Description
Book SynopsisWhile Convivencia is a specific historical term that has come to represent an idea of peaceful co-existence, Convivencia: Urban Space and Migration in a Small Catalan Town complicates this simplistic vision. Instead, it shows how convivencia has been and is indeed always conflict-ridden by scrutinising the relations between cultural diversity and social conflicts and considering why some social conflicts are said to be inherently cultural. It does this through a multi-scalar extended case study of a small town in Northern Catalonia, Spain. Starting from an ethnography, it sheds light on the multiple local-global processes inherent to the social construction of the “migrant problem” and its solutions.
The book analyzes the simultaneously local-global transformation of migration and societies, connecting the local processes of space- and place-making in Salt with the more extensive processes of migration, economic crisis and social transformation, and finally, the responses to these changes from the local society, institutions, and NGOs.
This work allows for a deeper understanding of the complex web of urban, social, and political transformation in which migration as a phenomenon takes part. Focusing mainly on the interaction between mobility and settlement and the socio-cultural processes at different scales through the vectors of production and reproduction of space, it advances findings on the “new social question in Europe.”
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1: The Setting: Salt in the 21st Century
Chapter 2: Social Conflicts: Negotiating Borders and Boundaries
Chapter 3: Spaces of Conflict, Conflicts over Space
Chapter 4: An Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove: From Zero-Tolerance to Policies of Quieting and Convivència
Chapter 5: Between Territorial Stigma and Rural Gentrification: A Rurban Paradise for the Middle-Class?
Chapter 6: Openings and Closures
References
Annex 1: Dramatis Personae
Index
