Immigrants Contesting Ethnic Exclusion: Structures and Practices of Identity

Abstract

Most of the literature on social exclusion has concentrated exclusively on socio-economic and political factors as the causes denying people access to social services and civil and political rights. Structures have been seen as established outside and independently of the practice and experience of individual and collective social actors. In this article I intend to show how social actors implement social strategies of inclusion to counteract practices and classifications of social exclusion within different possibilities of success. This I will do taking into account various arenas and landscapes of macro-structural constraints, which allow but also limit both autonomy and agency. In doing so, I will stress the complexities and variety of social exclusion/inclusion dynamics within contemporary urban societies that are strongly marked by demographic and ethnic changes. These issues will be explored through two different ethnographic cases: second-generation Spanish migrants to the Basque Country and Polish immigrants to Spain. En majorite, la litterature sur l’exclusion sociale s’est consacree exclusivement aux facteurs socio-economiques et politiques comme causes du refus d’acces de populations aux services sociaux ainsi qu’aux droits civils et politiques. On considere que les structures sont etablies hors et independamment de la pratique et du vecu des acteurs sociaux individuels et collectifs. L’article vise a montrer comment ces acteurs mettent en œuvre des strategies sociales d’inclusion pour compenser les pratiques et classifications d’exclusion sociale propres aux differentes possibilites de reussite. Cette approche tient compte de plusieurs arenes et paysages de contraintes macro-structurelles qui permettent, et restreignent parallelement, autonomie et agence. Dans le meme temps, l’article souligne les complexites et la diversite des dynamiques d’exclusion/inclusion sociale au sein des societes urbaines contemporaines, fortement marquees par les transformations demographiques et ethniques. Ces aspects sont etudies a travers deux cas ethnographiques: les migrants espagnols de deuxieme generation dans le Pays basque et les immigrants polonais en Espagne.