R Zapata-Barrero
Biographic Data
| ID | 22145 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Zapata-Barrero |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Zapata-Barrero |
| SIGNATURE | ZAPATA-BARRERO R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat Pompeu Fabra |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3478-1330 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 411 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The local trap in migration research
The “local turn” in migration research often portrays municipalities as inherently inclusive and rights driven. This article argues that such narratives risk idealising the local and reproducing what urban scholars call the local trap: the assumption that they are naturally progressive. Revisiting the normative and epistemological foundations of this literature, we conceptualise this bias as methodological localism, a mirror image of methodologic…
Theorising inclusive collective memory in contexts of contestation
This article investigates the role of migration in shaping contested collective memories, taking Catalonia as a case study. While memory studies have advanced the understanding of identity formation, the migration factor (M-factor) remains under-theorised, particularly in contexts where demographic change challenges entrenched national narratives. Catalonia offers a striking example: a territorial community with national aspirations but without a…
Urban resilience in Turkish refugee governance
This article examines how cities mobilize resilience as a regulatory principle in migration governance, focusing on their capacity to act under structural, institutional, and legal constraints. The literature distinguishes between two interpretations of urban resilience: a transformative approach, associated with decentralization and innovation, and a conservative approach, reinforcing existing institutional arrangements. Scholarship frequently l…
De-bordering policies at the city scale
This article bridges the fields of urban politics, migration governance and border studies by exploring Barcelona as a case study. It raises a first critical question about what happens to so-called borderlands when "borders" move to other scales, such as cities that are not usually categorized as "border cities". Within this framing debate, this study explores two fundamental questions: (1) how border practices at the state level shape constrain…
Resilient urban turnaround in migration governance studies
Today, cities are under multiple pressures because they must provide responses to global migration challenges, but have limited governance capacity. This is placing chronic stress on physical infrastructures, basic resources, and urban planning, which most often cities must face alone. There is a rising awareness that doing nothing may increase instability and social conflict, giving rise to more segregation, and racism. Focusing on the crucial t…
Governing diversity in the multilevel European public space
The issue of working out a viable relationship between accepting and/or living with diversity on the one hand and fostering integration on the other has occupied public debates, political agendas, and social sciences for decades. Our point of departure is that the contemporary European context provides distinct challenges. We need to understand how postmigrant integration is shaped and conditioned by the European public space understood as a geog…
Significado de la Teoría Política
Los cambios tan rápidos de parámetros que estamos viviendo estos últimos años están confrontando a los investigadorescientíficos sociales a nuevos contextos y perspectivas. Son situaciones tan nuevas que la tarea conceptual sobrecómo abordar estos nuevos interrogantes se torna una necesidad para la propia dinámica innovadora de la disciplina.Lo cierto es que cada vez más se tiene la convicción de que las reflexiones teóricas y las decisiones polí…
Justicia para inmigrantes
Este artículo examina desde un punto de vista normativo la relación entre la justicia y laextranjería, en particular las cuestiones sobre los límites de la justicia en una política de extranjería.La pregunta que me he planteado es la siguiente: ¿es moralmente justo que los Estados legitimensus políticas de extranjería en base a unos criterios económicos? El argumento que guiará mirazonamiento es que una política de extranjería tiene un carácter m…
Interculturalism and the 'Ideological Turn' of Diversity Politics
This article critically examines how ideology permeates the politics of diversity today and is forcing us to clarify political positions towards a much more intercultural approach to diversity. At a time when the demographic argument is gaining momentum in the US, Europe, and other continents, with neo-colonial beliefs of white supremacy and irrational fears of the ‘Great replacement’ movement, the diversity politics debate is becoming strongly p…
Urban migration governance under the resilience lens
Most of the recent literature in migration and ethnic studies, and particularly the debate on the “local turn”, mention multi-layered pressures that cities must address to develop their governance capacities, but few theorize an approach to better grasp these challenges. As cities move from state loyalty to empowerment, we enter the puzzle of urban resilience. This article argues that urban resilience is becoming a principle that regulates innova…
