Social actors: Spain endorses interculturalism, but requires more practice and less narrative

Keywords: complementarity, Diversity, Interculturalism, social actors, Spain

Ricard Zapata-Barrero
(Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

For Spain we have conducted 19 interviews in Barcelona, Bilbao, and their respective Autonomous Communities, and also some other social actors work at the state level.  What can we learn from Civil Society Actors?  We can highlight several key conclusions that may inform both research and policy agenda.

One of the first conclusions is that interculturalism is the mainstream policy. Most actors may have different views on how to carry on interculturalism, but the same intercultural action is never rejected.  Concerning the relation between interculturalism and multiculturalism, some actors are aware there is a scholarly debate comparing these two approaches. The references mentioned by interviewees tend to consider multiculturalism as a paradigm that must evolve into interculturalism, as an exception in time that seeks to ensure equality. There is then an assumed complementarity that arises from interviews.

Another conclusion is that there is not awareness of interconnections between the four paradigms (Interculturalism, Multiculturalism, Transnationalism and Cosmopolitanism). This means that there is neither a view they are opposite nor a position that they can be implemented at the same time.   But when speaking with most social actors, this lack of awareness disappears since they become conscious that for most of them the notions are present, and they even assume some combination into the diversity policy agenda. 

Another clear conclusion is the clash between normative universal values orienting diversity governance approaches and national legislations and structures that prevails. This national ranking over universal values is the core of most of the concerns related to structural racism and institutional and social discriminations. Concomitant to this, there is a permanent concern on the mismatch between theory/narratives and practices/implementation on diversity policies. The criticism of this mishmash crosses most of the interviews and can be considered as one of the core claims of social actors. Through all the interviews we detect that there is a clear fear of social segregation by nationalities through public space. The territorialisation of cultures is an undesirable outcome that any diversity policy must prevent. 

Beyond these concerns, two trends for Spain seems very clear: First,  diversity policies in Spain continue to have a conceptual commitment to interculturalism  and social actors in general seems to endorse it, in spite of expressing a certain concern on the gap between narratives and implementation, the difficulty to reach all the realms of the public sphere. Second, diversity policy practices tend to favour implicitly the complementarity among paradigms. Specially, even if sometimes multiculturalism and interculturalism are seen in opposite terms, most of the time complementarity is the mainstream view. 

Transnationalism and cosmopolitanism are not really confronted among them and among the other paradigms.  But there is in general a lack of knowledge about what does these two paradigms involve in the narrative and in practice. Cosmopolitanism tend to be an ideal directly threatened by a Spanish legislation that privileges the national over the universal. And transnationalism is highly appreciated as a reality with a lot of potentialities for social development but that is ignored by public authorities.  There is a majoritarian endorsement that the incorporation of transnationalism into the diversity policy agenda is still a pending issue.

These first conclusions request us more in-depth scholarly debate and policy tools. In general awareness raising of the plurality of normative approaches for managing diversity is assumed but never articulated theoretically nor in practice. A plural and complementary view of normative approaches to diversity management seems to be justified and endorsed by social actors.