pone. Fried bananas. Sweet of milk.

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Alberto started talking about Latino media in Spain. Latino media need to have sustainability ; these media are privately owned and commercial. They have commercial advertising because journalists, broadcasters and workers need to survive with money. He doesn’t like joking with anyone, so he doesn’t say that media only has a social function. He argued that there are many people who were skeptical about his radio show because of its advertising. Most of the microbusinesses in the Latino building and in the market were his sponsors. “Tell me, what media subsists without economic resources?” he argued. Alberto explained to me that migrants cannot work in Spanish mainstream radios because racism still remains in the Spanish dominant society. There is a political value of Latin American migrants; they carry an unattractive, cultural and racialized value. “Latino” and “Latina” broadcasters are marketed by race, accent, language, citizenship, and gender. They are discriminated against in the Spanish radio stations for their Latin American accents and lack of a Spanish accent, or because they are “undocumented”. Some of them shared with me experiences of discrimination, when they asked for a job in mainstream media, a result of their skin color ; particularly Colombian, Ecuadorian and Paraguayan women journalists told me about their difficulties in finding a job in the Spanish communication industry, even if they had a high level of formal education and professional media experience in their countries of origin. In my analysis, for that reason they always ended up working in Latino radio stations and, contrary to what happen in mainstream media, in Latino radio stations, Latin American migrants carry an attractive, cultural and racialized surplus value for their employers, a kind of “ethnic” and “cultural” commodification.22 In that sense, I name Latino radio stations “imperfect radio stations” (Ruiz Trejo 2015) because even if they are commercial media micro-enterprises, they became a familiar and intimate space for Latin American migrants in the middle of the hostile media society that don’t allow to access undocumented migrants to the dominant Spanish media. Also, they became a site for building community, nostalgia, and advocacy against police and social harassment across transnational and transatlantic boundaries.

Undocumented radio stations “Undocumented radios” refers to migrant minority radios as initiatives that are disadvantaged compared to mainstream radio stations because they do not have official permission which identifies them. The split between “radio stations with 22 They combine these radio jobs with other precarious occupations such as domestic workers, taxi drivers, public relations in nightclubs, and freelancers in different employments.

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permission” and “radio stations without permission” divides these media and generate confrontations. It is a kind of exercise of political control related to who is and who is not allowed to broadcast. The lack of permissions is understood as a material “universal” sign and in that sense, it is considered indispensable for transmissions. On the one hand, the juridical-legal instruments condemn and persecute migrant minority radio stations that are broadcasting without a “permission”. On the other, they restrict the granting of “permissions” for migrant minority radios in the public space. In the law, such discrimination is legal and, in that sense, the law becomes one of the main barriers for migrants to access to the media space of representation and to become producers and directors of their own media. Their status of “undocumented radio stations” means that these radio stations are not gathered in the General Media Study (EGM), which in Spain is the main instrument in which the advertising agents are based for making decisions about their investments in media. Another situation arises when looking at community radio stations.23In Spain, community radio stations have tried to maintain their programs on the airwaves since 1980. They have been engaged in a long, ongoing struggle to preserve their initiatives on air because of the political pressure; all across the country, they have obtained few legal licenses24 for broadcasting and, because of this, they are called “radio stations without documents” (Garc&a 2013).25 A commercial counterpart are the Latino radio stations; they are micro-enterprises that started to grow up from 2000. In Spain, there is no Communication Law to regulate them, and since its emergence, no Latino radio license has been obtained.26 Thereby, I refer to Latino radio stations as undocumented radio stations (Ruiz Trejo 2015: 209). This condition of being “undocumented” has resulted in the non-indexation of Latino radio station in the Media General Study (EGM).27 In Spain, advertisement in this index is the main instrument for decision-making on investments in the media, and this means Latino radio stations cannot have the opportunity to be chosen by advertising agencies. This fact connotes a rejection of Latino radios and their “Latino” listenership as equal peers in the

23 Non-profit radios. 24 In Spain, radios need an official permission for broadcasting. This authorization is given by the government authorities. These licenses determine who the main actors in the Spanish radio sphere are. To have a license imply to have the official right to broadcast in a frequency number. Radios that use the frequency of other radios infringe a juridical norm and they could be obligated to pay a penalty fee. 25 “Radios sin papeles” is the original term that Garcia uses in Spanish. 26 “Radio Tentacion”, a Latino radio, has a license radio on 91.4 FM in Aldea del Fresno. But in a different point that it uses. Thanks to Javier Garc&a (Community Radio Union of Madrid) for providing this information. 27 EGM is the acronym for “Estudio General de Medios”.