Urban resilience and migration governance in Tunisia’s unstable political environment
Tunisia is discovering a new migration pattern, with new arrivals staying rather than transiting, given the agreements between the EU and Tunisia to secure their borders. And this is happening in an extremely unstable environment that oscillates between democracy and autocracy. In this scenario, Tunisian cities are becoming catalysts for migration governance resilience. Drawing on the extensive literature on urban resilience but applied to pressu…
Tightening the conceptual lens in migration research
This brief note deals directly with what is interpreted as John Mollenkorpf’s epistemological, comparative and regional critique to conceptual thinking in migration studies. The paper is devoted to meta-conceptual thinking. From an analytical point of view, there are three main lines of thought that inspired the author to define a geography of concepts and the need of Weberian approach. First, the distinction between the discussion of a conceptua…
A Multi-scale Approach to Interculturalism
Interculturalism (IC) is presently discussed as a foundational basis for local public policy aimed at managing migration-related diversity within ethno-culturally plural societies, especially at the local level. Despite its increased saliency over the last decade, IC is neither theoretically new nor was it always intended for mere application in strictly city contexts of diversity. Rather, it has a global origin as a political basis for internati…
New scales of migration governance in the Mediterranean
Within the framework of Mediterranean migration studies and as a contribution to the emerging debate on the ‘local turn’, and on multiscalar approaches of region-making from different disciplines, the main objective of this article is to analyse an empirical trend that theoretically reinforces the view that cities can shape new regional domains. This city-region interface delimits the article’s two-sided argument. On one hand, the article argues …
Discrimination meets interculturalism in theory, policy and practice
Discrimination of immigrants and racialized minorities as the Roma is increasing in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Different policy approaches to diversity management tackle this issue differently, both in terms of recognizing ethnic discrimination as a key obstacle to integration and in terms of defining the ideal forms of conviviality in superdiverse societies. In this special issue, we focus on interculturalism as a policy approach to dive…
Mediterranean thinking in migration studies
The core reflection of this article is to explore the potential of using the Mediterranean as a category of analysis for migration studies, what epistemological and ontological effects this may have and how this could be done. To better capture this focus, I will speak about Med ‐ Thinking . This Mediterranean scale of analysis invites us to follow methodological regionalism. In practice, this means that we need to encourage scholars to channel t…
Qualitative migration research ethics
Purpose This article aims to set a roadmap for an ethical programme, which we call “qualitative migration research ethics” (QMRE). It is a scoping review that maps current ethical challenges that migration scholars often face and provide guidance, while acknowledging the fact that many researchers deal with ethical issues on a case-by-case basis. Design/methodology/approach By connecting three lines of debates – ethics in social sciences, in qual…
Republicanism, diversity and public space in contemporary political theory
This article seeks to contribute to the debate on contemporary political theory, a baseline for how to live together within diversity settings, by incorporating interculturalism into the normative theorizing of citizenship. Interculturalism’s nuclear philosophy lies in privileging people-to-people relations, and hence for a micro-identity politics. I will focus interculturalism as a strategy for citizenship-making and place-making policy with a p…
Diaspora governance and transnational entrepreneurship
His main lines of research deal with contemporary issues of liberal democracy in contexts of diversity, especially the relationship between democracy, citizenship, human mobility and immigration
Harnessing the potential of Moroccans living abroad through diaspora policies? Assessing the factors of success and failure of a new structure of opportunities for transnational entrepreneurs
In the framework of the emerging field of research on transnational migrant entrepreneurship at the crossroads of business and migration studies, the main purpose of this article is to assess the change of the Moroccan policy paradigm concerning their diaspora engagement policy, which has shifted from a guest-workers policy narrative (remittances based approach) to a transnational policy narrative (skills-mobilisation based approach) during the l…
Rebooting European Identity
