The Migrant's Journey: Border-Crossing, Otherness, and the Politics of Place in Contemporary Spanish Culture, 1986-2008.

Abstract

This dissertation is a full-length study of how literary and visual narratives, understood as both artistic texts and social documents, are shaping discussions of immigration in Spain. It examines the ways in which the structure of the journey used by Spanish fiction, film, paintings, and documentary photography is contributing to the construction of the social imaginary of “undocumented” North African and Caribbean immigrants in Spain. It also analyzes conceptions of the Spanish nation and, by extension, Europe that emerge from the encounter with the foreigner. After analyzing in chapter one the rhetorical logic of Spanish laws and major newspaper stories (mainly from El País, El Mundo and ABC), where migrants generally become visible only when they make contact with Spain, chapter two explores how Spanish fiction, such as La aventura de Saíd (Josep Lorman, 1996), Las voces del Estrecho (Andrés Sorel, 2000), La patera (Pablo Zapata Lerga, 2003), “Estrecho” (Pedro Guerra, 2005), and José Luis Tirado’s series of watercolors Estrecho (1992) and exhibit Paralelo 36 (2000) are shaping a more complex social image of the immigrant. It examines the departure from home – the stage when migrants are still emigrants, and establishes a comparison with Spain’s own emigrant past. Chapter three deals with the representation of border-crossing and arrival, when emigrants become immigrants, in the films Bwana (Imanol Uribe, 1996) and Princesas (Fernando León de Aranoa, 2005), and Javier Bauluz’s photograph “La indiferencia de Occidente.” It examines how they construct both a bridge and a border between the self (Spain) and the foreigner. Chapter four continues the journey, examining the denouement in relation to ideas of home and homeland, investigating the ways in which they become completely detached from their countries, maintain their former identities, or become hybrid subjects in the films Flores de otro mundo (Icíar Bollaín, 1999) and Agua con sal (Pedro Pérez Rosado, 2005). It also reflects on how the film Poniente (Chus Gutiérrez, 2002) shows Spain’s paradoxical identity as a country that emphasizes its own internal diversity but presents itself as monolithic when it encounters the immigrant, protecting its unity in the face of the “other.”