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Spanish commercial radio landscape, which reflects a marginalization and racialization of bodies within Spanish media capitalism. Community radio stations and Latino radio stations are both “extra-legal”, which means that there is not law of communication to regulate them. Both of these kinds of radio stations used to occupy the frequencies and, sometimes, their airwaves infringe the frequency of other radios. Sometimes community radio stations invade Latino radio frequencies and vice versa but this is not a characteristic of small radio stations because even the big commercial stations, which don’t have official license either, take over the frequencies. “Migrants are making huge effort – also economically – to be the owners of their own media. They don’t have any place not even in community radios. So, it is not fair that other airwaves from other radio station invade those of Latino radio stations”, Alberto said. The experience of journalists, as Alberto confirms, is that some migrant communication professionals do not consider the radio as a big business, but as a way to survive in the precarious economic situation of the country, and the radio is part of their daily lives. Community and Latino radio stations are in a similar position of exclusion from the media sphere, compared to the mainstream media; because neither has been able to obtain a broadcasting license in the last ten years. Their activity is in an extralegal indeterminate state. Nevertheless, Latino radio stations are more business-savvy and less communal. These radio stations have revenues from the advertisement of different companies that have interests among the Latino market. From 2000 to 2006, Spanish media experienced the “Latino media boom”. After the economic crisis in Europe in 2008, a large part of Latino media (journals, TV channels, radios, etc.) has been affected and a great number of them disappeared. Latino radio stations were the most flexible media that survived the adversities of the crisis. In other aspects, Alberto believed that Latino radio stations have a social function. For example, he explained to me that, in his own radio program, all sponsors are responsible companies. Luz Maria pointed out the example of “Air Madrid”. Some years ago, “Air Madrid”, an airline company, cancelled a lot of flights, affecting many migrants. In spite of this, other Latino radio shows continued to advertise them. However, when Alberto realized that “Air Madrid” was harming many people, he decided to cancel his negotiations with them; for him, it was irresponsible. Alberto also shared his experience with “Radio Feria” in the year 2010. At that time many mothers and their babies spent several days stuck inside the airport of Barajas. They had neither diapers nor milk. Through the radio, Alberto made a call to the radio fan club of listeners. He asked the listenership to bring food to the airport, and was able to mobilize a campaign to support these mothers and their children. Even though this support was a “simple practice” for Alberto he thought that this is the best way to make a

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contribution and support Latin American migrants in specific situations. The fan clubs of Latino radio programs are organizations typically characteristic of the reception of the minority migrant radios and are integrated by listeners.28 They usually act collectively, and these actions in alliance with the broadcasters can make some transformations in the model of citizen participation; this constitutes an example of migrant resistance. Alberto claims he had been threatened because of the opinions he has expressed on his program. There was, for example an issue related to the Uribe administration in Colombia from 2002 to 2006 and from 2006 to 2010. While Alberto was openly against the national security policy of the Uribe administration and criticized its investments in the army, the majority of Colombian radio journalists in Madrid supported the policies and strategies of the president of Colombia at the time. For Alberto, the possibility of being able to express an opinion is critical, and this is what he considers a social contribution. Furthermore, a large number of listeners, many of them women, called Alberto from their workplaces in order to discuss and debate on air their points of view on Immigration Law and the political and economic context in their places of origin (Latin America) and destination (Spain). They used to denounce the way police often treat migrants in a racist and xenophobic way. Many Latino radio programs in Madrid offer on-air legal assistance, and listeners call to ask about their doubts regarding legal residency, labor rights, family reunification, dual citizenship, immigration controls, deportations, repatriations, police detentions, and police and administrative abuse. Another example of the role of some Latino radio programs is the use of voices of the Latin American migrants themselves to denounce the social exclusion of the migrant communities. They live in a postcolonial condition in Spain, as the ancient colonizer country of Latin America and as a new neocolonizer country, part of the European Union, that considers them as “extracommunitarian”.29 A proof of the postcolonial situation is that in 2012, the Spanish public health system was severely impacted in its principle of “universality”, which means that it fundamentally changed, impeding the universal access to social security. A health reform, contained in the Royal Decree-Law 16/ 201230, suggested the exclusion of thousands of people, mainly “undocumented” 28 Latino radio programs usually have loyal listeners that like to listen to the radio daily and they organize themselves in a collective way with other such listeners through a kind of cultural and social organization called fan clubs. 29 A majority of Latin American migrants share language, culture and religion with Spanish society as a colonial heritage. 30 Real Decreto de Ley. Until 2012 in Spain, the medical model was universal; access to health system was guaranteed to all people without exceptions. In protest against this decree, workers in the National Health System (SNS) have developed lines of action through a