In this article, I will defend interculturalism as a main methodology to reboot the same European identity. My focus will combine normative, epistemological and policy-oriented scholarship and documentary analysis. After contextualizing the terms of the debate within the on-going project of Europe, I will follow six main streams. First, as a matter of Diagnosis, I underline that the current European identity crisis is related to the core ontologi…
Methodological interculturalism
As part of the post-multicultural era, transnationalism, super-diversity, cosmopolitanism and solidarity develop a sense of awareness to live in a complex society. This requests us to identify the epistemological barriers preventing us to produce new knowledge, since there is a raising consciousness that these new frameworks cannot be addressed with old policy maps. All share the need to go beyond methodological nationalism, and one of its by-pro…
Mapping the Qualitative Migration Research in Europe
Applied Political Theory and Qualitative Research in Migration Studies
Introduction
Theorizing the ‘local turn’ in a multi-level governance framework of analysis
Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies
This open access book covers the main issues, challenges and techniques concerning the application of qualitative methodologies to the study of migration. It discusses theoretical, epistemological and empirical questions that must be considered before, during, and after undertaking qualitative research in migration studies. It also covers recent innovative developments and addresses the key issues and major challenges that qualitative migration r…
Interculturalism in the post-multicultural debate
The main purpose of this article is to formulate a defence of the emerging intercultural policy paradigm for the benefit of those who are still somewhat reluctant to accept its proper place within the current migration-related diversity policy debate. My defence will take two main lines of argumentation: Firstly, I will state that the increasing intensity of the intercultural policy paradigm must be placed in the present-day post-multicultural pe…
The Muhammad cartoons controversy in comparative perspective
Udgivelsesdato: September
Diaspora governance and transnational entrepreneurship
His main lines of research deal with contemporary issues of liberal democracy in contexts of diversity, especially the relationship between democracy, citizenship, human mobility and immigration
The Politics of Immigration in Multi-Level States
This book develops an exploratory theory of immigration in multilevel states addressing two themes: governance and political parties. It examines not only how, and by whom, immigration policy is decid
Policies and public opinion towards immigrants
By tackling negative opinions towards immigration we can create a basis to orientate policies that seek to reduce them. My purpose is to highlight that the analysis of immigration in Spain exemplifies a clear link between policies and public opinion. It is this link that is at the basis of what I will call the ambivalence of Spanish public opinion, when border and integration issues are compared
Qualitative migration research ethics
Purpose This article aims to set a roadmap for an ethical programme, which we call “qualitative migration research ethics” (QMRE). It is a scoping review that maps current ethical challenges that migration scholars often face and provide guidance, while acknowledging the fact that many researchers deal with ethical issues on a case-by-case basis. Design/methodology/approach By connecting three lines of debates – ethics in social sciences, in qual…
The Spanish Governance of EU borders
Spain has a relatively short history of immigration compared to other European countries. Entry into the European Community in 1986 forced Spain to draw up the first legislation on immigration in 1
Harnessing the potential of Moroccans living abroad through diaspora policies? Assessing the factors of success and failure of a new structure of opportunities for transnational entrepreneurs
In the framework of the emerging field of research on transnational migrant entrepreneurship at the crossroads of business and migration studies, the main purpose of this article is to assess the change of the Moroccan policy paradigm concerning their diaspora engagement policy, which has shifted from a guest-workers policy narrative (remittances based approach) to a transnational policy narrative (skills-mobilisation based approach) during the l…
Monitoring discriminatory political discourse on immigration
The aim of this article is to present the findings of an analytical framework we have designed to monitor discriminatory political discourse on immigration. Through the understanding of how some of the most relevant studies in three disciplines (political science, social psychology and linguistics) have framed racism, we try to infer how such racism may manifest in discourse through particular discriminatory tendencies. The combination of these t…
Managing Diversity in Spanish Society
This paper examines the main elements of Spanish diversity management and specifically its philosophy. It defends the argument that Spain follows a practical philosophy. ‘Practical philosophy’ refers to a way of managing diversity which is not based on established and preconceived ideas, projected by its own social construction such as French republicanism or British multiculturalism, but rather on questions and answers generated by the practice …
