Labour Market Limbo: The Uneven Integration ... - Wiley Online Library

doi: 10.1111/imig.12313

Labour Market Limbo: The Uneven Integration of Co-Ethnic Argentine Immigrants in Spain Angela S. Garcıa*

ABSTRACT Immigration and citizenship laws that discriminate by race, ethnicity, and national origins are increasingly illegitimate in contemporary democracies, yet laws that grant privileged access and membership to immigrants who share natives’ ethnicity persist. This enduring positive selection rests upon the assumption that co-ethnicity fosters integration. Countering this logic, this article centers on co-ethnics’ insertion into local labour markets. It draws from a case study of Aguaviva, Spain, a depopulating village in which both co-ethnic Argentines and Romanian immigrants reside. The analysis qualifies the trend of deracialization in immigration and citizenship policy and shows that positive preferences do not uniformly foster integration. In dual labour market systems, co-ethnics struggle because they are not different enough for secondary sector jobs reserved for immigrant “others,” yet in the primary sector they enter into direct competition with natives.

INTRODUCTION For centuries, states formally excluded immigrants of particular races, ethnicities, and national origins due to perceived labour market competition (Dancygier, 2010; Olzak, 1992), cultural threat (Burns and Gimpel, 2000; Sniderman et al. 2004), and the global diffusion and normalization of racist policies (FitzGerald and Cook-Martın, 2014). Some scholars argue that the concurrent rise of contemporary liberal principles pushed democracies to shun exclusion by ascribed status in the late twentieth century (Joppke, 2005; Zolberg, 2006). Others contend that World War II and the Cold War prompted critical shifts in racial geopolitics that helped eliminate such overt discrimination (FitzGerald and Cook-Martın, 2014). Far less explored in the literature are enduring cases of positive selectivity in which co-ethnics – immigrants who share the native majority’s ethnicity – are granted membership rights and privileged access to the polity (Joppke, 2005; Tsuda, 2009). This type of policy is more compatible with the exigencies of contemporary liberal states and geopolitical norms because it makes positive derogations for preferred ethnic groups, while treating all noncitizens equally. * University of Chicago

[Correction added on 20 January 2017 after first online publication: The Introduction section was inadvertently removed in the article and it is now reinstated in this version]

Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

© 2017 The Author International Migration © 2017 IOM International Migration Vol. 55 (1) 2017 ISSN 0020-7985

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Preferential policies for co-ethnics centre on a primordialist model that treats ethnic identity as natural and fixed (Geertz, 1963; Chandra, 2001). Within such policies, ethnic proximity between co-ethnic immigrants and natives is assumed to foster immigrants’ integration (Joppke, 2005; Adida, 2014). More specifically, co-ethnicity is expected to function as a kind of “post-colonial bonus,” wherein citizenship rights and cultural capital in language, customs, and kinship relations aid co-ethnics by facilitating their integration into the “homeland” (Oostindie, 2011). If the predictions of this model hold, co-ethnic immigrants should face more inclusion than culturally dissimilar ones. Yet an array of studies demonstrates that co-ethnics frequently experience exclusion, rather than inclusion, in some social domains of their destination countries (Tsuda, 2009). Research on SouthSouth migration indicates that West African immigrants who share ethnicity and religion with their hosts experience political exclusion in urban Ghana, Benin, and Niger (Adida 2014). Studies based in Asia show Brazilian co-ethnics struggling to incorporate socially in Japan, even while becoming well integrated into the labour market (Tsuda, 2003, 2009). Chinese of Korean descent have similar experiences in South Korea (Seol and Skrentny, 2009). Ethnic Germans are broadly excluded from mainstream society in Germany (Levy and Weiss, 2002; Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2009). For co-ethnic Latin Americans in Spain, social inclusion comes more easily than labour market integration (CookMartın, 2013; Cook-Martın and Vildarich, 2009; Vives-Gonzalez, 2011). Although co-ethnics benefit from legal preferences that are not extended to other immigrants as well as rights and privileges that are often comparable to those of natives, they experience an uneven integration process. If co-ethnicity does not inevitably result in inclusion, what drives the integration challenges faced by co-ethnic immigrants? This article focuses on the local level, within co-ethnics’ immediate destinations, to offer a close analysis of their integration into local labour markets. Although steady, stable employment is fundamental to immigrants’ long-term socioeconomic stability and settlement (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001), labour market considerations are generally neglected in the cultural logic of policies that favour co-ethnics. This analysis draws from the theoretical framework of dual labour markets, in which the high-status primary sector is dominated by well positioned natives and the lowstatus secondary sector is mainly populated with immigrants who labour under difficult conditions, instability, and poor wages (Piore, 1979). In these circumstances, the presence of non co-ethnic immigrants critically influences co-ethnics’ labour market integration. Not different enough to sustain employment in secondary sector jobs reserved for immigrant “others,” co-ethnics must also directly compete with the native labour force in seeking to ascend to the primary sector. I develop this “labour market limbo” argument with interview and ethnographic observational data collected in Aguaviva, a Spanish municipality that is home to both co-ethnic Argentines and Romanian immigrants. This article suggests three caveats to the general trend of deracialization in immigration and citizenship policy (see Joppk, 2005, Zolberg, 2006, and FitzGerald and Cook-Martın, 2014). First, ethnic selection continues in thin disguise through laws that favour co-ethnics, because the reverse side of these selective measures is the exclusion of other, less desirable immigrants. Second, although positive preferences are much easier for governments to sustain than negative discrimination, they do not translate into smooth, even integration paths for co-ethnic immigrants. Finally, this difficulty stems, in part, from these policies’ neglect of labour market considerations for co-ethnics. Finding and sustaining work in receiving locales is fundamental, for immigrants and co-ethnics alike. Despite assumptions that co-ethnics’ cultural capital renders them quickly assimilable, the presence of other immigrant groups within immediate receiving locales can critically mitigate their labour market integration.

