Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T12:20:00.416Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“We suffered in our bones just like them”: Comparing Migrations at the Margins of Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2016

Mikaela Rogozen-Soltar
Mikaela Rogozen-Soltar*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno
*
mikaelars@unr.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I trace how return migrants (former labor emigrants) from Andalusia, Spain draw on their regional history of emigration as a resource for claiming the moral authority to assess immigrants from the global south. By comparing their own migratory experiences and those of new migrants, Andalusians renegotiate competing ideas about their region's membership in Europe, a question with renewed political saliency during the ongoing economic crisis. Specifically, they use comparisons to claim a more central place in Europe for Andalusia, while at the same time eschewing moral culpability for Europe's mistreatment of labor emigration. To do so, Andalusian return migrants mobilize discourses of migrant suffering at various geopolitical scales of belonging, often mapping Andalusians’ experiences of emigration and return onto the region's historical trajectory of Europeanization. The scaling up and down of discourses of migrant suffering in the context of historical narratives of migration enables Andalusians to claim moral superiority based on their non-European, migrant past while also claiming European belonging in the present. Memorializing and assessing migrant suffering thus become forms of discursive work that help construct the political and moral limits of Europeanness. Through analysis of this process, I call for a more central focus on return migration and the intersection of multiple kinds of population mobility in migration research and in the study of European unification.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 880 - 907
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

ABC (Sevilla Edition). 2014. Los alarmantes datos de paro juvenil en Andalucía que llamaron la atención del Papa. 28 May 2014. http://sevilla.abc.es/economia/20140527/sevi-datos-paro-andalucia-201405271320.html (accessed 1 Sept. 2014).Google Scholar
Algazi, Gadi. 2005. Diversity Rules: Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell's The Corrupting Sea . Mediterranean Historical Review 20, 2: 227–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersson, Ruben. 2014. Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Armentrout, Anna. 2012. The Politics of Experience: Peace Corps Volunteers, Vietnam Veterans, and American Internationalism, 1961–1980. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Balfour, Sebastian. 2000. Spain from 1931 to the Present. In Carr, R., ed., Spain: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ballinger, Pamela. 1999. Definitional Dilemmas: Southeastern Europe as ‘Culture Area.’ Balkanologie: Revue d’études pluridisciplinaires 3, 2: 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ballinger, Pamela. 2007. Borders of the Nation, Borders of Citizenship: Italian Repatriation and the Redefinition of National Identity after World War II. Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, 3: 713–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bastia, Tanja. 2011. Should I Stay or Should I Go? Return Migration in Times of Crisis. Journal of International Development 23: 583–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Yehoyada, Naor. 2011. The Moral Perils of Mediterraneanism: Second-Generation Immigrants Practicing Personhood between Sicily and Tunisia. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 16, 3: 386–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Yehoyada, Naor. 2014. Transnational Political Cosmology: A Central Mediterranean Example. Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, 4: 870–901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg, Mette Louis. 2011. Diasporic Generations: Memory, Politics, and the Nation among Cubans in Spain. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Boehm, Deborah. 2013. Intimate Migrations: Gender, Family, and Illegality among Transnational Mexicans. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Boehm, Deborah. 2016. Returned: Going and Coming in an Age of Deportation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Calderwood, Eric. 2014. The Invention of al-Andalus: Discovering the Past and Creating the Present in Granada's Islamic Tourism Sites. Journal of North African Studies 19, 1: 27–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Candea, Matei. 2006. Resisting Victimhood in Corsica. History and Anthropology 17, 4: 369–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Donald. 1997. States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Immigration. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Chambao. 2007. Papeles Mojados. Sony Music.Google Scholar
Chavez, Leo. 2008. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Jeffrey. 1997. The New Racism in Europe: A Sicilian Ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, Jane. 1997. From Duty to Desire: Remaking Families in a Spanish Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2007. Nations of Emigrants: Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
De Genova, Nicholas and Peutz, Nathalie, eds. 2010. The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
De León, Jason. 2015. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Divita, David. 2014. From Paris to Pueblo and Back: (Re-)Emigration and the Modernist Chronotope in Cultural Performance. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24, 1: 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El Diario . 2015. El PSOE denuncia que Rajoy olvida a los emigrantes españoles en los presupuestos. Eldiario.es, 28 Aug. (accessed 14 Sept. 2015).Google Scholar
Fernández, James. 1988. Andalusia on Our Minds: Two Contrasting Places in Spain as Seen in a Vernacular Poetic Duel of the Late 19th Century. Cultural Anthropology 3: 21–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernando, Mayanthi. 2014. The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fikes, Kesha. 2009. Managing African Portugal: The Citizen-Migrant Distinction. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fokkema, Tineke. 2011. ‘Return’ Migration Intentions among Second-Generation Turks in Europe: The Effect of Intergeneration and Transnationalism in a Cross-National Perspective. Journal of Mediterranean Studies 20, 2: 365–88.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 1991. Bartók's Funeral: Representations of Europe in Hungarian Political Rhetoric. American Ethnologist 18, 3: 440–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallardo, F. A. 2011. Canal sur cancela el espacio ‘Andaluces por el Mundo. Diario de Sevilla, 21 Dec. At: diariodesevilla.es (accessed 23 Feb. 2014).Google Scholar