Methodological interculturalism
As part of the post-multicultural era, transnationalism, super-diversity, cosmopolitanism and solidarity develop a sense of awareness to live in a complex society. This requests us to identify the epistemological barriers preventing us to produce new knowledge, since there is a raising consciousness that these new frameworks cannot be addressed with old policy maps. All share the need to go beyond methodological nationalism, and one of its by-pro…
How do political parties deal with the "diversity gap"? Democratic deficits and party strategies
This article is a theoretically oriented contribution seeking to review the existing literature directly or indirectly addressing the "diversity gap" in political parties. Within this particular field I identify two main areas to conduct research: participation and representation. The premise is that the particular features of political parties, given their role in the democratic system, implies that they cannot be neutral when they identify the …
Intercultural policy and multi-level governance in Barcelona
The main purpose of this article is to analyse Barcelona’s mainstreaming approach to intercultural policy from the beginning of its immigration process. My key questions are threefold: (a) why was Barcelona attracted by the intercultural approach so early in 1997? (b) how can we understand the consolidation of interculturalism? and (c) how can its successful permanent endurance (16 years) be explained, given different migratory contexts/political…
Is Catalonia Immune to Racism? An Analysis of Intolerant Political Discourses of Mainstream Party Representatives (2010-2011)
Despite the reduced presence of the far-right in Catalonia, anti-immigrant stances and discourses have occupied a central position during political campaigns for local, autonomous, and national elections in 2010–2011. The Catalan case is based on the analysis of three case studies: the local exclusion from the census of undocumented immigrants by the city of Vic, the campaign of the People's Party candidate in Badalona containing hate speech agai…
New scales of migration governance in the Mediterranean
Within the framework of Mediterranean migration studies and as a contribution to the emerging debate on the ‘local turn’, and on multiscalar approaches of region-making from different disciplines, the main objective of this article is to analyse an empirical trend that theoretically reinforces the view that cities can shape new regional domains. This city-region interface delimits the article’s two-sided argument. On one hand, the article argues …
Diversity and cultural policy
At the crossroads of citizenship, cultural and diversity studies, I enter in the emerging debate on cultural citizenship. Culture is seen as a channel for diversity inclusion, and cultural policy carries the function of enhancing citizenship. My reasoning will follow two steps. First, in overviewing the recent literature, I identify two main drivers making cultural citizenship: the democratic/equality and the identity/national drivers. However, I…
Setting a Research Agenda on the Interaction Between Cultural Demands of Immigrants and Minority Nations
During the last two decades of the 20th century, the normative debate on multiculturalism has been one-dimensional. It has deployed arguments related to cultural demands either linked to feminism and sub-cultural identities, immigration, or national minorities. Little attention has been given to the relations between these dimensions, and how they affect each other in putting forward demands to the nation-state. The purpose of this article is to …
Resilient urban turnaround in migration governance studies
Today, cities are under multiple pressures because they must provide responses to global migration challenges, but have limited governance capacity. This is placing chronic stress on physical infrastructures, basic resources, and urban planning, which most often cities must face alone. There is a rising awareness that doing nothing may increase instability and social conflict, giving rise to more segregation, and racism. Focusing on the crucial t…
Governing diversity in the multilevel European public space
The issue of working out a viable relationship between accepting and/or living with diversity on the one hand and fostering integration on the other has occupied public debates, political agendas, and social sciences for decades. Our point of departure is that the contemporary European context provides distinct challenges. We need to understand how postmigrant integration is shaped and conditioned by the European public space understood as a geog…
Discrimination meets interculturalism in theory, policy and practice
Discrimination of immigrants and racialized minorities as the Roma is increasing in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Different policy approaches to diversity management tackle this issue differently, both in terms of recognizing ethnic discrimination as a key obstacle to integration and in terms of defining the ideal forms of conviviality in superdiverse societies. In this special issue, we focus on interculturalism as a policy approach to dive…
Theorizing State Behavior in International Migrations
