a ‘netnography’ of access to...
TRANSCRIPT
Migration and citizenship in social media;
A ‘netnography’ of access to Spanish
citizenship.
www.pablomateos.com
Department of Geography
Pablo Mateos
Dept. of Geography, University College London
Contents
1. Background & justification
2. Methodology - Netnography
3. Analysis and results
4. Conclusion
Growing interest in citizenship studies
• Citizenship is one of the two key ingredients of the Nation
State (territory + people)
• Different approaches: (Bauböck, 2006)
– Citizenship as belonging / identity (Anderson’s imagined
communities)
– Citizenship as a bundle of rights and obligations
– Citizenship as membership (=nationality or passport)
• Transnationalism literature interested in dual / multiple
nationality (the overlapping of States)
– Flexible Citizenship (Ong, 1998)
– Absent citizens / Citizenship a la carte (Fitzgerald, 2008)
– Extraterritorial Political Rights (Escobar, 2007)
Integration, return or circular migration?
A telling quote…
• “As soon as I get the [British] citizenship I go back
to Mexico”
Felipe, Mexican living and working in London for five
years (personal communication)
EU citizenship and migration
• 1993 Maastricht EU treaty – ‘Schengen effect’
– 2 ingredients:
• EU citizenship = Any EU nationality
• Full mobility for EU nationals
• Increasing benefits of an EU nationality little studied – Entry (esp. from ‘tourist visa-waiver’ countries)
– Permanence (bypasses migrant residency legislation in 30 countries)
– Intra-EU Mobility (Schengen effect, access to large labour market)
• See papers by Van Liempt, I. on Somali 3-way migration
– Exit (multiple return, access to welfare)
• But… very different policies of nationality acquisition across Europe – (Baubock, 2006; 2 volume IMISCOE book)
Ancestry: a passport to Europe
• Adverts in a magazine for the Portuguese speaking community in London
• German Citizenship - Don’t loose your
citizenship because of lack of information
• Consulting and Geneaology
• Complete advice and Genealogical
research
• Search of your ancestors in Italy
• Offices in Italy – Offices in Brazil
Discussion fora on access to EU
citizenship
•http://www.ukresident.com/forums
•http://www.immigrationboards.com/viewforum.php?f=42
7
Different languages: a first obstacle
• American
citizenship
forum
Univision
• US-based
• in Spanish
Ethnic preferences in EU nationality laws used by
migrants
… it is now common to see Madrid full of Latin Americans who are
grandchildren of Italians, living legally in Spain, while the grandchildren
of Spaniards are in many cases living illegally here..
(Ricardo, Brasilian)
Why can a great-great-grandchild of an Italian live legally in Spain and
a grandchild of Spaniards cannot? It is very unfair that if one person
has only one Italian great-great-grandparent can obtain the Italian
nationality and live in Spain without problems, while I have four
Spanish grandparents and I’m just a foreigner in Spain.
(Laura, Argentinean)
• Some testimonies from our study
Research objectives – Spanish nationality
• To explore the different strategies to access a EU nationality
(Spain)
• To understand migrants/descendants’ underlying reasons
• To map out the hierarchy of countries and routes
– residence vs ancestry
• To distil lessons for future work
– Measurement beyond naturalisation / official stats
• To test an innovative research methodology
Netnography
Netnography – Ethnographic work of internet material
containing personal experiences or life histories (Kozinets,
2010)
• Kozinets, RV. (2010) Netnography. Doing Research On-line. Sage: London
• Miller, D (2011) Tales from Facebook, Polity
• Brinkerhoff, J (2006) Digital Diasporas , Cambridge UP
• Social media, an untapped resource
in migration studies
• Discussion fora, facebook groups,
twitter messages, blogs, on-line
news, commercial services
Discussion group characteristics
• “Registro Civil” disscusion group
http://groups.msn.com/registrocivil
• Key player in facilitating migration information
through a “self-help approach”
• Run from May-2001 to Feb-2009
• Messages fully visible to the public
– 54,920 messages downloaded in May 2008
– 6,813 people (unique user names)
– 2,860 people sent messages to the “Nationality forum”
and this is the group studied here
Variables captured
Variable Pre-set responses
1 ID Person ID number
2 Role in the group Participant / Leader
3 Country of origin Country
4 Spanish Ancestors? Y/N
5 Seeks nationality Y/N
6 Year nationality requested Year
7 Nationality approved? Y/N
8 Year nationality acquired Year
9 Method of access to
nationality
residence / spouse/ parents/
grandparents/ off-spring/
10 Resides in Spain? Y/N
11 Year of arrival to Spain Year
12 Length of residence in
Spain
< 1 year / 1-2 years / 3-5
years / > 5 years
13 Signs of irregular
experience?
Y/N/ probably
14 Undocumented/irregular
migrant?
