Next GRITIM-UPF Research Seminar by Siresa Lopez:

Date: 6^th June 2018

Time: 18:00

Place: at UPF - Campus Ciutadella (Roger de Llùria Building, Room 40:213).

Title: ‘Experiencing European diversity: EU cultural policy, transnational mobility and European identity’

Abstract: The new migration-driven dynamics in European cities are constitutive of ‘complex changes in the population characteristics surrounding patterns of nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, age, gender, class, and human capital’ (Vertovec 2015). In these complex urban landscapes of overlapping cultures and explicit distortion of the group-space-culture continuum, movers’ acculturation strategies are subjected to a same sort of diversification (Berry 1997) involving different strategies and degrees of interculturality in the formation of ‘clusters of social communication’ (Deutsch 1953). The hybridisation of social relationships and cultural practices might have a transformative character in the way individuals rationalise their experiences in the domain of identity. Identities, necessarily dynamic and malleable because involve identifications with changing realities, find expression not only through emotional, attitudinal and behavioural channels, but also through the political domain of meaning-ascription, visible when these changing realities are signified within particular discourses. In this lecture, I will present the methodological design and main findings of my doctoral research. Following studies linking socio-spatial interaction and European identity (Recchi & Favell 2009; Mau 2010; Kuhn 2015), I have analysed differences among EU-movers in incorporating inter-group relations and perceptions on immigration and cultural difference in subjectivities on a European cultural diversity. The data set I use has been generated through semi-structured interviews with Spanish and Italian movers in North-Western European cities representing distinct diversity contexts. The focus of the lecture will be placed on the methodological strategy I have followed in order to engage students with a discussion around methodological problems and difficulties linked to qualitative research designs.

BIO: Siresa Lopez is a researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po Paris. Previously she has been a research associate at the School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester; visiting scholar at the Department of Politics, New York University; Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at CEDEM, Université de Liège; and researcher at IBEI, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals. She has a background in Economics, Anthropology, and Political Science. Her main fields of research include diversity management policies, intra-EU mobility and European identity.

Recommended Readings:

Rother, N., & T. M. Nebe (2009), ‘More mobile, more European? Free movement and European identity’, in: Recchi & Favell (eds.), Pioneers of European Integration: Citizenship and Mobility in the EU. Cheltenham, Northanptom: Edwar Elgar.

Schlenker-Fischer, A. (2011), ‘Multiple identities and attitudes towards cultural diversity in Europe: A conceptual and empirical analysis’, in: Fuchs & Klingemann (eds), Cultural Diversity, European Identity and the Legitimacy of the EU. Cheltenham & Northampton: Edward Elgar.