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migrants, from the right to receive health care and certain sanitary public benefits. One of the demonstrations in defense of public health was extremely symbolic, and activists called for civil disobedience of the decree. Several journalists and broadcasters of the minority migrant radios invited migrant listeners to participate in the rallies. These networks of broadcasters and listeners responded and went to the demonstration, even if they were in an irregular situation and they faced a higher risk of being threatened by the police. Some of the protests would not have had much migrant participation if Latino radio stations had not stimulated their listeners. On the day of that event, the streets were full of slogans written on banners “Say ‘NO’ to health apartheid”, “Don’t sell public health, defend it”, “Public health is not an expense, but an investment”, “With documents or without documents, public health for all”. After their use on the demonstration these slogans were reused and broadcasted in some Latino radio programs in Madrid. Alberto was also making use of the slogans of protest in order to support the claims of migrants for public health services. Estamos apoyando esta protesta. Para m&, es importante que la gente nos vea aqu& con nuestros micrjfonos apoyando algo que nos toca a todos, sobre todo, a los inmigrantes. Si te das cuenta, todos los Decretos tanto las Reformas Laborales y los recortes salariales, los recortes en sanidad, en educacijn, las pensiones, afectan a toda la sociedad espaÇola en su conjunto pero, sobre todo, vulneran los derechos de nosotros los inmigrantes que no tenemos papeles y que tambi8n somos trabajadores. Por eso estamos aqu& con nuestra gente que vino a apoyar y con la radio nos toca hacer doble trabajo: pelear aqu& y all# por nuestros derechos.31

To conclude this chapter, Latino radio stations are “imperfect” and “undocumented” radio stations, not more or less than other commercial media, but with the value of migrant voices. The broadcasters and listeners produce stories and memories of everyday life in their own voices. They produce creations less legitimated than the discourses of mainstream radio. The radio practices constitute a new change in the way of inclusion in the “transnational public sphere” (Fraser 2014), in the way that bodies take place in the “space of appearance”32 campaign called “I do, health for every one” (Yo S&, sanidad universal) that encourages the health professionals to apply a “conscious objection” to the decree. This campaign has been highly promoted in some Latino radio programs for the migrants’ health care. 31 Translated by the author : We are here supporting this protest. To me, it’s important that people see us here with our microphones, supporting something that touches us all, especially, all migrants. If you realize, all the decrees, Labor reforms and wage cuts, cuts in health, in education, pensions, affect the whole of Spanish society, but in particular, violate the rights of us, migrants who do not have documents and we are also workers. So here we are with our people. We came to support the rally with our radio and we have to do double duty : fighting here and fighting there for our rights (Fieldnotes, Madrid, September 26th 2012). 32 This concept was originally a Hanna Arendt concept: “it is the space of appearance in the

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(Butler 2012), in the way that voices are heard and recorded, and in how broadcasters and listeners articulate among them. Latino radio stations in Madrid are ethnic commercial media that follow the capitalist interests of media directors; however, as we saw, the practices of some broadcasters and listeners could change certain views on and discourses about immigration. We cannot consider the commercial radio market as a tool for social protest against oppression and exploitation of migrant workers because we will not consider capitalist consumption as a way to fight. But this reflexivity has to be explored in the new map of the media and cultural studies. Could we identify some resistances, refunctionalizations, and reappropriations of these commercial media? The stories of Alberto, Luz, and fans clubs of listeners referred to in the previous sections are an illustration of this. They are not representative of all Latino radio stations but they are a representative diffraction (Ruiz Trejo 2015: 125), which means they reflect different positions, situations, and moments that we have known situationally and partially.