SELECTING IMMIGRANTS BY ETHNICITY Preferential policies attempt to build “ethnic affinity” within states by promoting the migrations of post-colonial subjects and the resettlement of former emigrants and their descendants (Brubaker,

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1998: 1047). The notion of ethnicity inherent in such policy is fundamentally one of origins, which is centred in the racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural traits co-ethnic immigrants presumably hold in common with natives. These perceptions of commonality can result in preferential treatment for some immigrants via ethnic affinity policy, a subset of a larger family of migration laws that use ethnic, racial, and/or national-origins criteria to screen potential migrants, shape legally sanctioned migration flows, and promote immigrants’ assimilability (Joppke, 2005). Since the conclusion of World War II, immigrant selection has shifted away from factors of ethnicity, race, and national origins and towards criteria around human need, family ties, and immigrants’ skills. Nonetheless, some liberal democracies continue to partially select immigrants based on ethnic descent or national origin. In Europe, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Germany have some form of positive preferences in place (Joppke, 2005), as do Japan and South Korea in Asia (Cornelius and Tsuda, 2004; Seol and Skrentny, 2009), and Israel in the Middle East (Peled, 1992). Current tolerance for such policy hinges on the positive character of its discrimination: it is generally still acceptable to treat all non-citizens equally while “positive derogations” are made for certain ethnicities or national origins (Joppke, 2005: 22). These preferences rest on the logic that co-ethnic immigrants readily integrate into the cultural conventions of an already-familiar ethnic homeland, but they omit explicit consideration of co-ethnics’ insertion into local labour markets.

