Transformations in Family Life Among African Immigrants and EU Communitarians in Spain: Evidence from the Padrón Municip

1. “Transformations for family life and the lifecourse among African immigrants and EU Communitarians living in Spain: evidence from the Padrón Municipal"Caroline H. Bledsoe Conference on “African Transnational and Return Migration”Centre for Research in Ethnic RelationsRadcliffe House University of Warwick 2009 Project collaborators: Papa Sow, Gunnar Andersson, Andreu Domingo, Annett Fleischer, Núria Empez, Réne Houle Additional thanks to: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Alaina Dyne, Rafaél Bellon Gómez

2. “Variations in reproduction and the lifecourse among African immigrants and EU Communitarians in Spain: evidence from the Padrón Municipal" • Main sources: • ethnographic studies (Africa and Spain) • the Spanish Padrón Municipal ((www.ine.es). I dwell briefly on this latter source because becaue I make an unusual claim about the value of numbers in vast quantitative masses: contrary to conventional wisdom, they are a potential of tremendous qualitative inspiration. • There are surprisingly rich potentials for sociocultural and historical exploration on reproduction and family life that Spain’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística makes available to the world in the demographic data encoded in the Padrón Municipal, the municipal register • Extraordinary variations in fertility and child raising among immigrants in Spain from Africa, patterns that are especially sharp when compared with patterns seen among European nationalities in Spain. Examples: Britons and Germans. • The Padrón’s data must be read with caution – indeed, they are full of deceptive traps. • But the INE data are enormously “available”, user-friendly, “visual.” Moreover, INE officials and their statisticians who generate the numbers are surprisingly accessible as well; they are highly responsive to emailed queries from literally anyone in the world – this hands an unprecedented quantitave power to those who may produce the greatest insight: those with deep understandings of the “existential” realities of Spain.

3. Why focus on Spain?: • It’s now the leading European host country, proportionate to its national population, for immigrant arrivals. • geography and economy: Located at the edge of the EU, with vast tracts of borderland exposed to the external world and an economy heavily reliant on agriculture and construction. This “interface” country is a crucial case study also because it is caught between pressure from its European neighbors and its citizens to tighten its borders versus the risk of excluding much-needed labor.

4. Main question for the presentation: • What is the impact of changing EU policies on family life among Africans in Spain, and also EU "Communitarians“?

5. Debunking stereotypes • First, some comparisons to show the striking variations within Spain itself: • people who report that are of Spanish vs. foreign nationality • Selected nationalities within Spain – some surprising similarities, differences, trends

6. Total: 45,200,737 Nationals: 40,681,183 Foreigners: 4,519,554

7. Moroccans and Colombians in Spain, 2007

9. Malians and Senegalese in Spain, 2007 ... And Pakistanis

10. European communitarians are now the largest and most rapidly increasing groups in Spain – • (not Moroccans or Latin Americans)

13. For European communitarians: What has the expansion of internal boundaries and categories of “belonging” meant for EU communitarians vis a vis Spain? life style, lifecourse, family

14. increasing fluidity through space – • north for work, south for play

15. Ibiza, Spain http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-191501799-ibiza_vacations-i “opportunity for unbridled hedonism” among EU youth

17. Opportunity to experiment with new identities, escape a sterile a life rut, find a temporary/permanent partner for those whose “local” markets have not produced the right person Random Youtube example:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gErJGN7Axk&feature=related

18. And opportunity to retire – whether temporarily (until debilitative senescence) or permanently

19. Britons and Germans in Spain. 2007

23. Example: Brits • Assumptions/hopes for British pensioners in Spain: • money goes farther (pound has been strong against the euro) • body is healthier (hence medical costs fewer) • family in gloomy UK can be lured down to visit on cheap flights • Rules surrounding taxes, property, and pension payments can be exploited • EU communitarians can vote in local elections to help preserve rights

24. “Want to invite friends or family from home to spend a weekend in Spain? Or maybe surprise them and take a spontaneous trip home? Most places in Spain are close to international airports and flights to UK just take less than three hours.” “If you receive a pension in England, you can continue to receive it in Spain and arrange for it to be paid into a Spanish bank account. A UK pension in Spain is taxable only in the UK… …and… you won't have to pay anything to the Spanish tax authorities.”

25. Possible evidence in the Padron of breaking Spanish laws regarding declarations of residence- sudden opportunities that the periodic adjustments of local registers provideThe case of the missing Germans

26. Enhancement of lifecourse options through expanded EU space as Europeans episodically ”select” themselves into the population of Spanish residents

27. What about the effects of EU expansions and intensified exclusions on life course and life chances for Africans? Much rests on changes the laws on how they are allowed to come.

28. “Attracting the best and the brightest: the promise and pitfalls of a skill-based immigration policy.” Kara MurphyImmigration Policy in Focus, Vol. 5, No. 10, Dec 2006 Family reunification has become one of the major ways for non-OECD people to gain access to Europe

29. Family reunification – usually seen as an “inclusion” device. When family reunification becomes one of a rapidly shrinking number of ways to get to the EU, its definitions become the bases of exclusion. Most notably: Reduce allowable relationships -- (to genes, state-recognized legal contracts)Shrink definitions of children -- (to ever-younger individuals)Shrink definitions of marriage (to heterosexual, older ages, archaic/impossible norm of emotional closeness)

30. “Effects” of family reunification policies on Gambian families in Spain: Two ways to look at this. 1. “Perverse consequences” view • As people try to shape their lives to accommodate a narrowing set of entry demands, social relationships and even age itself become commoditized objects of commerce • Outcomes: substantially altered versions of family life, whether by comparison to the home country or to earlier periods of immigration in the host country. • Families themselves intensify the potentials for distortion structured by state policies by selecting individuals for migration whose attributes will most likely pass family reunification muster.

31. In contrast to the view of “perverse consequences” of family reunification policy • Boundaries as shifting zones of mutually constructed accommodation, as people who appear to fit the “safe” categories are delegated to go to Europe – on behalf of the family

32. Strategy: Attempt to sidestep geographical boundaries Africans arriving in the Canary Islands, 2006

33. Strategy: Raise the young for export to take advantage of the special protections afforded to them in migration policies Looking from Tanger, Morocco, to Spain. Photo: Nuria Empez, 2006

34. Strategy: Join a European family – marry a European citizen (suggested by the numbers below for Cameroonians in Germany) or have a child by one

35. Strategy within immigrant families: Send a wife to a man with papers(Result for Gambians: younger marriage for Gambian women in Spain than back home in The Gambia itself. (Most women can only come if they are marrying someone. Hence the young Gambian women who come are by default married)

36. Strategy: Send males below the age of “adulthood,” or construe men as boys (Easier to get in if you are a child)

37. Now let’s pull back and scrutinize the cultural logics of European notions of family and human rights for both Europeans and Africans

38. Two main phases in European family structures of interest 1. • Social reputation closely tied to property (especially land). Hence: emphasis on trying to restrict claimants for fixed property holdings. • Childbearing: essential that it occur within a lawful marriage (because of its assumed stability) as the appropriate context for childbearing • Marriage: one partner • For children: inheritance from one’s own parents; hence, importance of being raised by them to become properly socialized into their station in life • (sociologist Talcott Parsons said, • every children should one constant mother and father figure throughout life) Contemporary family reunification rules are based on ever-tighter versions of this classic “European” ideal .

39. What about classic African family patterns, by comparison? • Emphasis less on protecting material assets than on “wealth in people” • ie, guaranteeing the capacity to generate wealth, in perpetuity, on behalf of the kinship corporation, by trying continuously recruiting new members • Marriage as a process – to ensure a proper fit for the corporation, and keep the marriage filled with representatives of the contract’s signatories. • Multiplicity of marriage partners OK since constant recruitment of family members is important; • (hence, a real “companion” might be seen with suspicion by the family) • Kids: must be “developed” on behalf of the kinship corporation – very useful to foster them out so they will experience new ways of life. • Value of incorporating unrelated “strangers” or “clients” and transforming them into family

40. Obvious implications for Africans of “family reunification” categories: • the great African “circulation” models mesh poorly with the narrow, static definitions of spouses and biological children, the basic categories now allowed under family reunification schemes in Europe

41. New ironies

42. 2. Dramatic post-war changes in the European family: “Second demographic transition” • Fewer marriages, higher age at marriage, more informal unions, more births out of wedlock, more children living in a non-marital or single parent household • These patterns are generally intensified by more education, less religion, and they began in the north and spread to the south and east

43. Africa has also changed: • more single-spouse households, • more emphasis on “official” monogamy (many countries make it the law of the land), although de facto polygyny thrives • there are growing gaps between wives, especially by education and family status, and between their sets of children

44. But the European family reunification categories have not changed, to reflect either family patterns in Africa OR those in the changing Europe. • THE most archaic, and possibly mythical, versions of the European past • More exploitation? More manipulations?

45. Relevance for this conference: • Implications for “remittances” • What kinds of family ties will be the ones through which the investments and remittances flow? • My contention: • NOT those that family reunification assumes it’s screening for – (Why?) because (a) they don’t really exist in these ways, and (b) obligations to those who made huge investments in migrants follow “African” patterns • Hence: almost ALL remittances will be distributed through “informal,” extended family, patron-client networks