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Migration and citizenship in social media; A ‘netnography’ of access to Spanish citizenship. [email protected] www.pablomateos.com Department of Geography Pablo Mateos Dept. of Geography, University College London

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Migration and citizenship in social media;

A ‘netnography’ of access to Spanish

citizenship.

[email protected]

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

Data capture screen

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]