POLICIES OF PREFERENCE IN SPAIN In Spain, the desirability of Latin Americans as immigrants developed in the highly political postCivil War context. By constructing a romantic notion of hispanidad, a pan-ethnic Iberoamerican community born out of Spanish colonization, the fascist dictator Francisco Franco sought to strengthen ties with Latin America and compensate for Spain’s isolation in post-war Europe (Skrentny et al., 2007; Joppke, 2005: 116). In doing so, a 1954 law allowed for twelve dual nationality treaties with Latin American countries on the basis of historical ties and Spain’s “spiritual mission” in Latin America. In 1969, another immigration law exempted Latin Americans and Filipinos from standard work permit requirements (see Joppke 2005: 116). After transitioning to democracy, post-Franco Spain continued preferential policies for Latin Americans, though the approach shifted from overcoming geopolitical isolation through selective immigration to forming links with emigrants and their descendants through citizenship law (Joppke, 2005: 116-121). Spanish citizenship is centred in the principal of jus sanguinis, which attributes nationality by virtue of descent, rather than jus soli, which recognizes as nationals any individual born within state territory. Spain’s jus sanguinis framework first emerged in the late nineteenth century within the context of heavy out-migration to the “new world.” In response to the challenges presented by such emigration, the Spanish state sought to continue relationships with emigrants and their descendants with the Civil Code of 1889, which declared that all those born of a Spaniard held Spanish nationality, regardless of place of birth (Moreno Fuentes, 2001: 124-125). This legislation regulated the ways in which Spanish nationality was attributed, passed on, and maintained. The principle of jus sanguinis has become an increasingly important and debated aspect of Spain’s citizenship laws. In the 1990s, two nationality reforms capped claims of Spanish citizenship by foreign-born descendants of Spaniards at the first generation, with emigrants’ grandchildren regulated by the same naturalization procedures as ordinary immigrants. But in 2002, new legislation strengthened intergenerational ethnic return migration to Spain. The law waived the residence requirement for emigrants’ children to recover Spanish citizenship, and it reduced the residence requirement for grandchildren to one year (Joppke, 2003: 452). The Spanish Foreign Ministry estimated that the 2002 reform put about one million descendants of Spanish emigrants – 850 thousand Latin Americans, of which almost half were Argentines – on a “fast track” to Spanish citizenship


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(Joppke, 2003: 453). At the time of writing, Spain allows the foreign born children and grandchildren of Spanish citizens to claim state membership and, in the case of Latin American nationals, to do so without losing birth citizenship. Like Franco’s concept of hispanidad, contemporary Spanish citizenship preferences are based on the perception that Latin Americans are more culturally similar to the native-born population than other immigrants (Skrentny et al., 2007). This reasoning invokes similarity hand in hand with the notion that ethnic affinity ensures immigrant integration and a minimal disruption to the native popon, for ulation (Joppke, 2005: 123; Cornelius, 2004: 420).1 The Spanish Prince Felipe de Borb example, claimed that Hispanic countries share with Spain “cultural roots that are the backbone of our identities, independent of our national origins” (cited in Calvo, 2006: 1). Similar to most policies of preference for co-ethnics, Spain’s approach revolves entirely around cultural similarity, neglecting considerations of co-ethnic labour market integration. When the economic and political conditions of sending and receiving nation-states shift, however, the possibility of improved employment opportunities and better wages in the “ethnic homeland” dominate co-ethnics’ motivation to emigrate – not cultural rationales. The migration flows between Spain and Argentina illustrate this argument. Historically, Spain has experienced large outflows of emigrants, but since the late 1980s it has become a country of immigration (Cornelius, 2004: 389). At the same time, Argentina, quintessentially characterized for its incoming immigration flows, has transformed into a country of emigration (Cook-Martın, 2013). When Argentina’s economic and political crisis exploded in 2001, emigration to Spain became a popular option for those with Spanish ancestry. The number of native-born Argentines residing in Spain more than doubled between 1999 and 2003, rising from 64,020 to 157,323 (Jachimowicz, 2003: 1). In 2009, Spain began to grapple with its own economic crisis. Argentine arrivals stagnated, and some began the process of return migration (INE, 2016). Yet citizenship constructs have long-term salience, and Spain’s preferences continue to provide the legal basis for ethnic affinity migration. Importantly, they also allow Spanish municipalities to become involved in selective immigration schemes. As detailed below, depopulating municipalities use Spain’s citizenship preferences to recruit desirable Argentine co-ethnics as a way to stabilize their populations. Local leaders also rely heavily on the logic of assimilability and, in doing so, they repeat the state’s failure to seriously consider co-ethnic immigrants’ integration into local labour markets.

FIELD SITE AND METHODS To analyse co-ethnic labour market integration, this article centres on Aguaviva, a small municipality in the Spanish province of Teruel located in the south of the Autonomous Community of Arag on. Aguaviva led the development of the Spanish Association of Municipalities against Depopulation (AEMCD), an organization encompassing 85 localities seeking to recruit “culturally similar” co-ethnics to repopulate rural villages. Like the other towns in the AEMCD, Aguaviva’s remote location greatly contributes to its trend of depopulation, which is especially affected by rural-urban internal migration. In the 1930s, Aguaviva reached its historical high of approximately 1,800 inhabitants, but by the mid-1980s this number had dropped close to 600, shrinking to a third of the town’s previous size in about fifty years (see Figure 1 below). Complicating matters, most villagers who remain in Aguaviva are far beyond their reproductive years, with the number of inhabitants age 55 and over consistently above 50 percent for decades (INE 2016). When Luis Bricio Manzanares, mayor of Aguaviva from 1991 to 2015, first came to power, he was aware of the threat of depopulation. As the municipal population dips, local business, industry, and schools feel the effects. “The town loses its unity,” Bricio said in an interview. “Stores aren’t viable, bars close, and bit by bit this becomes a ghost town.” Because municipal budgets in Spain