We are really just at the beginning of analysing the connection between ethics, border management and migration policies. In this framework of the debate, I would like to propose a line of analysis centred, not so much what States do in the area of migration policies but rather theorize about the behaviour toward the demand for entry by people from other States. That is, how the States behave rather than what the States do in migration policies. …
Perceptions and Realities of Moroccan Immigration Flows and Spanish Policies
This article puts forward a number of theoretical considerations relevant for understanding the relationship between immigration policies and the flows and settlement of Moroccan immigrants in Spain. The basic argument is that there is a combination of perceptions and realities that have to be taken into account in any analysis exploring the interface between migrants' plans and their actions and state policies. The structure of this article will…
Republicanism, diversity and public space in contemporary political theory
This article seeks to contribute to the debate on contemporary political theory, a baseline for how to live together within diversity settings, by incorporating interculturalism into the normative theorizing of citizenship. Interculturalism’s nuclear philosophy lies in privileging people-to-people relations, and hence for a micro-identity politics. I will focus interculturalism as a strategy for citizenship-making and place-making policy with a p…
State-Based Logic versus EU-based Logic towards Immigrants
Since the Treaty on European Union in 1992, there have been two contrasting conceptions of how one should approach the EU political union. From the EU standpoint, this process is a gain, but from the States' point of view it is a loss. There is a third logic that makes up the EU: that of third-country immigrants residing in the Member States ( Euro-immigrants). For this population the process is neither a gain nor a loss, but simply something tha…
Ciudadanía, democracia y pluralismo cultural
Political Theory Today
We are living at a time of great unrest, conflict and doubt about our political frames of reference - of confusion regarding the present and disorientation regarding the future. The rapid changes in disciplinary boundaries that we have witnessed in recent years are giving rise to new scenarios and perspectives . Inquiring into how we should approach these new contexts thus seems imperative as far as the innovative potential of the discipline itse…
Interpretando el proceso de multiculturalidad en España y la propuesta de ciudadanía cívica de la UE
Estamos viviendo un Tiempo Histórico caracterizado por las migraciones internacionales. La llegada y permanencia de personas procedentes mayoritariamente de países en vías de desarrollo ponen cada vez más en evidencia que los instrumentos habituales para gestionar conflictos procedentes de la modernidad tienen dificultades para funcionar con normalidad. Siguiendo el enfoque de cambio de paradigma de la modernidad como enfoque para la interpretaci…
The Spanish Governance of EU borders
Spain has a relatively short history of immigration compared to other European countries. Entry into the European Community in 1986 forced Spain to draw up the first legislation on immigration in 1
Setting a Research Agenda on the Interaction Between Cultural Demands of Immigrants and Minority Nations
During the last two decades of the 20th century, the normative debate on multiculturalism has been one-dimensional. It has deployed arguments related to cultural demands either linked to feminism and sub-cultural identities, immigration, or national minorities. Little attention has been given to the relations between these dimensions, and how they affect each other in putting forward demands to the nation-state. The purpose of this article is to …
Perceptions and Realities of Moroccan Immigration Flows and Spanish Policies
This article puts forward a number of theoretical considerations relevant for understanding the relationship between immigration policies and the flows and settlement of Moroccan immigrants in Spain. The basic argument is that there is a combination of perceptions and realities that have to be taken into account in any analysis exploring the interface between migrants' plans and their actions and state policies. The structure of this article will…
The Muhammad cartoons controversy in comparative perspective
Udgivelsesdato: September
Policies and public opinion towards immigrants
By tackling negative opinions towards immigration we can create a basis to orientate policies that seek to reduce them. My purpose is to highlight that the analysis of immigration in Spain exemplifies a clear link between policies and public opinion. It is this link that is at the basis of what I will call the ambivalence of Spanish public opinion, when border and integration issues are compared
Theorizing State Behavior in International Migrations
We are really just at the beginning of analysing the connection between ethics, border management and migration policies. In this framework of the debate, I would like to propose a line of analysis centred, not so much what States do in the area of migration policies but rather theorize about the behaviour toward the demand for entry by people from other States. That is, how the States behave rather than what the States do in migration policies. …
