Immigration and the politics of space allocation in rural Spain

The case of Andalusia

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2158233
AutoresLiliana Suárez‐navaz (autor de correspondencia), Liliana Suárez-Navaz
Año2007
Volumen34
Número2
Páginas207-239
Fecha de publicación2007-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Peasant Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0306-6150 • E-ISSN: 1743-9361
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03066150701516682
OpenAlexW2045576876
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas27

The incorporation of southern European countries into the European Union has transformed the relationship between peasants, the state and the international labour market. In order to illustrate the nature of this change as its affects southern Spain, examined here is its current impact on rural labour and the construction of interethnic 'difference' in Andalusia. It is argued that, in order to establish control over migration inland, the Spanish state has allocated to Andalusian peasants a 'frontline' role in forging a European identity in opposition to the migrant 'other', although this involves what is essentially a class struggle between peasants who - themselves migrants once - are now 'insiders' and rural employers, and migrants who are their agricultural workers and the new 'outsiders'. In the Andalusian village context this takes a specific ideological form: namely, disputes between peasant insider and migrant outsider over such things as their respective occupation of and rights to space in the locality. Notes 1 On the more general process of how new social boundaries are consciously and unconsciously used to perpetuate an unbalanced system of rewards that benefit those who impose them, see Barth Citation1969 and Mechaga Citation1995. 2 On this, see among others, the important works - from different political viewpoints - by Malefakis Citation1970, Broué and Témine Citation1970, Robinson Citation1970, Fraser Citation1979 and Bolloten Citation1979: 67ff.]. For the extent of the contrast in the interpretations of Spanish agriculture at this conjuncture, see Brenan Citation1943: Chapter VI - The Agrarian Question] and Trotsky Citation1973. Whereas the former saw the agrarian sector of Spain as essentially feudal, the latter maintained it was already capitalist. Subsequent discussions about the agrarian question as applied to Spanish agriculture can be found in the useful collections edited by Sevilla Guzmán Citation1979, Citation1984 and by Rodríguez Zúñiga and Soria Gutiérrez Citation1985. The role of peasant economy in the wider context of Spanish capitalism is considered by Castillo Citation1979 and Pérez Touriño Citation1983. 3 There is a large literature on this subject, but see especially Leval Citation1975, Collier Citation1987, Ackelsberg Citation1991; Citation1993, and Cárdaba Citation2002. 4 About this one main source [Broué and Témine, Citation1970: 34, 36] notes: 'In 1931, two million agricultural workers owned no land at all, whereas 50,000 members of the gentry owned half of Spain's acreage. While 11⁄2 million small proprietors whose land did not exceed 21⁄2 acres were forced to work on the estates of the big proprietors in order to live, 10,000 landowners owned more than 250 acres each ... Andalusia was the traditional domain of the latifundia. Here the average annual income of a big landowner was about 18,000 pesetas and a small one about 161 pesetas. But the majority of peasants did not own any land: they were braceros (or jornaleros), day labourers who seldom worked more than one day in two and had to survive all year on starvation wages by working on the large estates in the worst of conditions, under the supervision of the labrador, the predatory bailiff, who was always ready to line his pockets through arbitrary fines or blackmail over jobs. Much arable land remained fallow, its owner either preserving it for shooting or because he was able in this way to make the braceros pay through the nose for their demands [for land or work]. For this region, which probably included some of the wretchedest people in Europe, was also the land of class hatred, of the slave ever ready to revolt again his master; the rebellious peasants were hungry for land.' 5 For the growth in Spain generally of agroindustry, see Juan i Fenollar Citation1978, and for the impact of market integration on the peasantry from specific regions (Valencia, Galicia), see Arnalte Alegre Citation1980 and Colino Sueiras Citation1984 and Narotzki and Smith Citation2006. Some classic regional studies of the rural socio-economic structure during this period based on ethnographies include not just rural communities in Andalusia [Pitt-Rivers, Citation1954; Arguedas, Citation1968; Martinez-Alier, Citation1971 but also Basque folklore [Caro Baroja, Citation1944 and ethnographic accounts of Catalonia [Hansen, Citation1977 and Santander [Linage, Citation1978; Tax Freeman, Citation1979. 