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FIGURE 1 POPULATION DECLINE IN AGUAVIVA, SPAIN

1,850 1,650

Populaon

1,450 1,250 1,050 850

650 450 Year Source: National Institute of Statistics (INE), 2016.

are made on the basis of population, as out-migration increases the availability of services declines (Hortas-Rico et al., 2013). The constant threat of school closings and the curtailment of basic government services make life in depopulating municipalities like Aguaviva even more precarious. Bricio travelled to Buenos Aires, Argentina in the summer of 2000. There he set out to recruit Argentines of Spanish descent to emigrate to Aguaviva in order to offset its extended period of depopulation. Selected co-ethnic Argentines – families with parents under 40 years old, and with at least two school aged children – would travel to Aguaviva via subsidies paid for by the municipality. On the one hand, Argentina seemed to be a reasonable launching point for this initiative: Spain was experiencing an economic boom at the time, whereas Argentina was teetering on the precipice of an economic and political crisis. In addition, there was a large population of co-ethnics in Argentina. This was of interest to Aguaviva’s leaders, who believed that the town’s natives would only accept culturally similar newcomers. Bricio made his decision to repopulate Aguaviva with Argentines, using the logic that they had a “similar culture, the same cultural setting, the language, the religion.” As Bricio explained it, “This town is like a society . . . and because of that you’ve got to be really careful with the townspeople, right? Because we have a very concrete way of life.” Municipal leaders were invested in preserving the town’s social, cultural, and ethnic context while building the town’s population, and they sought out migrants of Spanish descent who would presumably integrate rapidly. On the other hand, it was rather unreasonable to travel across the Atlantic to Argentina to find immigrants willing to relocate to Aguaviva. In 2000, the year of the mayor’s trip, Spain was already experiencing immigration growth, with an almost 12 percent increase in foreign-born residents pushing the number of immigrants nation-wide close to 900,000. The following year, an even larger 24 percent increase in the foreign born spiked the immigrant population to well over one million (Ortega Perez, 2003). Even around remote Aguaviva, there was a burgeoning presence of immigrants in the area from which Bricio could have begun his re-population endeavour: close to 900 immigrants already resided throughout the remote province of Teruel in 2000 (INE, 2016).


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FIGURE 2 POPULATION BY NATIONALITY IN AGUAVIVA 800 700

Populaon

600 500 400

Spanish

300

Foreign

200

Total

100 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

0 Year

Source: National Institute of Statistics (INE), 2016

The focus in the village, however, was on manufacturing socially acceptable migrant flows to settle in Aguaviva. The migration streams entering Spain at the turn the century were dominated by Moroccans (Ortega Perez, 2003). Of those immigrants residing throughout Teruel in 2000, 44 percent were born in Africa (INE, 2016). By 2007, Romanians became the most numerous immigrant group (INE, 2016). These were not the co-ethnic immigrant neighbours envisioned in Aguaviva’s repopulation plan. The flip side of selective policies that give preference to ethno-culturally similar groups is, of course, the exclusion of other, less socially-desirable immigrants (Joppke, 2005: 23). Within Aguaviva’s preference for Argentine co-ethnics, then, lay thinly veiled discrimination against immigrants already residing in Spain. When Bricio journeyed to Argentina, he left behind a population of just 592 inhabitants in Aguaviva. In the autumn of 2000, just six months after the mayor’s recruitment trip, selected co-ethnic Argentines began to arrive to Aguaviva. They immediately shifted the municipality’s demographic outlook. The newcomers, who encompassed recruited Argentine families and those who followed them through newly established migrant kinship networks, boosted the village’s population to 651 inhabitants (see Figure 2). The leaders of similar towns nearby witnessed Aguaviva’s sudden population growth with interest. Bricio recalled that “we saw this [co-ethnic recruitment] could be good not only for our town but also for others . . . then eight or ten of us mayors got together and decided to form an association.” The Spanish Association of Municipalities against Depopulation evolved out of this meeting, and it grew to encompass 85 municipalities in Arag on, Castilla y Le on, and Valencia, all with populations between 200 and 1,000 inhabitants, committed to recruiting co-ethnic immigrants. Within the field site of Aguaviva, I engaged in three months of qualitative data collection during 2006, with an additional follow-up visit in 2010. I conducted ethnographic observation of immigrant residents in Aguaviva in their homes, within public contexts in the municipality (at shops, bars, parks and plazas, and church), and at their places of work. A purposive, non-random sample of 39 informants (local leaders, natives, immigrants, and immigrant employers) participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews to access diverse viewpoints regarding co-ethnics’ labour market integration in Aguaviva. During data analysis I coded interview transcriptions individually, looking for recurrent themes and common trends with an inductive analytical approach. As I refined my interpretations, I coded each interview three times. I followed a similar process with the observation field notes, which I triangulated with interview and demographic data. © 2017 The Author. International Migration © 2017 IOM

