Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders: Migrants, Transnational Encounters, and Identity in Spain offers a new approach to the cultural history of contemporary Spain, examining the ways in which Spain’s own self-conceptions are changing and multiplying in response to migrants from Latin America and Africa. In the last twenty-five years, Spain has gone from being a country of net emigration to one in which immigrants make up nearly 12 percent of the population. This rapid growth has made migrants increasingly visible in both mass media and in Spanish visual and literary culture. This book examines the origins of media discourses on immigration and takes the analysis of contemporary Spanish culture as its primary framework, while also drawing insights from sociology and history. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders introduces readers to a wide range of recent films, journals, novels, photography, paintings, and music to reconsider contemporary Spain through its varied encounters with migrants. It follows the stages of the migrant’s own journey, beginning outside Spanish territory, continuing across the border (either at the barbed-wire fences of Ceuta and Melilla or the waters of the Atlantic or the Strait of Gibraltar), and then considers what happens to migrants after they arrive and settle in Spain. Each chapter analyzes one of these stages in order to illustrate the complexity of contemporary Spanish identity. This examination of Spanish culture shows how Spain is evolving into a new space of imagination, one that can no longer be defined without the migrant—a space in which there is no unified identity but rather a new self-understanding is being born. Vega-Durán both places Spain in a larger European context and draws attention to some of the features that, from a comparative perspective, make the Spanish case interesting and often unique. She argues that Spain cannot be understood today outside the Transatlantic and Mediterranean spaces (both real and imaginary) where Spaniards and migrants meet. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders offers a timely study of present-day Spain, and makes an original contribution to the vibrant debates about multiculturalism and nation-formation that are taking

Because of severe domestic labor shortages, Japan has recently joined the increasing number of advanced industrialized nations that have begun importing large numbers of immigrant workers since the 1980s. Although the citizenship status of foreign workers is the most precarious in such recent countries of immigration, the national governments of these countries have become increasingly preoccupied with border enforcement, forcing local municipalities and organizations to offer basic rights and social services to the foreign residents who are settling in their local communities. This book analyzes the development of local citizenship in Japan by examining the role of local governments and NGOs as well as grass-roots political and judicial activism in the expansion of immigrant rights. In this manner, localities are emerging as important sites for the struggle for immigrant citizenship and social integration, enabling foreign workers to enjoy substantive rights even in the absence of national citizenship. The possibilities and limits of such local citizenship in Japan are then compared to three other recent countries of immigration (Italy, Spain, and South Korea).

In an era of globalization and demographic transition international migration has become an important issue for European governments. The past decades have seen an increasing and diversifying flow of migrants from different parts of the world, including many from South, Southeast and East Asia. It has become apparent that in several European countries the demand for workers in certain sectors of the labour market is increasing and that Asia has become the source for these workers. This collection explores the phenomenon of Asian immigration in Europe, particularly focusing on the ways in which Asian immigrants gain access to local labour markets. The book includes studies of several countries including Germany, France and the United Kingdom - shedding light on the labour market positions of different ethnic groups within Europe. Asian Migrants and European Labour Markets will interest scholars in the field of labour economics, population and migration studies and international business.

Examining which actors determine undocumented migrants’ access to healthcare on the ground, this volume looks at what happens in the daily interactions between administrative personnel, healthcare professionals and migrant patients in healthcare institutions across Europe. Borders across Healthcare explores contemporary moral economies of the healthcare-migration nexus. The volume documents the many ways in which borders come to disrupt healthcare settings and illuminates how judgements of a health-related deservingness become increasingly important, producing hierarchies that undermine a universal right to healthcare.

In her groundbreaking and innovative study, the author takes us on a fascinating journey through some of Madrid's multilingual and multicultural schools and reveals the role played by linguistic practices in the construction of inequality through such processes as what she calls "de-capitalization" and "ethnicization". Through a critical sociolinguistic and discourse analysis of the data collected in an ethnographic study, the book shows the exclusion caused by monolingualizing tendencies and ideologies of deficit in education and society. The book opens a timely discussion of the management of diversity in multilingual and multicultural classrooms, both for countries with a long tradition of migration flows and for those where the phenomenon is relatively new, as is the case in Spain. This study of linguistic practices in the classroom makes clear the need to rethink some key linguistic concepts, such as practice, competence, discourse, and language, and to integrate different approaches in qualitative research. The volume is essential reading for students and researchers working in sociolinguistics, education and related areas, as well as for all teachers and social workers who deal with the increasing heterogeneity of our late modern societies in their work.