6 How some of this migration flow went to form the industrial reserve army of labour on which the informal sector that grew up around Madrid subsequently depended is outlined by Benton Citation1990, see also note 16 for case studies of the period of urbanization and massive out migration from rural areas. 7 Details of this process at that conjuncture (and subsequent ones) are outlined in Castles and Kosack Citation1973 and Castles and Miller Citation1993. 8 For studies of the agrarian sector in Andalusia during this period, see Grupo ERA Citation1980 and Mignon Citation1982. 9 Where agricultural workers in southern Spain are concerned, there has been a tendency to categorize them as 'primitives' that are no different from the animals in the fields. Thus, for example, the description [Salazar, Citation1911: 100] of rural labourers in Murcia at the start of the twentieth century as having great physical strength but being mere children intellectually ('Tal es la raza que habita nuestros campos, una raza de gran vigor físico, pero en estado completo de niñez, inculta é ignorante y como consecuencia fanática y rutinaria hasta extremos inconcebibles') echoes the way in which black workers in Africa were regarded by colonialism. 10 The term cacique originally meant 'the principal person in a village', but in the nineteenth century it acquired negative connotations, referring to anybody who is considered to hold power in an illegitimate, arbitrary, and corrupt way. Uses of the term are related to the ascendancy of a local agrarian bourgeoisie that emerges during the process of capitalist development [Contreras, Citation1991: 503; Joaquín Costa, Citation1978. 11 Arrendatarios are tenants who rent land, and aparceros and medianeros are sharecroppers to whom the landowner supplies land, seed, capital investment, and other kinds of inputs or clientelistic favours. For his part, the tenant or sharecropper contributes the plough animals plus labour. Comuneros are more strongly linked to a particular plot of land, paying a minimum rent and acquiring some rights over the holding as the years pass. Such an arrangement establishes socio-economic links across generations between landowning and tenant families. 12 In the village, poor people used to live in chozas, described as thatched cottages or huts by Mintz Citation1982 in his ethnohistorical research. Choceños are those who lived in the chozas. Similarly, cortijeros are the people who live in the cortijos, which, in contrast to the typical rural habitations of the Andalusian elite in this part of southern Spain, refer to small houses scattered in the valley. 13 See Contreras Citation1991, Martínez Veiga Citation1991, and Sevilla Guzmán Citation1979. 14 See also the concept vivir de lo suyo, or 'live on their own', used by García Muñoz Citation1995. 15 Clientelism and patronage have received important attention from scholars working in the Mediterranean area; see Cazorla Citation1994, Contreras Citation1991, Corbin Citation1979, Costa Citation1982, Frigolé Citation1981, Citation1991, Gellner and Waterbury Citation1977, Gilmore Citation1980 and Littlewood Citation1979. 16 For analyses of the effects of rural emigration and programmes of modernization see, among others, Aceves Citation1971, Aceves and Douglass Citation1976, Berger and Mohr Citation1975, Brandes Citation1975, Buecher Citation1991, Candel Citation1967, Cazorla Citation1965, 1989, Douglass Citation1975, Giner and Salcedo Citation1978, Greenwood Citation1976, Citation1977, Gregory Citation1978, Iszaevich Citation1991, Martin Díaz Citation1991, Martínez Veiga Citation1991, Rhoades Citation1978 and SoléCitation1982. 17 More than two million Andalusians had left the region by 1975, and in villages such as Alfaya over half the population emigrated. 18 Interview, spring 1995. 19 During the 1960s some of the wealthiest producers in the Alfaya Valley also bought a tractor and other new machinery for cereal cultivation. 20 Interview, summer 1995. 21 See Gavira Citation1991, Moreno-Navarro Citation1991a, Citation1991b, Palenzuela Citation1991, Citation1992, and Sevilla Guzmán and González de Molina Citation1992. 22 Interview in the summer of 1993 with a peasant farmer who was also a local councillor. 