Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies

The movement of populations across national boundaries is coming to be one of the main challenges that nation-states face from within their boundaries. In this era of globalization, migration no longer can be understood as a one-time displacement. The connectedness of today’s societies brought about by the development of communication technologies, cheaper and easier communications makes contact with a country of origin easier for migrants. States are forced to deal with the diversity in language, culture and identity in democratic ways. This study looks at how, within nation-states, citizenship is regulated by the type of access granted migrants to public resources such as health. Language becomes a key element in the negotiation of citizens’ rights. A study of a health care clinic in the Catalan-Spanish bilingual city of Barcelona shows the way migrants are challenging nationalist ideologies on language and citizenship. The interest in the study of a specific country such as Spain is its location as a nation-state with ethno-linguistic minorities in the European Union context. It is a case that is traversed by the tensions around internal homogeneity that is being challenged from above by supra-national entities and from below by the mobility of persons across national boundaries. The research is based on a two-year ethnographic study carried out by the author between 2002-2003 at a primary health care clinic in a multicultural neighborhood of Barcelona. The practices of both health care providers and immigrants mainly from South East Asia (Pakistan and India) and Northern Africa (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria) are analyzed. The findings discuss the contradictions between actual everyday practices of multilingualism and the language/health policies of state and regional sociopolitical entities.