Immigration and integration? Or racism and poverty?
In the current sociopolitical debate surrounding the various social fractures that permeate our society, there is a reductionist tendency to point, with alarming ease and impunity, to two particularly vulnerable groups: people perceived as immigrants and the impoverished. While a convergence is taking shape on the political right to point to the newcomers As the chief thief in structural problems such as the housing crisis, there continues to be an accumulation of media analyses that, disguised as objectivity, criminalize the poverty of social strata with the greatest unmet material needs.
Doesn't it make any sense, at least constructive, to problematize immigration when this status is nothing more than temporary: after how many years of residence in a country does one cease to be an immigrant? Idescat data (2024). The ease with which the debate is approached from this perspective stems from the inclination to seek responsibility for the failures of the political class in the face of entrenched problems—the result of generational ills such as wage stagnation or youth precariousness—by looking down on social groups with less capacity for political influence (without the right to vote) and/or.
It is undeniable that the gap with the greatest impact on our daily lives is reflected in the inequalities related to our differentiated economic capacity. This gap is precisely what explains why people who suffer from structural material deprivation cannot integrate into our societies, or why they have less room to participate in our neighborhoods, and it does not matter whether these people respond to the names Mamadou, Fátima, Maria, or Jordi. The discourses that blame people perceived as outsiders for their exclusion intentionally ignore the fact that no integration The poverty of these people is a consequence of the lack of coverage of basic needs. In the current context, without meeting material needs and ensuring family conciliation, there is no room for political, social, or cultural participation.
The label immigrant It serves to define otherness, those people perceived by the hegemonic social group as outsiders. So much so that any person with black skin or of Maghreb descent is perceived as an immigrant in Catalonia, regardless of whether they were born in Catalonia or not, have lived here for more than 30 years, or speak a Catalan that Pompeu Fabra would envy. In this sense, a quick analysis of the language used by the press shows how the label of immigrant is reserved only for those people perceived as (i) impoverished outsiders. A distinction is made between outsiders with high economic capacity, who are called foreigners, community members, or expats, and those with fewer financial resources, who are considered immigrants and who tend to come from the Global South—the origin of people who belong to groups that have suffered slavery, colonization, or structural imperialist or plundering dynamics.
Focusing the debate on immigration and integration stigmatizes the group of people perceived as outsiders (from the Global South). We need to talk more about the elephants in the room: racism and poverty. This perspective brings more people together and explains much more of the biases that fracture our society.
Continuing with the first dynamic is cheating ourselves in solitaire. Cheating because part of the more or less conscious motives of those who perpetuate it is the attempt to address various social problems, such as endemic poverty or the underfunding of social services, by focusing on minority social groups, lacking political or economic power and therefore less at risk of protest or retaliation. It's a self-deception that, in the current geopolitical context, brings political benefits, given that the old recipe of the common enemy is proving successful in the West. And economic benefits, since this narrative is proving to be tempting for business sectors that thrive on social fears, hatred of one another, and polarization in the digital world.
This distortion of reality through language that points fingers and prejudges is a brake on any national project that aspires to social cohesion or fosters a sense of belonging. They condition in a singular way: racism and (therefore) material poverty.