23 The first Ley Orgánica de Extranjeria or the law stipulating who was to be categorized as a non-national (='alien') was enacted in 1985, one year before the official entry of Spain into what was then the EEC (European Economic Community). See Suárez-Navaz and Calavita [Citation2003] and Suárez-Navaz, Collier, and Maurer [Citation2002]. The strengthening of the - until then - porous frontier with Africa was in fact widely seen as the sine qua non for European membership with full rights. Subsequent amendments to this legislation, together with 'normalization' programmes (=amnesties), meant that those initially excluded from Spanish nationality - some three million foreigners - were later awarded this status. This legal process of incorporation notwithstanding, high numbers of unauthorized day workers in rural Spain continues to be the norm. 24 Immigrant workers came mainly from Morocco, Algeria and Senegal. 25 Interview during the summer of 1994 with a female who had previously emigrated from Alfaya, and is now in France. 26 Although this phenomenon is clearly less acute in Andalusia, especially in rural areas, the questioning of 'Spain' as a 'nation' has rendered Spanish nationalism a 'politically incorrect' position in most intellectual, political, and generally progressive circles. Even though the discussion of the problematic status of a common Spanish national identity is beyond the scope of this work, it is necessary to mention the political and cultural force of various national identities within Spanish territory, which are officially recognized by the 1978 Spanish Constitution. 27 See also Fraser Citation1973, Gilmore Citation1980, and Martinez Veiga Citation1991. 28 On rural bandits generally, see Hobsbawm Citation1969, and on the post-Civil war resistance by and persecution of anarchist maquis in Spain, see Tellez Citation1974. 29 Interviews during the summer of 1994 and the spring of 1995; see also Gilmore Citation1980: 85]. 30 The details of this initial welcome extended to immigrants are described by me elsewhere [Suárez-Navaz Citation1997, Citation2004. 31 Extract from the newspaper Diario, p.16, 28 July 1992. 32 The Ley Orgánica de Extranjeria penalizes not only 'illegal' foreigners and employers who hire them, but also any person who - though not directly employing 'illegals'- nevertheless helps them find a job. The immigrant leader in the shelter was 'punished' that summer for his behaviour with a fine to the value of US$8,000 - an average wage for a nine-month period. 33 Interview with a Moroccan immigrant, summer 1992. 34 Interview with the Mayor, summer 1992. 35 Interview, summer 1992. 36 El Ideal, 11 July 1991. 37 Although this quotation is about the nation-state, it applies equally at the village level. 38 Interview, summer 1992. 39 Interview, summer 1994. 40 It is not necessary to point out the historical importance of Islamic culture in southern Spain, and how it has influenced in a positive way many aspects of Spanish national culture (song, architecture, etc.). Given this, the local categorization of the 'moors' as 'other' (='not us') is ironic indeed. 41 As is clear from the anthropological literature (see, e.g., Mauss Citation1966), every gift - however well-intentioned or altruistic - carries as its sub-text the necessity of reciprocity. The recipient is required in turn to provide the giver with something (social or political obedience; an economic resource such as labour-power) of equivalent value. 42 Both this and the previous quotation are taken from the 1995 Programme for the Integration of Immigrants. 43 Interview, spring 1995. 44 Interview, summer 1994. See very similar descriptions in Frazer Citation1973 and Gilmore Citation1980. 45 This discourse is a staple of colonial ideology, as the classic analysis by Mannoni Citation1956: 110ff.] makes clear. 46 The same applies to services such as schooling, which local workers may see as being strained due to its having to cater for additional children (from migrant families), a problem compounded by underfunding on the part of the local/central state. Additional informationNotes on contributorsLiliana Suárez-Navaz Fieldwork for this research was financed jointly by the United States National Science Foundation (Grant No. SBR-94/11667) and the Spanish Ministry of Science (Grant No. BSO2002-03331). The author extends her thanks to the African immigrants and Andalusian peasants with whom she lived and worked in Andalusia, and also to Tom Brass for very helpful editorial comment on an earlier version of this article

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