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In interviews, five local leaders, including the mayor, a priest, municipal workers, and a social worker, provided information on depopulation in Aguaviva, the recruitment of co-ethnic Argentines, and the reception of immigrants, both Argentines and Romanians. Four natives of Aguaviva contributed their perspectives on depopulation and immigrant arrivals. Interviews with immigrants, 27 in total, probed labour market experiences in Aguaviva, personal migration history, Spanish ancestry, social relations with natives and other immigrants, and adjustment to life post-migration. The three principle immigrant employers in town provided their outlooks on the local labour market, hiring immigrants, and immigrants’ performance at work. All interview respondents commented on differences and similarities between natives in Aguaviva, co-ethnic Argentines, and Romanians. Most brought up the issue independently during interviews. Those who did not were asked questions that prompted cross-group comparisons. For example, local leaders, natives, and employers were asked: As different groups of immigrants arrived in Aguaviva, how did you react? Immigrants were asked: Does your employer treat all workers the same? These questions were followed with probes as necessary.

ARGENTINES AT WORK IN AGUAVIVA As co-ethnics, Argentines were perceived as socially desirable when they arrived in Aguaviva (see Calavita, 2005). Nonetheless, with Spanish citizenship in hand, they were incompatible with the second sector work available in the municipality – jobs that placed a premium on flexible, disposable, and cheap labour (see Piore, 1979). As Maxwell (2012) argues, integration is multidimensional: better integration in some domains, like societal integration, may result in trade-offs in others, such as labour market integration. Employers in Aguaviva soon turned to other immigrants, particularly undocumented Romanians, as their preferred labour source. At the same time, Argentines’ efforts to enter into the local primary sector were frustrated by direct competition with well-connected, privileged natives. The analysis below demonstrates how, in a dual labour market system, the presence of other immigrant groups can critically shape co-ethnics’ labour market integration. It also suggests the primacy of work for immigrants, regardless of co-ethnic ties and preferential policies. The reception of co-ethnic Argentines As Argentines trickled into Aguaviva, they received a warm reception that was strongly connected to the population growth they brought. As Elena, a native in her 80s, remembered, “It was an exciting time, to hear that the school would stay open and seeing new faces on the street.” A perception of shared ethnicity also drove the welcome. Raul, a 76-year-old retiree, recalled a conversation he had in the pub about the Argentines: “We were all in agreement that this was a good thing. They weren’t so different from us! We would help them adjust and they would help us keep the town going, so we’d all come out winning.” Similarly Ana, a 53-year-old shopkeeper, reflected, “How would we ever do this without being able to understand each other, both with words but also in terms of our life styles? They are like us. Hispanics, Spanish. That helps them fit in, and helps us accept them.” Embedded within this type of reflection were perceptions of other immigrants in the region. “It’s not like they [the Argentines] are Moroccans,” exclaimed Carmela, a homemaker and mother of two. “Those kinds of people would be hard to integrate here. Their religion, their clothes, their food and language. . . It’s all very strange. But the Argentines, they are like us.” Due to their contribution to population growth and their co-ethnicity, Argentines were placed at the top rung of the scale of immigrant social desirability in Aguaviva. This status also came, in part, because of the other immigrant groups against whom they were compared (see Calavita, 2005). Across interviews, co-ethnic Argentines also recounted a warm reception in Aguaviva and personal familial connections to Spain. Nevertheless, from the very beginning of their time in Aguaviva they


