Ambivalent inclusion: anti‐racism and racist gatekeeping in Andalusia's immigrant NGOs

Abstract

This article explores encounters between Andalusian NGO workers and immigrant clients in southern Spain. It traces how local ambivalence about pluralism, rooted in long‐standing debates about the legacy of Andalusia's medieval Muslim past, produces both inclusion and exclusion of migrants. On the one hand, Andalusian NGO staff have developed a discourse of anti‐racism in which care for immigrants is a means of constructing a modern, progressive identity for a historically marginalized European region. On the other hand, widely circulating racialized and gendered discourses about immigrants also result in the exclusion of those deemed undeserving, particularly Muslim, Moroccan men. The Andalusian case thus highlights the vagaries of social life that complicate implementation of policies and programmes for migrant incorporation. In the process, it demonstrates that modes of immigrant inclusion and exclusion in Europe are deeply intertwined with regionally particular anxieties about social difference. Résumé L'auteure examine ici les rencontres entre les employés d'ONG en Andalousie et les bénéficiaires de leur action, immigrés dans le sud de l'Espagne. Elle montre comment l'ambivalence locale sur le pluralisme, ancrée dans de vieux débats sur l'héritage de l'Andalousie musulmane du Moyen Âge, entraîne à la fois l'inclusion et l'exclusion des migrants. D'un côté, le personnel des ONG andalouses a élaboré un discours d'antiracisme présentant l'accueil des immigrés comme un moyen de construire une identité moderne et progressiste pour une région de l'Europe qui a été de tout temps marginalisée. De l'autre, les discours racialisés et genrés très répandus à propos des immigrés entraînent l'exclusion de ceux qui ne sont pas jugés méritants, en particulier des hommes musulmans marocains. Le cas de l'Andalousie met ainsi en lumière les aléas de la vie sociale qui compliquent l'application des politiques et programmes d'intégration des immigrés. Il montre dans le même temps que les modes d'inclusion et d'exclusion des migrants en Europe sont intimement entremêlés avec des inquiétudes sur la différence sociale qui varient d'une région à l'autre.

Caradura: Migration, Informal Labor, and the Problem of Enacting Trust in a Spanish Enclave in Morocco

“…Moroccan agency also implies that they voluntarily form ties of confianza. In tight places, such as the criminal cases described above, this allows tactics of “responsibilisation,” whereby “forms of inequality and blame are imposed on self‐care rather than on structural problems that require cultural and political solutions” (Rogozen‐Soltar , 642). Discourses assigning victimhood to sub‐Saharan and Asian refugees, but hostile agency to Moroccans have been recorded elsewhere in Spain (Rogozen‐Soltar ; Shryock ).…”

Shadow Subjects: A Category of Analysis for Empathic Stancetaking

“…Campaigns for “getting along” through convivencia represent a newer area of concern while harkening back to romanticized views of intercultural tolerance during Muslim rule in Al‐Andalus (AD 711–1492). Approaches to convivencia with new immigrants, especially North African Muslims, vary according to local policy and civic and social initiatives (Erickson ; Rogozen‐Soltar , ). In schools, convivencia is a measure of student conduct as well as attitudes toward multicultural difference.…”

On Precariousness and the Ethical Imagination: The Year 2012 in Sociocultural Anthropology

“…One set of articles raises the question of how dissent comes to be thwarted (Cho ; Harms ), individualized (Junge ), or pathologized (Weiss ). A second set explores the violence and exclusion that accompany the “ambivalent inclusion” (Rogozen‐Soltar :633) of immigrants in diverse parts of the globe (Ameeriar ; Gonzales and Chavez ; Rogozen‐Soltar , ; Rozakou ), whereas one article explores how Australian Aboriginals struggle over how to inhabit white settler colonial public space (Fisher ). A third set of articles deals with state and other forms of governmental bureaucracy (Hull ; Kravel‐Tovi ; Lavie ; McKay ; Thedvall ), whereas a fourth represents media landscapes as battlegrounds over normative forms of reflexivity (Tambar ), over infrastructures and visual representation (Gürsel 2012), and over “the local” (Udupa ).…”