Paradoxical dynamics of Latino radio stations Latino radio stations exist in a paradoxical dynamic. On the one hand, the commodification of ethnic identities is a strategy that directors of Latino radios use to obtain profits. They convert the marginality or their “culture” into commercial products through marketing strategies in order to gain access to the market. There are some Spanish directors of Latino radios that present these radios as “authentic Latino” because they employ Latin American journalists; this is a form of “eating the Other” (Hooks 1996). Even in the case where directors are Latino American migrants, they both, use Latino commercial identity as a brand. On the other hand, these radios allow the participation of migrants in the public radio sphere and create a transnational interaction in the “transnational radio field” (Ruiz Trejo 2014), which constitutes one of the paradoxes: an economic benefit for radio directors and an important tool for others, listeners who find a cheap and seductive way to remain in contact with their countries of origin. Otherwise, the Spanish labor market’s growing service sector has affected working-class Latino men. Saskia Sassen (2000) called this process the “femiwidest sense of the word, namely, the space where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men (sic) exist not merely like other living or inanimate things but make their appearance explicitly” (Butler 2012). Butler retooked and resignfy the main idea: “This is no small problem since it means that one must already be in the space in order to bring the space of appearance into being – which means that a power operates prior to any performative power exercised by a plurality” (Butler 2012).

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nization of labor”. Nevertheless, the dispositions of gender are different in the narratives of Latino radio shows where men, “invisible” in the public sphere and labor market, absent within the discussions of Spanish politics and political institutions, use the radio to be in the “space of appearance” (Butler 2012). Latino radio is a predominantly masculine space and the majority of journalists and broadcasters are males, but especially owner and manager positions are occupied by men who have power over the radio stations and contacts with sponsors. When I asked some of the owners of the radio stations why there were not more females acting in their programs, several of them responded that it was because women were not interested in appearing in the media and did not ask for jobs in their programs. This question is paradoxical considering that many female journalists, broadcasters and technicians are part of the transmissions, but their jobs are often subordinated to those of male journalists or directors. The voices of women rarely appear ; they are not in management positions, neither in technical controls or on air, and they are not even behind the microphones, but they are employed in production, administrative positions, and in the cleaning of the radio studios. Similarly to Latino radio stations in the United States, a case investigated by Dolores Casillas (2014), within this acoustic space, men are not reproached for speaking aloud, being undocumented, or working in feminized labor roles, such as mopping floors or washing dishes; in contrast, on the radio, they recover their “lost” authority by taking the microphone. Paradoxically, the radio offers new gender roles where male migrants can have political discussions, but women are denied the same social position and power as men. Also, broadcasters usually make jokes about inequalities between men and women; the descriptions of objects are usually associated with the penis, and male listeners who call, laugh on air in a tone of “albur” a “Latin American” linguistic exercise based on puns, which is easily identified by the listener. These hyperboles of masculinization are inscribed in the process of exclusion that male migrants experience while live in the Spanish dominant society. It constitutes a heterosexual/Latinization dispositive where the dispositions of gender turn women into “invisible” subjects. Furthermore, it becomes important to focus on a particular biography of a broadcaster woman, so that we can identify how the racial / colonial migrant status intersects with class and gender, and how limited their potential career options are. On one occasion, I talked to Chary on air, and several listener women called us and discussed some points of my research, making jokes with humor. Chary talked about her experience working in the Latino Radio stations in Madrid as a Guarani speaker, born in Asuncion. She shared the story of her parents from Paraguay, a poor family of farmers. Chary told me that it had been very difficult for her to arrive in Spain. She was divorced, had a lot of debts in Paraguay, one daughter, and the only place where she found a job was cleaning a

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house because she was “undocumented” (field notes, Madrid, September 13th 2012). This experience indicates that access to the media is even more difficult for women migrants who have double and triple shifts at work and who are often responsible for child care. Along the same line of gender inequalities, employment agencies contract advertising spaces in some radio programs because they are looking for workers in a particular sector. They usually offer precarious jobs, badly payed, in the domestic work sector, reproducing the sexual division of work and the ethnostratification of the labor market. This sector is reserved for migrants, and particularly for women. Latino radio stations do not promote jobs in the sector of medicine, architecture, law, engineering, etc. The radio stations build an idea of a “Latino subject” that contributes to the interests and benefits of the radio owners and directors. The image of the audience is associated with “lower class workers”, the “unskilled” and “undocumented”, who can hardly aspire to different job positions. Consequently, Chary’s experience as a “Latina”, creates an identification with a large number of female listeners, especially domestic workers that participate on air and share a similar experience of migration with Chary. At the same time, they have a media space for expressing their political views, feelings, and worries, a forbidden act in mainstream media. This panorama shows that the possibility of participation that Latino radio stations provide to the migrant women is a profitable space for the owners of these stations and their sponsors, but paradoxically, women listeners make different uses of the radio. For example, when I visited Alberto’s radio show, we received a call from Bogota. This time, it was the voice of a mother. She had a daughter living in Madrid, and was worried, as the daughter had not called her family in Colombia for several weeks. This mother explained that her daughter was a listener of Alberto’s radio program and she asked the radio’s audience to help her locate her daughter. This is one of the most popular transnational reappropiations that people, especially worried mothers in Latin America, give to the radio in Madrid. Otherwise, male broadcasters promote songs, information, and entertainment that reproduce “romantic love”, “sexuality with love” and a notion of “Latino community” that favors one cultural matrix legitimizing whiteness and mestizo culture as much as one sexuality – heterosexuality. The commodification of “romantic love” through the songs converts the radio in a dispositive of Latinization/heterosexuality projecting a Latino imaginary of dominant masculinity and femininity. The heteronormative forms appear, prescribing regulatory ideals that are often not equivalent with the bodies, practices and desires of listeners, which constitutes other types of violence33. 33 In my PhD thesis, I explained in more detail this questions (Ruiz Trejo 2015).