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were principally concerned with socio-economic advancement. Indeed, the co-ethnics cited their expectations for better job opportunities as a key motivation behind their decision to migrate. Matıas, one of the first Argentines to arrive to Aguaviva, explained his perspective: “I feel linked to Spain in many ways, especially through my grandparents. They were from Spain. . . I was also interested in the idea of rejuvenating a dying town. But if I am honest, I did not decide to come to Aguaviva for these reasons. I came, I brought my family here, because we were having problems making ends meet in Buenos Aires. We thought we would make more money here and that life would be easier.” The local labour market Despite high expectations, Argentines encountered a narrow and segmented labour market in Aguaviva. The primary sector, with white collar jobs in local government, small business, schools, banks, and other professions, was dominated by socio-economically privileged and well-connected natives. The secondary sector used to revolve around agriculture, but this work declined due to a lack of irrigation infrastructure, an illness that infected peach groves in the late 90s, falling prices, and Aguaviva’s aging population. The town’s small service sector (one hotel and several restaurants) was also not a stable source of primary employment for incoming Argentine co-ethnics. At the forefront of Aguaviva’s economy in the summer, when many natives and their families return for vacation, the service work was seasonal and temporary. Although undersized, the industrial and construction sectors offered the most steady and well paid work within the secondary sector. These employers were also accustomed to hiring immigrants, as they had intermittently employed Romanians since the early 2000s. It was during this time that Romania’s economy began to collapse, leading to very low per capita incomes, high unemployment, and increased migration throughout Europe (Sandu et al., 2004: 19). Upon arriving to Aguaviva, most Argentine co-ethnics found work in a company that centres on gravel extraction and the production of cement, gravel, and asphalt, or in one of several local construction companies. These jobs were physically demanding, relatively low skilled, and often had no promotion ladder. One Argentine, Mateo, took a position on the gravel pit’s conveyer belt despite an old back injury that made standing for long periods of time painful. “When we came, at first we were just the men. . . So we all lived together and the mayor started getting us jobs. The work was really hard. I worked long hours, and I felt exhausted. With my back I wasn’t sure how long I could last at that job, but there was nothing else,” he explained. Roberto, also employed at the gravel pit, faced a different set of difficulties. “I started to work as a cement truck driver. . . the trucks were really old, with bad brakes. It was very hard to drive, and dangerous,” he recalled. Co-ethnics with jobs in construction did not fare much better. Carlos was employed as a bricklayer with a local construction company. He began work at the height of summer, with high temperatures and blaring sun. “My problem was the heat,” he explained. “I’ve always worked in restaurants, so at this job I was not accustomed to the conditions. And because I was learning slowly, I did not make much progress.” Carlos began to work during official break times in order to keep pace with the rest of the crew – a group of Romanians who, due to their experience, moved through their tasks much more quickly. The co-ethnics’ struggles at work did not go unnoticed by their employers. In general, their perception was that the Argentines were “too lazy” to perform manual labour effectively. One employer explained that “all those South Americans were adorable for chatting, having coffee or a few beers. But putting forth effort on the job, and the continuation of that effort – that wasn’t possible.” Frustrated with a co-ethnic employee’s complaints about working conditions, a manager in a construction company exclaimed, “But he was employed as a driver! And for that job to seem hard, well, I don’t know exactly what he came here for.” Another employer described a similar frustration: “This specific guy that I’m telling you about started off driving a compact steam roller


