A blurry profile, an impossible incorporation

Integrate into what? Incorporate into where? Dissolve with whom? These are the big preliminary questions that would need to be answered about current migratory challenges. Questions that make us look at a point prior to demographic growth itself. I'm referring to being able to know what profile, what nucleus, what space of identification Catalonia, and the Catalan Countries, currently offer to a person migrating there. Can this migrant know where they have arrived if a good part of the natives themselves do not know the basic coordinates of the country where they have been living for years or have even been born?

Before continuing with the reasoning, however, some clarifications must be made. First, that the term "integration" suggests a unidirectional process of accommodation of those who arrive to those who are already there. Perhaps "incorporation" is an image that better indicates the process of reciprocal adaptation of one and the other. And even "dilution" is a metaphorical term that explains what really happens in a relationship between several, that is, a reciprocal accommodation. Just as a sugar cube cannot dissolve in coffee without the coffee becoming sweetened. In any case, there can be no debate about how the foreigner is welcomed without first asking ourselves who this welcoming subject is and what their capacity is to incorporate without disappearing.

A second clarification has to do with the need to know the circumstances that have made our country one of the main receivers of immigration in Europe in the last twenty years, if not the main one. The "Fenix Report" points to serious, not to say grave, economic causes. And I'm not just talking about final growth balances, but also about all arrivals and departures, particularly at the municipal level. And this without going into the degree of adjustment between formal records and unofficial factual reality. I miss a lot of information about these transitions and their causes; about the subjective perceptions associated with so much mobility; about the expectations that the foreigner has regarding the place of arrival, or why they end up leaving. And, of course, it would be relevant to consider the information about economic flows that occur towards the places of departure and that perhaps explain more than we think.

And, still, a third question. I distrust well-intentioned attitudes that conceal the conflict in the relationship between newcomers and citizens who are already established in the country, whatever their origin. The clear xenophilic tendencies – shown, in particular, by the parties most central to the right and left, the media, and a certain "tertulianismo" (excuse my neologism, but I resist calling it "intellectualism") – I have found that they often do nothing more than accentuate xenophobic attitudes. Is there data, for example, on the voting intention among teachers and professors here on the far right, or among healthcare personnel, and even among public servants as a whole? According to data from the French journalist François Jarraud, which Xavier Diez shared in his "Espai de dissidència", the vote of French teachers for Le Pen's Rassemblement National could have already reached 20 percent in June 2024. And that of civil servants in general, 29 percent. And here, what will happen in the next municipal and parliamentary elections? Limiting ourselves to studying the numbers on transfers between parties may be hiding much more significant variables in voting trends.

And I return to the central question, which I consider to be prior to any debate about the incorporation of the newcomer population. That is, to know how this country can be identified when one arrives. And I say this in view of the general disorientation that we Catalans ourselves show about who we are. A disorientation partly due to the turbulent times we are living in, yes, but even more so due to the planned consequences to erase the profiles of the nation, of the community. That, as we saw recently, university applicants do not know the name of the country's president and can answer that he is called Salvador Dalí or Salvador Espriu is a disgrace. And that in a television contest, when asked about popular Catalan songs, it is shown that an eighteen-year-old person, schooled here since the age of four, confuses them with the Virolai or Els Segadors because they don't even ring a bell is, to say the least, a symptom of the process of collective disintegration in which we live. And that a minimum knowledge of Catalan cannot be demanded from those who want to regularize their roots in the country is scandalous. How do you expect the migrant to identify which society, which nation, they are asked to join? Or is it okay that they only "integrate" into Spain?