Y/N
15 Returned to country of
origin?
Y/N/ intermitent / pretends
16 Other observations Free text
• Captured for 2,860 people
• 41.904 messages processed
• at least 16.856 messages on
nationality read
Countries of origin & Spanish ancestry
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600
Argentina
Venezuela
Cuba
México
Colombia
Perú
Uruguay
España
Chile
Brasil
República Dominicana
Ecuador
Estados Unidos
Marruecos
Personas
Con ancestros Españoles Sin ancestros Españoles Información de ancestros no disponible
Ancestry and residence by country of origin
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
% Ancestros Españoles
0%
25%
50%
75%
100%
% V
ive
en
Es
pa
ña
Argentina
Austria
Brasil
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
Ecuador
Estados Unidos
Francia
Guatemala
Holanda
Italia
Marruecos
México
Panamá
ParaguayPerú
Portugal
República Dominicana
Sahara Occidental
Uruguay
Venezuela
Ancestry rate
Resid
en
ce r
ate
Typology of countries (ancestry vs. spouse)
Country of origin (1)
Total
People
(2)
%Ancestry
(3)
%Spouse &
Children
(4)
Difference
quotient
(5)
Predominant
Method (6)
Ukraine 5 0% 80% 1
Russia 6 0% 33% 1
Morocco 10 10% 60% 0.71
Dominican Republic 37 16% 65% 0.6
Peru 53 17% 49% 0.49
Colombia 61 16% 38% 0.39
Ecuador 23 22% 43% 0.33
Panama 8 25% 38% 0.2
Paraguay 8 25% 38% 0.2
Portugal 5 20% 20% 0
Mexico 80 39% 25% -0.22
Venezuela 165 53% 28% -0.3
United States 16 50% 25% -0.33
Cuba 78 45% 18% -0.43
Argentina 469 39% 15% -0.44
Brazil 36 47% 14% -0.55
Uruguay 63 43% 11% -0.59
Chile 41 49% 12% -0.6
Western Sahara 6 33% 0% -1
Spouse &
Children
Neutral
Ancestry
Main findings
• Irregularity as a transition process
• Waiting times 2-4 years
• Return and circularity
• Welfare benefits
• Ancestry preferences with the EU seen as
unfair
• Family strategies; Residence vs. ancestry
Irregularity is a transition between statuses
• A large number of cases show people entitled to Spanish
nationality who are irregularly in Spain or in a legal limbo
because of the lengthy administrative process
My case is as follows, I got Spanish nationality (great!) after this I requested
the nationality for my two daughters but after a year and a half I have no news
at all. […] One of them is now 18 and her residence permit has expired for
several months […] I am desperate and feel powerless because my phone
calls and enquiries are going nowhere. My daughters have been living in Spain
for 7 years and one of them needs to work but can’t. The nationality will be the
solution but we don’t know nothing about how the process is going or how
much longer we have to wait. If any one can answer my questions please help.
(Marisa, Ecuatorian)
Transnational lives or insurance policy?
• 96 people declare future residence intentions.
• 58% to stay in Spain
• 19% already returned to country of origin
• 8% pretends to return
• 15% come and go between the two countries
• Welfare entitlements, return and residence Hi, I am Colombian and I have Spanish nationality with DNI and everything. I now live in Colombia
and my question is , can I loose my [Spanish] nationality for living in Colombia and not in Spain?. If
so, what do I need to do not to loose it?. If I return to Spain will I have problems for not having had
National Insurance contributions, or as a Spaniards I won’t have any problems?
(Claudio; Colombian, return migrant living in Colombia)
Hello, (…) my mother is Peruvian 62 years old and wants to request the Spanish nationality, she
has been in Spain for 9 years and has made National Insurance contributions for 4 years. I would
like to know if she gets Spanish nationality will she receive a pension or not?
(Rosario; Peruvia, more than 10 years living in Spain)
Nationality is passed on to facilitate further migration
• Interesting case of nationality transmission through ancestry to regularise migration situation in Spain.
I am Cuban and I am as irregular in Spain. My mother is in Cuba and has just obtained the Spanish nationality because her father was Spanish born in Spain, that is, she was Spaniard ‘by birth’. I have requested the residence permit for being the daughter of a Spaniard by they have rejected it, what can I do?
• A year later, after having acquired Spanish nationality she is interested in passing it on to her husband:
Hello: I am Cuban and I have Spanish nationality. My husband is in an irregular situation. I would like to know if he has the right to regularise his situation in Spain if we have been married (in Cuba) for 8 years. Regards
(Gladys; Cuban, resident in Spain)
Some more illustrations of these strategies
¿Anybody knows of an solicitor in Alicante? I need to get my grandfather’s birth certificate… I have been living in Spain for 5 years, but I am now back in Argentina. I would like to get Spanish citizenship to transmit it to my children.