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on the highway. And the second day he came to tell me that on the steam roller it was really hot. And of course – hot? Sure it’s hot. But it’s a job, right?” Within several months of arrival, Argentine co-ethnics’ struggles in the local labour market already were evident. Romanian competition in the secondary sector The presence of Romanian labourers in Aguaviva invited hard comparisons with the co-ethnic Argentines recruited to the town. At a conversation in a bar just off the main plaza, an employer remarked that his Argentine and Romanian workers were “complete opposites. . ..with the Romanians, their approach to work was totally different. They learned quickly and didn’t complain. They kept to themselves and got the job done quickly.” Another employer nodded along, repeating “they’re complete opposites.” Immigrants also drew their own conclusions. Vasile, a Romanian pioneer in Aguaviva, remembered: “We were working at the gravel pit at the same time as the Argentines. They worked there too. And they didn’t last even a week or two. Most left to look for other work . . . The job was very hard. Not for us, though. We held up well, and we won the approval of everyone, of the townspeople.” Argentines had a different take on the matter. David, who had circulated through most industrial and construction employers in town, claimed that Romanian workers were favoured because they were exploited. “Look, they work harder for less money. Why? Because most of them don’t have papers,” he said. The immigrants in highest demand in Aguaviva – and in the Spanish labour market as a whole – were pliable, employer-contingent, and often undocumented (see Calavita, 2005: 101-102; Cornelius, 2004: 402). During the principle time of data collection in 2006, Romania was not a member of the European Union, which meant that Romanian immigrants in Spain did not have the right to access the labour market at will.2 Foreign workers all throughout Spain are typically paid less than natives (Cornelius, 2004: 400), and this wage discrimination was the complaint Romanians in Aguaviva most often reported. Christian, for example, remembered his first job working illegally as a cook: “Yes, they paid me very little. They paid me some three euros and change [an hour] . . . but if I had papers, they would have had to pay me more—six or seven euros, it depends.” A local social worker noted that Romanians were not treated equally “in terms of salaries, workplace conditions, and work schedules”. She continued: “A Spaniard knows very well what his job is, what he has to do and what he doesn’t have to do. But here many [employers] take advantage, you know? So a [Romanian] migrant works in construction . . . but the boss says ‘Sunday swing by my house and take care of this thing for me too.’” Romanian immigrants quickly became preferable to co-ethnic Argentines as workers in Aguaviva. As one employer confirmed, “Now I’d rather hire the Romanians. They work hard and don’t complain.” Another employer maintained that Romanians were valuable employees precisely because of their difference, a comment remarkable given Aguaviva’s extensive efforts to recruit culturally similar co-ethnics to the village: “They understand enough Spanish to get the job done, but it’s clear that they are workers,” the employer said. “There is no confusion there. With the Argentines, there are social connections, or children in the same school. . . That closeness brings problems when there are difficulties at work,” he explained. Though municipal leaders anticipated that co-ethnics would readily integrate into village life, local employers prized immigrants as detached labour, not familiar neighbours (see also Cook-Martın 2013: 129-144). Native competition in the primary sector Argentines in Aguaviva saw incongruence between their experiences on the job and their status as co-ethnics with Spanish citizenship. As one recruit described, “Coming from Argentina, with my father’s Spanish blood, I came here thinking things were going to be better. And then I find myself


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FIGURE 3 POPULATION BY COUNTRY OF BIRTH IN AGUAVIVA 120

Populaon

100 80 60

Morocco

40

Romania

20

Argenna

0

Year

Source: National Institute of Statistics (INE), 2016

with this – a job at the gravel factory, using a shovel 10 hours a day!” Nonetheless, the segmented local labour market constrained employment options: the co-ethnics could remain in the industrial and construction sectors, where they faced tough conditions and increasing competition from Romanians, or they could attempt to enter into the primary sector, dominated by well-positioned natives. Mariana was one of several Argentines I met who attempted to break into the primary labour market when she arrived to Aguaviva. Because she followed her husband, who migrated several months ahead of her and their children, Mariana had a sense of the limited employment available in town. Nonetheless, she wanted to continue working in the banking industry, in a teller position similar to that she held in Buenos Aires for over seven years. At the time of her arrival, there were two banks in Aguaviva. “I went to both, with my resume and ready to talk about my experience. I went on my own. . . I was nervous, but I thought I’d find something, even if it was just part time. But nothing! The managers told me it was a hard career to enter, as if I had no experience. They weren’t interested in hearing about my work in Argentina,” Mariana recalled. I met only one Argentine in Aguaviva who was able to transition into primary sector employment. “I tried so many jobs around here,” Marco said. “It was all there was. So I took it, you know? . . . But I couldn’t stand that work. Physically, it was very hard. So I found a different job. . . A candy and snack food salesman. And of course, I go around with a computer, well dressed, with my little car. It is a better job.” Marco managed to leave manual labour behind, but it took persistence over time as well as investing in his own vehicle. Entrepreneurship emerged as an alternative route for Argentines seeking to circumvent the confines of labour market segmentation in Aguaviva. Two of the originally-recruited families opened their own businesses in the municipality. Despite its small scale production, an Argentine familyowned cable factory added to Aguaviva’s industrial profile, and an Argentine-owned restaurant on the outskirts of town contributed to the town’s service sector. These business owners first worked as entry-level manual labourers, but they managed to forge open an entrepreneurial labour market niche for themselves in Aguaviva. Given the difficulties co-ethnic Argentines faced across both the secondary and primary sectors of Aguaviva’s limited labour market, many choose a more final option: to leave the municipality in search of better opportunities. Some Argentine recruits departed Aguaviva less than a year after arriving. Of the original eleven Argentine families officially sponsored by the municipality in 2000,