Managing Diversity in Spanish Society
This paper examines the main elements of Spanish diversity management and specifically its philosophy. It defends the argument that Spain follows a practical philosophy. ‘Practical philosophy’ refers to a way of managing diversity which is not based on established and preconceived ideas, projected by its own social construction such as French republicanism or British multiculturalism, but rather on questions and answers generated by the practice …
Pourquoi la Catalogne intéresse-t-elle l’Europe
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La gouvernance de l’immigration en Catalogne
New Perspectives on the Ethics of International Migration
International audience
European Migration Governance
This article discusses the need for an ethical code for states in international migration management (IMM). IMM is interpreted as an ethical context characterized by moral dilemmas, insofar as it is difficult to irrefutably know if the decision to "allow entry" or "deny entry" of people is good and right. This calls for an applied ethics approach drawing a normative map in a world in motion, and then for an ethical code of practice regulating sta…
Borders in Motion
Borders in Motion: Concept and Policy Nexus Ricard Zapata-Barrero Ricard Zapata-Barrero * * Department of Social and Political Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Immigration (GRITIM-UPF). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Refugee Survey Quarterly, Volume 32, Issue 1, March 2013, Pages 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hds021 Pu…
The Politics of Immigration in Multi-Level States
This book develops an exploratory theory of immigration in multilevel states addressing two themes: governance and political parties. It examines not only how, and by whom, immigration policy is decid
New Multicultural Identities in Europe
The limits to shaping diversity as public culture
Is Catalonia Immune to Racism? An Analysis of Intolerant Political Discourses of Mainstream Party Representatives (2010-2011)
Despite the reduced presence of the far-right in Catalonia, anti-immigrant stances and discourses have occupied a central position during political campaigns for local, autonomous, and national elections in 2010–2011. The Catalan case is based on the analysis of three case studies: the local exclusion from the census of undocumented immigrants by the city of Vic, the campaign of the People's Party candidate in Badalona containing hate speech agai…
Diversity and cultural policy
At the crossroads of citizenship, cultural and diversity studies, I enter in the emerging debate on cultural citizenship. Culture is seen as a channel for diversity inclusion, and cultural policy carries the function of enhancing citizenship. My reasoning will follow two steps. First, in overviewing the recent literature, I identify two main drivers making cultural citizenship: the democratic/equality and the identity/national drivers. However, I…
Multiculturalism and Interculturalism
Explores the critical debate between multicultural and intercultural approaches in both political theory and practiceBoth interculturalism and multiculturalism address the question of how states should forge unity from ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. But what are the dividing lines between interculturalism and multiculturalism? This volume brings together some of the most prominent scholars in the field to address these two different ap…
Exploring the foundations of the intercultural policy paradigm
In this second decade of the twenty-first century, interculturalism is emerging as a new policy paradigm to deal with diversity dynamics. It is basically viewed as a set of policies sharing one basic idea: that the interaction among people from different backgrounds matters. Its concerns are to intervene politically and to propose a way to manage the dynamics of diversity, based on exchange and interpersonal relations. I propose exploring a found…
Explorando los contornos de una teoría de movilidad interna en la UE
Due to current mobility patterns, basically related to the economic crisis and recent enlargements, EU citizens’ free movement is being seen with fears and uncertainties by EU member states. This article explores the theoretical implications of the restrictions of EU in-mobility taking the ideal of EU citizenship as the main cornerstone, and it proposes an opportunity-based approach that can shape a potential EU in-mobility theory. Formulating th…
Interculturalism in the post-multicultural debate
The main purpose of this article is to formulate a defence of the emerging intercultural policy paradigm for the benefit of those who are still somewhat reluctant to accept its proper place within the current migration-related diversity policy debate. My defence will take two main lines of argumentation: Firstly, I will state that the increasing intensity of the intercultural policy paradigm must be placed in the present-day post-multicultural pe…
Political science (52 works) · Sociology (52 works) · Law (42 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (31 works) · Politics (29 works) · Law (26 works) · Economics (21 works) · Political economy (17 works) · Geography (15 works) · Immigration (15 works)