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However, the “Latino” identity is not only related to the speech that the radio market projects, but rather with the positions of those who recognize and live that identity. There are negotiations and struggles that are constantly rebuilding and (re)updating this position. Despite regulatory and commercial seductive speeches that attempt to control bodies, practices, and desires (through heteronormative or sexist songs, racist information against indigenous migrants produced by “mestizo” broadcasters or skilled journalists, gender-unequal speeches, etc.) there are ways in which people give new uses to the radio, such as when listeners denounce police raids or racist controls on the streets in order to let their “undocumented” countrymen/women know and to avoid being identified. Likewise, the listener fan clubs arise around the radio programs and become typical organizations of the radio reception where people get together and act collectively to confront the barriers that the regularization of borders impose. Thus, a form of media like the radio station, which was born with capitalist purposes, is reappropriated by people as a tool to overcome obstacles, to create bonds of solidarity (“community love”), for mutual support in difficult situations, and to exchange information, music, etc. with people who stay in the countries of origin. On that account, in my feminist ethnographic challenge, migrant women challenge the power of patriarchal songs, dancing; they take over the dominant heteronormative space in Latino discotheques, renegotiating their autonomy, rejecting the advice of sexist musical lyrics, showing that men do not always have control of the situation. They usually use different strategies, for example, dancing with other women, challenging the hetero-patriarchal authority transmitted through songs, opening a place for them and rejecting the idea that women are a complement to men. Women and lesbian migrants appropriate songs that the heteronormative musical industry distributes; they dance, redesigning the rhythm of music, dancing and resignifying the sex / gender / desire system thereby established. The “romantic love” of songs is not always reproduced or idealized (Ruiz Trejo 2015).

Conclusion In brief, there are different radio stations and ways of broadcasting. On the one hand, “Latino” identity becomes a brand, and many food products, restaurants, discotheques, stores, businesses, and media use it as a way to gain a target group. Latino radio is a space to sell a lifestyle, an ideology, or an identity. Latino commercial identity is sold as a representative idea of all Latin American migrant populations, despite their heterogeneity, and this is a field of study that should be deeply explored in Spain. Does Latino identity generate a massive

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identification between Latin American migrants? Is there a disidentification of this identity? On the other hand, Latino radio is an interactive medium that allow migrants a lot of possibilities with its real-time broadcasts and participatory talk shows. Latino radio offers to the listeners the opportunity to remember their “homeland” through words, songs, narratives, and memories. The sensation of listening to the voices from across the Atlantic Ocean creates souvenirs of a “homeland”, and makes networks of listeners fascinated by the sound. Some radio stations broadcast from Latin America, and they are one of the agents in the “transnational radio field”.

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Biographic notes

Eva Youkhana holds a PhD in Sociology and a Masters in Social Anthropology. She conducted several interdisciplinary environmental projects, urban and migration studies focusing on Latin America, West Africa and Europe. After working in the Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Bonn, she joined the Research Network on Latin America: Ethnicity, Citizenship, Belonging and the Interdisciplinary Latin America Center (ILZ) as a PostDoc in 2010. Since September 2015 she is professor in anthropology at ZEF and leads the Department for Political and Cultural Change. Gioconda Herrera is an Ecuadorian Sociologist, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito, Ecuador (FLACSO-Ecuador). Her main research interests are the connections between Global social inequalities and the mobility of people. She has several publications in the subject of gender and migration in Latin America, and her current research deals with deportation policies and migrants strategies in the US. Juan Carlos Velasco is Senior Tenured Scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). His main research areas are philosophy of law, ethics and politics, with a special focus on human rights, justice, migration and democracy. He was Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Among his numerous publications are: Habermas. El uso pfflblico de la razjn (Madrid 2013); El azar de las fronteras (M8xico 2016); and, as co-editor, Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy. Political Participation, Minorities and Migrations (Dordrecht 2013). He is the head researcher of the project “Human Rights and Global Justice in the context of International Migrations”. Lara Jüssen studied interdisciplinary Latin American Studies in Cologne and Buenos Aires until 2007. She then worked in international cooperation and development: on women in the conflict region Congo, on social conditions in