(Cristina, Argentinean)
[…] My grandfather was Spanish and we have just managed to get my father’s nationality recognised post-mortem by the Spanish consulate in Buenos Aires. This nationality thing is very urgent to me, so that I can pass it to my partner. My siblings live in Argentina but I have been living in Spain for three years but as a student and this time doesn’t count at all.[…]
(Ernesto; Argentinean, 3 years living in Spain)
Conclusions (I)
• Interest in accessing an EU nationality is two-fold: – a migration strategy
– an ‘insurance policy’
• Strong interest in transmission to children and partner
• Clear hierarchy of countries: ancestry-residence gradient
• Ancestry route might be more prominent than naturalisation
• Fuzzy boundaries – Irregularity / nationality
– Residence / absent
– Nationalities / citizenship-denizenship
• Traditional survey work in countries of origin required
• Currently attracting funding to expand this work
Conclusions (II)
• Netnography method
(+) cheap to collect & no transcription!
(+) honest & detailed responses (in general)
(-) incomplete life histories
(-) ad hoc research strategy
• Promising methodological developments in the
age of volunteered information and the social web
– Text mining, blog mining, Facebook?
Acknowledgements / publications
• Thanks to:
– Prof. Jorge Durand (U. Guadalajara) co-author
– Dr. Isabel Villaseñor (UNAM, Mexico)
– Muhammad Adnan (UCL, UK)
• Papers published on the topic: – Mateos, P., and Durand, J. (2012) Residence vs. ancestry in
acquisition of Spanish citizenship; A 'netnography' approach.
Migraciones Internacionales, 23, 9-46
– Mateos, P. (forthcoming) EU Extrazens; Is external and multiple
citizenship changing national membership in the European Union?
International Migration Review (in press)
Other references
• Cheshire, J, Mateos, P. and Longley PA, (2011) Delineating Europe’s cultural regions; Population structure and surname clustering, Human
Biology, 83 (5):573-598 [article] [manuscript]
• Lakha, F., Gorman D, Mateos, P. (2011) Name analysis to classify populations by ethnicity in public health: Validation of Onomap in Scotland,
Public Health 125 (10) 688-696 [article]
• Iceland, J., Mateos, P., and Shaw, G. (2011) Ethnic Residential Segregation by Nativity in Great Britain and the United States. Journal of Urban
Affairs, 33 (4) 409-429 [article]
• Mateos, P., Longley, P.A. and O’Sullivan, D. (2011) Ethnicity and Population Structure in Personal Naming Networks. PloS ONE (Public Library
of Science) 6 (9) e22943 [article]
• Longley PA, Cheshire, J, and Mateos, P. (2011) Creating a Regional Geography of Britain through the Spatial Analysis of Surnames, Geoforum,
42 (4) 506-516 [article]
• Petersen, J, Longley, PA., Gibin, M, Mateos, P, and Atkinson, P. (2011) Names-based classification of accident and emergency department
users, Health and Place, 17 (5) 1162-1169 [article]
• Mateos, P., De Smith, M., and Singleton, A. (2011) Developments in Quantitative Human Geography, Urban Modelling, and Geographic
Information Science, Transactions in GIS, 15 (3) 249-252 [article]
• Mateos, P. (2011) Uncertain segregation: the challenge of defining and measuring ethnicity in segregation studies, Built Environment, 37 (2)
226-238 [article]
• Vaughan, L., Arbaci, S., and Mateos, P. (2011) Perspectives in urban segregation. Built Environment, 37 (2) 125-127 [article]
• Petersen, J, Gibin, M, Longley, PA, Mateos, P, Atkinson, P and Ashby, D. (2011) Geodemographics as a tool for targeting neighbourhoods in
public health campaigns. Journal of Geographical Systems 13(2) 173-192 [article]
• Aguilar, A.G. and Mateos, P. (2011) Diferenciación Socio-Demográfica del Espacio Urbano de la Ciudad de México [Urban socio-demographic
differentiation in Mexico City], EURE (Santiago), 37(110) 5-30 [article]
• Mateos, P. (2010) El analisis geodemografico de apellidos en Mexico. [Geodemographic analysis of surnames in Mexico] Papeles de Población
65, 73-103 [article]
• Mateos, P, Singleton, A D, Longley, P A. (2009) Uncertainty in the analysis of ethnicity classifications: some issues of extent and aggregation of
ethnic groups. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35 (9) 1437-1460 [article] [manuscript]
• McElduff,F., Mateos,P., Wade,A., Cortina-Borja,M. (2008) What's in a name? The frequency and geographic distributions of UK surnames.
Significance 5(4), 189-192 [article]
• Mateos, P. And Tucker, D.K. (2008) Forenames and Surnames in Spain in 2004. Names, a Journal of Onomastics, 56 (3) 165-184. [article]