Introduction. Communication and Education for Peace on migrations
| Autor | Eloísa Nos Aldás - Eduardo Andrés Sandoval Forero - Alex Iván Arévalo Salinas |
| Cargo del Autor | Universitat Jaume I de Castellón - Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (UAEM) - Instituto Interuniversitario de Desarrollo Social y Paz (IUDESP) |
| Páginas | 23-30 |
Translation into English by Jenny M. Murphy.
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Two women cross the street under the watchful eye of the police. One of them will be arrested and forced to show immigration papers, while the other will avoid this control and continue on her journey. Although both have the same rights and liabilities, the physical and ethnic differentiation in relation to the Spanish population puts an end to this equality, making the detained a potential suspect for residing undocumented in the territory.
Police arrests due to racial profiling take place daily in cities around the world and are poorly reflected by the media. The raids are carried out in all sorts of places, from bus and train stations to intercultural training centers. One example is the complaint made by the foundation CeiMigra concerning the national police of Valencia and their attempts to detain five immigrants during the break time between attending the courses they offer.
As Amnesty International concludes in its 2010 report on the State of Human Rights in the world, these controls have intensified with the economic crisis in Spain (2010: 180). The organization cites the complaint carried out by the union of the Vallecas province in Madrid regarding the pressures that police officer’s face from their superiors to meet monthly quotas. This news caused a huge stir at the national level, although as noted in this same report,
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Spain’s Interior Ministry denied the existence of any such instructions regarding this subject.
These cases point to the changes being made in immigration policy by European governments in response to the global economic crisis, modifications that reached their peak with the adoption of the Directive 2008/115/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals, which extends the imprisonment of immigrants in detention centers for up to 18 months, allows the expulsion of minors and vulnerable people and outsources border controls by signing agreements with third countries.
The social, economic and political setbacks that we are witnessing may even affect one of the major European achievements as is evident with the recent announcement of Denmark to restore border controls with Germany and Sweden: the freedom of movement within the Schengen space.
The major physical and mental barriers impair progress gained in social integration of the immigrant population affecting their fundamental rights (Pajares, 2010). We are in a reconfiguration process of migration of unforeseen consequences (Gómez Gil, 2010).
The far-right parties have used the economic crisis and migration flows to increase their membership and political participation. Among its main strategies is the exaltation of anti-immigration discourse, which relates these people to the origin of the economic crisis. Its aim is to blame immigrants for the social effects of this crisis like rising unemployment, a strategy that denies and conceals the responsibility of other actors such as banks, businesses and governments partaking in speculation and the lack of will to establish controls over the financial system. The success of this discourse is reflected in the growth of extreme right parties in the recent European elections in 2009 (Gomez, 2009: 2).
In response to the economic crisis and its management by rich governments, the Indignant movement or 15-M in Spain, in the last municipal elections of 2011, has peacefully demanded alternatives and changes to political, economic and social structures. Thousands of people have gathered in squares and public places to demonstrate their rejection of an unrepresentative political system and their dissatisfaction with the silencing of the debate by business, political and military power groups. Their criticisms are directed at the lack of participation in decision-making and the power of these groups to establish their interests above all other groups. In addition, 15-M demonstrations are a sign of citizenship fatigue resulting from the lack of will of international organizations and governments to address the deep inequalities of the world system. According to Tortosa (2011: 31), we face a constant class struggle between those at the top against those at the bottom, where the former benefit from their better organization, internationalization and globalization. The excessive nationalism of those at the bottom directly influences
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this result by dividing and disorganizing them. To explain the consequences of these dynamics, Tortosa (2011: 31) coins the term...
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