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Ecuador’s flower productions, and on social and ecological standards in the Bangladesh garment industry. In 2010 she took up work with the Research Network on Latin America – Ethnicity Citizenship Belonging at Bonn University, where she defended her Phd in Cultural Anthropology with a project on citizenship and migration, labour and gender in 2016. She recently joined the Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Bonn. Lucia P8rez is an Ecuadorian Sociologist, Researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Quito, Ecuador. Her main research interests are feminist studies, social inequalities and migration. Mar&a Jos8 Guerra Palmero is Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. She has been as Visiting Scholar in the New School for Social Research, NYU (1997), and in the Center for European Studies of Harvard University (1998). Her research projects have been involved with contemporary moral philosophy, feminist theory and applied ethics, especially environmental ethics and bioethics. Currently, she coordinates a research project titled “Justice, citizenship and vulnerability. Narratives of precarity and intersectional approaches” (FFI2015-63895-C2-1-R) supported by the Minister of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government. She published various books on feminism and ethics among those Mujer, identidad y reconocimiento. Habermas y la cr&tica feminista Instituto Canario de la Mujer, 1998, and Teor&a feminista contempor#nea. Una aproximacijn desde la 8tica Madrid, Complutense, 2001. Maria Schwertl is a Cultural Anthropologist and postdoc at the University of Munich. She has worked on transnationalism displayed in living rooms, on the recent hype on the migration& development-nexus, on the ethnographic migration and border regime analysis approach and on the security-industrial complex. Her current research focusses on the producers of border technology. Marisa Ruiz Trejo has a PhD in Anthropology of migrations, identities and intercultural studies from the Latin American Studies Program of the Universidad Autjnoma de Madrid. In her PhD thesis, she worked on the political economy of “love” and the importance of emotions in migrant lives. Prior to starting her doctoral studies, she received a M.A. in Spaces, Societies and Cultures of Americas. She has published book chapters and journal articles addressing a variety of topics such as feminist epistemologies and methodologies and anthropology of social movements and of migrant radio stations. In addition, she was visiting student in the Ethnic Studies Department, UC Berkeley (2012) and visiting scholar in the Anthropology Department, NYU (2014). Currently, she is

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a postdoctoral researcher at the “Gender Studies Program” (PUEG-UNAM). Her current research project focuses on the feminist critiques of the social sciences in Mexico and Central America. Rodrigo Fidel Rodr&guez Borges holds a PhD in Journalism and a PhD in Philosophy. He is a member of the Research Project Justice, Citizenship and Vulnerability. Narratives of precariousness and intersectional approaches (Ministry of Economy, Spain). He is a professor in the Department of Communication Sciences at University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain) and his lines of research are: journalism ethics, immigration and public opinion, gender and media, and media and citizenship. Yaatsil Guevara Gonz#lez reads for a PhD in Sociology at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology. She studied Anthropology and holds a Masters in Regional Studies. She is a fellow in the Project “The Americas as Space of Entanglement(s)” at the Center for InterAmerican Studies in Bielefeld University. Her research centers on forced migration and refugee studies in Central America and Mexico. Her current research focuses on refugees’ social negotiations and their everyday life during stranded mobility in transit spaces in Mexico’s southern border. She is also actively working in the migrant shelter “La 72-Hogar Refugio para personas migrantes”. Yvonne RiaÇo is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Geography of the University of Neuch.tel, Switzerland. Her current research focuses on “International Student Mobility”, a project situated at the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “On the Move”. She is also an Editor of “Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography”. Her work is informed by feminist geographies of difference. Yvonne RiaÇo’s research interests include highly skilled migration and gender, migrant’s transnational networks and multi-local belonging, geographical imaginations and migration decisions, migration policies and gender regimes, city-making strategies of barrio residents in South-America, and participatory research.