My Last Blog Post and Photos from Istanbul

First, I've posted my photos from my last trip of the year, Istanbul. Aside from having one of the most incredible skylines I've ever seen, it was interesting to see a city where churches were turned into mosques and Christians built mosques in the style of Greek orthodox style churches from the Byzantine era, especially after spending time in numerous Spanish cities where the opposite occurred hundreds of years earlier. History has a strange way of reversing the fortunes of different political-religious groups over time. The pictures are available here.

Now onto the last blog post.

Two years ago I made the decision to follow in the steps of my friend Tiffany and apply for a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Spain while I was working in Washington. I was in the middle of switching jobs and was looking for a way to eventually get out of Washington and spend some time abroad; Fulbright seemed to fit the bill. Since the Fulbright Grant requires a professor to sponsor an applicant's proposal, however, I emailed every single law professor studying immigration issues in Madrid. After all, I had never studied in Spain while I was at Macalester or Northwestern and needed to find someone who might take an interest in my work.

As fate would have it, my adviser, Diego Blázquez-Martín, emailed me back expressing interest in my proposal. Diego had studied at Columbia, NYU, and Brown while getting his PhD at my host institution, la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, so he could related to someone from another country trying to conduct independent research in his country. It was a quality that would serve me well during my time in Spain. With Diego's support as well as the support of my professors at Macalester and a Spanish language professor at the Catholic University of America, I wrote and revised my application and finally turned it in late September 2007.

Although I had high hopes for my application, I did not realize I was about to embark on a two year journey that tested my patience, intuition, intellectual curiosity, and self awareness in a myriad of contexts and situations. All that mattered to me then was developing a sound proposal that would make it past the first round of cuts in February of 2008 before the Spanish Fulbright Commission and the J. William Fulbright Board in Washington, DC would make their final decision on whether I would receive the grant or not. I guess one could not fault me for thinking in short term steps, for the time being; the longer, more profound reflection on the implications of studying in Spain for a year only became a reality after I received word that I was a Fulbright Scholar in April 2008.

The question that emerged over time as I was preparing to leave for Europe revolved around the manner that I would document my experience in Spain and beyond. Naturally, I would post pictures on Facebook and continue to keep in touch with my friends through email, Gchat, and Skype. The idea of keeping a blog about my experiences, another idea that I borrowed from Tiffany, seemed to be a good format to discuss my experiences abroad. So in September 2008, I finally posted my first blog entry, stating that the purpose of the blog was to report and make observations on "Spanish society, politics, life, fashion, etc." with commentaries on "on issues related to my research on the history of immigration law and the rights of undocumented immigrants to join labor unions."

62 blog posts later, I have documented wide swaths of topics related to my time in Spain. Some of my posts have appeared in the forms of mini historical-sociology lessons that accompanied my photo albums on Facebook or my "Views from the City" series on Madrid. Other posts have been commentaries on developments on immigrant rights in Spain, especially on the development of the reform of the LO 8/2000. Finally, some posts have centered on my actual Fulbright experiences in Andorra, Berlin, and the preparation and execution of the Fulbright immigration conference in June. While my blog could have covered a wider range of contemporary topics, I feel that my work was fairly representative of my time in Spain, given that I only added one post per week when I had a free moment between research and travel. In this sense, it has met my goals and hopefully has maintained my readership, however few in number, interested and engaged in my work and life in Spain.

Of course, the blog could never completely communicate the different dimensions of my first experience in Europe. First, the blog could never capture the dynamics of the interviews with a diverse array of individuals from NGOs, labor unions, political parties, and lawyer's associations or the evolution of my knowledge the rights of undocumented immigrants in Spain. To be sure, this process will remain caught on tape or in a variety of notes, presentations, and drafts of my paper. But I believe that no form of communication will express the multifaceted nature of my work or the joy that it brought me over the course of ten months.

Second, no form of communication will reflect the full dynamics of my trips to other European and African cities this year. To say that this year has been nothing less than an adventure would be an understatement in every sense of the word. The task of documenting these journeys clearly fell to my camera, which ironically stopped working midway through my last trip in Istanbul. No photo, however, will be able to capture the moment when I stepped into another city, another country for the first time and felt the burst of excitement with the possibilities that existed within the next few days. Words fail to completely capture these moments as well, though that should never stop one from attempting to bring a little context to the memories captured in photographs of their journeys.

Thirdly, I do not think ten months worth of blogging would allow me to begin making observations of Spaniards and the immigrants who are rapidly changing Spain's social framework. I can say that the Spaniards who I have met have taken me into their work and their lives with joy and excitement without expecting anything in return. It was truly refreshing and invigorating, especially after the networking frenzy of egoism that seemingly drives the social interactions in Washington, DC. Though these people and the wonderful qualities of Spaniards will remain in my memories, I will certainly miss this quality of interaction when I return to the United States.

To be sure, many Spaniards need to come to terms with the changes that accompany the growth of immigrant populations in Spain. Simply blaming immigrants for every social problem, particularly those related to the economic crisis, is not a sound response to a permanent social change. After all, every social context is impermanent, giving way to another one through a process of conflict and/or cooperation between social actors. The question that remains unanswered for the moment is this one: can Spaniards, particularly the Spanish Government, focus on the latter during an economic crisis? I have made several observations on the potential responses to this question. For the moment, however, I will say that it remains to be seen whether a sound response can emerge in response to the challenges of the economic crisis gripping Spain.

Finally, no blog post will never be able to capture the transition between my life in Spain and my life in the United States, especially the feeling that accompany the move from the dizzying heights of the "Fulbright Experience" to those more routine, more familiar. As it stands, I will not blog about my experiences once I return to the States. I will post up a podcast that I recorded with the International Institute of Education in late May when it is available online. Aside from this update, however, I believe that my transition back to the United States will remain a private matter that will allow me to gain a greater understanding of the impact of living abroad on my personal, intellectual, and professional development.

I will say that living abroad has made me appreciate different aspects of American society while developing more insightful criticisms of its shortcomings; one cannot simply emerge from this process without developing a more nuanced perspective of one's own country. At the same time, the experience of living abroad has given me the encouragement to travel around the United States with a stronger sense of curiosity of understanding the different manifestations of the American character. The next few months will also see me bring these realizations into fruition as my search for a new job will take me to another part of the United States to begin my life anew.

And how will I begin this new life? With ten months of wonderful memories that will last a lifetime. Reflecting over these experiences, a few lines from a Czeslaw Milosz poem come to mind:

"That boy, does he already suspect
that beauty is always elsewhere and always delusive?
He sees what I see even now. Oh but he was clever,
Attentive, as if things were instantly changed by memory.
Riding in a cart, he looked back to retain as much as possible.
Which means he knew what was needed for some ultimate moment
When he would compose from fragments a world perfect at last."
- "From the Rising of the Sun"

I will not know the long term consequences of receiving this grant. But, for the time being, I can live with a quiet satisfaction that it has contributed to the creation of my own world perfect, one that will incorporate experiences beyond the boundaries of Spain and the United States as I continue to explore and understand a world that continues to present, in Fitzgerald's words, something commensurate to our capacities for wonder.