Sevilla Photos on the way... and the Immigration Conference

As always, I take a trip and subsequently follow up with a quick post about up coming photos from my travels. This edition will cover my trip to Sevilla, the capital of the Autonomous Community of Andalucía, for the feria, a week long festival of seeing women and men dancing sevillanas to flamenco music, partying in tents known as casetas, and enjoying the sight of Sevillanos dressed in traditional flamenco dresses and suits. Words cannot even begin to describe the feeling of witnessing the combination of all three elements; the best phrase I can formulate is: amazing.

In the meanwhile, I would like to share some news over a conference on immigration that I am organizing with six other Fulbrighters who are studying different aspects of the impacts of this process on Spanish social, cultural, and legal/political institutions. We will be hosting the conference titled "Emigration to Immigration: The New World of Spain. Seven American Perspectives on Immigration in Spain" at a space in Casa de América, an important cultural institution in Madrid that promotes dialogue over issues related to Ibero-America. We are working with a professor from my host institution, the Instituto de Derechos Humanos in the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, who will moderate the event.

My presentation, titled "Severing the Ties that Bind: The Role of the Constitution Court in Shaping the Rights of Undocumented Workers in the Zapatero Era," which is a longer version of the talk that I gave at the Andorra mid-year conference. Although it is a lot of work - it might actually force me to bring my work states-side - I am excited for the opportunity to present my work in Spanish to a wide audience. I think it will be an excellent way to top off the year before I head back home to finish my paper.

As for my research, I am finally completing interviews with representatives of Spanish labor unions and NGOs. One interesting bit of news: as the Tribunal Constitucional expands the rights of undocumented immigrants, the Spanish Government, under the leadership of a socialist premier, has begun the process of introducing a law that respects the TC's sentences on the rights of immigrants to organize, strike, public assembly, and association irrespective of their legal status while using restricting the rights to family regroupment on the basis of an individual's duration of their residency and extended the internment of undocumented immigrants detained by the police. In other words, a step forward and a step backward for the rights of immigrants in a period that should signal a new start in the regulation of immigration in the post Aznar/PP era of 1996 to 2004.

Ironically, the source of this push for more restrictionist policies comes from the EU as well as the Spanish Government itself, which took a more progressive stance on immigrant rights during the first four years of Zapatero's rule from 2004 to 2008. Although the EU has been moving towards a more conservative slant on the issue, it appears that the economic crisis that is affilicting Spain has prompted the Government to begin taking a "tougher stance" on the issue, even though these policies have little bearing on regulating the movement of immigrants into Spain.

The interviews noted that between 2000 and 2004, a period of intense restrictions of the rights of immigrants, immigration actually grew; currently the number of immigrants is declining as the economy prompts migrant workers to move back to their country of origins or to remain at home until the economies of the developing world improve. In other words, these types of policies fail to address the economic nature of the reasons driving immigrants to move to Spain. Whether or not the new law will take this reality remains to be seen as the Spanish Government continues to find new legal means to address this issue.