Immigration and the politics of space allocation in rural Spain: The case of Andalusia

Abstract

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.