García-Sánchez., 2014. Language and Muslim Immigrant Childhoods: The Politics of Belonging. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrido, Ángeles Arjona and Olmos, Juan Carlos Checa. 2005. Emigrantes en Andalucía (España): una aproximación a los casos de Bélgica y la Argentina. Anthropológica 23: 101–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, Lila Ellen. 2011. Fado's City. Anthropology and Humanism 36, 2: 141–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hershenzon, Daniel. 2014. Traveling Libraries: The Arabic Manuscripts of Muley Zidan and the Escorial Library. Journal of Early Modern History 18, 6: 535–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Seth. 2013. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Jiménez-Bautista, Francisco and Sandoval-Forero, Eduardo Andrés. 2010. Los migrantes españoles emigrantes a Granada. Papeles de Población 66: 75–102.Google Scholar
Juventud Sin Futuro. 2016. www.nonosvamosnosechan.net (accessed 26 May 2016).Google Scholar
Kertzer, David and Hogan, Dennis. 1985. On the Move: Migration in an Italian Community, 1865–1921. Social Science History 9, 1: 1–23.Google Scholar
King, Russell, ed. 2000. Sunset Lives: British Retirement Migration to the Mediterranean. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
King, Russell and Christou, Anastasia. 2010. Cultural Geographies of Counter-Diasporic Migration: Perspectives from the Study of Second-Generation ‘Returnees’ to Greece. Population, Space and Place 16, 2: 103–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koven, Michele. 2013. Speaking French in Portugal: An Analysis of Contested Models of Emigrant Personhood in Narratives about Return Migration and Language Use. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17, 3: 324–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leinaweaver, Jessaca. 2013. Adoptive Migration: Raising Latinos in Spain. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lemon, Alaina. 2000. Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
López Trigal, Lorenzo. 2010. Conceptualización y consideraciones sobre las migraciones de retorno en España. Ería 83: 326–30.Google Scholar
Lucht, Hans. 2011. Darkness before Daybreak: African Migrants Living on the Margins in Southern Italy Today. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maddox, Richard. 2004. The Best of All Possible Islands: Seville's Universal Exposition, the New Spain, and the New Europe. Albany: SUNY Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markowitz, Fran and Stefansson, Anders, eds. 2004. Homecomings: Unsettling Paths of Return. Lanham: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Narotzky, Susana. 2012. Europe in Crisis: Grassroots Economies and the Anthropological Turn. Etnográfica 16, 3: 627–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narotzky, Susana and Besnier, Niko. 2014. Crisis, Value, and Hope: Rethinking the Economy: An Introduction to Supplement 9. Current Anthropology 55, S9: S4–S16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ní Laoire, Caitríona. 2011. Narratives of ‘Innocent Irish Childhoods’: Return Migration and Intergenerational Family Dynamics. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37, 8: 1253–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olwig, Karen. 2012. The ‘Successful’ Return: Caribbean Narratives of Migration, Family, and Gender. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18: 828–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Partridge, Damani. 2012. Hypersexuality and Headscarves: Race, Sex, and Citizenship in the New Germany. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Perlita, de Huelva. 2005 [1969]. “Obrero Emigrante.” On the album Amigo Conductor. Spain: Divucsa Music.Google Scholar
Pine, Frances. 2014. Migration as Hope: Space, Time, and Imagining the Future. Current Anthropology 55, S9: S95–S104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez, Vicente and Egea, Carmen. 2006. Return and the Social Environment of Andalusian Emigrants in Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32, 8: 1377–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez, Vicente, Egea, Carmen, and Nieto, José Antonio. 2002. Return Migration in Andalusia, Spain. International Journal of Population Geography 8: 233–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogozen-Soltar, Mikaela. 2012a. Ambivalent Inclusion: Anti-Racism and Racist Gatekeeping in Andalusia's Immigrant NGOs. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18, 3: 633–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogozen-Soltar, Mikaela. 2012b Managing Muslim Visibility: Conversion, Immigration, and Spanish Imaginaries of Islam. American Anthropologist 114, 4: 611–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roseman, Sharon. 2013. Unemployment and Labor Migration in Rural Galicia (Spain). Dialectical Anthropology 37: 401–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayad, Abdelmalek. 2004. The Suffering of the Immigrant. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Paul. 2004. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Paul. 2005. Immigrant Racialization and the New Savage Slot: Race, Migration, and Immigration in the New Europe. Annual Reviews of Anthropology 34: 363–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinatti, Giulia. 2015. Return Migration as a Win-Win-Win Scenario? Visions of Return among Senegalese Migrants, the State of Origin, and Receiving Countries. Ethnic and Racial Studies 38, 2: 275–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suárez Navaz, Liliana. 2004. Rebordering the Mediterranean: Boundaries and Citizenship in Southern Europe. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Terrio, Susan. 2009. Judging Mohammed: Juvenile Delinquency, Immigration, and Exclusion at the Paris Palace of Justice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Theodossopoulos, Dimitrios. 2013. Infuriated with the Infuriated? Blaming Tactics and Discontent about the Greek Financial Crisis. Current Anthropology 54, 2: 200–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ticktin, Miriam. 2011. Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsuda, Takeyuki, ed. 2009. Diasporic Homecomings: Ethnic Return Migration in Comparative Perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Tucker, Joshua. 2014. Sounding the Latin Transatlantic: Music, Integration, and Ambivalent Ethnogenesis in Spain. Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, 4: 902–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wessendorf, Susanne. 2007. ‘Roots Migrants’: Transnationalism and ‘Return’ among Second-Generation Italians in Switzerland. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, 7: 1083–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wessendorf, Susanne. 2010. Local Attachments and Transnational Everyday Lives: Second-Generation Italians in Switzerland. Global Networks 10, 3: 365–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar