Immigration: social and cultural capital

Since mid-2008, the CCCB has been conducting a study into the social and cultural capital represented by immigration and its scant recognition by the host society. The theme is even more salient at a time when, all over Europe, the uncertainty and anxiety generated by the world economic crisis are fuelling new discriminatory policies and xenophobic attitudes towards a population that is almost always considered mere unskilled labour.

For its part, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC has for some time been conducting studies along the same lines in various cities and regions, particularly in North America and central and eastern European countries.

In the context of this background, the two entities co-organise a debate about the potential value of immigration as an essential factor in articulating new forms of social cohesion and sustainability in an increasingly complex and diverse milieu. The analysis and discussion of these questions in Barcelona and Catalonia will take place in the framework of similar situations, experiences and problems as they are experienced on the international scale.

16 April

5 p.m. Presentation: Immigrants or new citizens? Integration and/or exclusion?

Josep Ramoneda, Director of the CCCB and Pep Subirós, writer and philosopher


Cultural capital: potential and limits

Lamin Cham, specialist in immigration; Eunice Romero, politologist; Mostafà S'haimi, community activity leader

Moderator: Pep Subirós

7 p.m. The Hispano/Latin experience in North America

José Walter Tejada, member of Arlington County Board (USA)
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, project director at the Institute for Research in Labor and Employment, UCLA
Kate Brick, master candidate master's candidate at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
Moderator: Andrew Selee, Director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute (WWICS)

17 April

5 p.m. Migrations to the post-Soviet region

Andrei Korobkov, lecturer in Political Science, Middle Tennessee State University

Johannesburg: from apartheid to xenophobia

Loren Landau, Director of the Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits University, Johannesburg

France: Assimilation and/or exclusion?

Marc Hatzfeld, sociologist and lecturer at the École d'hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris


Moderator: Blair Ruble, director of the Kennan Institute and the Comparative Urban Studies Project, WWICS

7 p.m. Round table: Immigration and citizenship. Help and hindrances

Carmen Bermúdez, graduate in Business Administration and Social Economy; Ernesto Carrión, graduate in Political Science; Taoufik Cheddadi El Harrak, Islamologist and sociologist; Huma Jamshed, Vice President of the Barcelona Municipal Immigration Board; Brahim Yaabed, Head of the Citizenry, Diversity and Identities Commission of the Fundació CatDem-Trias Fargas

Moderator: Xavier Besalú, lecturer in Pedagogy at Girona University