Center for Comparative Immigration Studies

This paper explores how immigrants have caused a restructuring of identities in the “new” Spain, through a juxtaposition with those who have traditionally been defined as “cultural others.” To show how processes of categorization are used as a rhetoric of exclusion, Agrela analyzes the way in which public policies are constructing immigration as a symbolic, political, and cultural problem that has recently become one of the most salient issues on Spain's political agenda at the local, regional, and national levels. The paper examines how formal and informal categories of immigrants are established by public policies and how immigrants have come to be defined as a “public problem.”