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only two remained when I last visited in 2010. Natives and the remaining Argentines in Aguaviva had the impression that the co-ethnic recruits did not return to Argentina but rather relocated to Spain’s large cities, particularly Barcelona and Madrid. As the number of co-ethnics dwindled, the population of Romanians in Aguaviva increased significantly, only to fall off again as Spain’s economic downturn took hold (see Figure 3). The experience of co-ethnic immigration to Aguaviva offers broad lessons that extend beyond the municipality. Sarrible (2000) demonstrates that even when holding human capital constant, co-ethnics throughout Spain struggle to find and keep employment. As Cook-Martın (2013: 132) argues, part of the problem is that Argentines with Spanish nationality compare themselves with native Spaniards, and expect to do as well them in the labour market. Natives, on the other hand, view Argentines as culturally similar yet immigrants nonetheless, and expect them to work for low wages and in poor working conditions. This article adds an additional layer of complication by including other immigrant groups – those who are not co-ethnic – into the analysis. When co-ethnics face competition from natives in the primary sector of local labour markets and other immigrants in the secondary sector, they enter labour market limbo, coming dangerously close to being shut out of employment altogether.

CONCLUSION In the second half of the twentieth century, liberal nation-states deracialized their immigration and citizenship policies (Joppke, 2005; Zolberg, 2006; FitzGerald and Cook-Martın, 2014). By focusing on preferential policies for co-ethnics, this article introduces important qualifications to the facially neutral immigration and citizenship frameworks of contemporary democracies. First, as Joppke notes (2005: 23), laws favouring co-ethnics represent the logical reverse of measures that restrict based on race, ethnicity, and national origins. By offering privileged access to the nation-state in terms of entrance and membership for some, these laws exclude other, less socially-desirable immigrants. In Aguaviva as in Spain, this exclusion centres on North Africans and Eastern Europeans, who rank towards the bottom of the scale of immigrant social desirability (Calavita, 2005). The same is true in Japan and Korea, which exclude most low-skilled immigrants who are not co-ethnic (Cornelius and Tsuda, 2004; Seol and Skrentny, 2009). Although these nation-states do not directly discriminate based on race, ethnicity, or national origins within the black letter of the law, as applied on the ground ethnic selection clearly continues in thin disguise through laws that favour co-ethnics. Secondly, though positive preferences are much easier for governments to sustain than negative discrimination, they do not uniformly translate into smooth, even integration paths for co-ethnic immigrants. Despite assumptions that co-ethnics’ cultural capital facilitates their overall integration, the presence of more flexible immigrant groups critically mitigates their insertion in the secondary sector labour market. Their entry into the primary sector, on the other hand, is blocked by wellpositioned native workers. Overall, a key assumption behind policies of ethnic preference – that co-ethnic migrants will integrate rapidly in their putative homelands – is not reflected in the actual labour market experiences of co-ethnics. Third, co-ethnic policies centre on shared culture and language because state actors are compelled to maximize social cohesion and minimize difference (Cook-Martin, 2013: 132-133).This emphasis on cultural traits, however, overshadows the consideration of co-ethnics’ skills and potential to integrate into local labour markets. Like most economic immigrants, co-ethnics experience some level of motivation to migrate that is related to the opportunity to improve their socio-economic status, and not exclusively to “return” to the often-distant homelands of their parents or grandparents. This observation suggests a set of policy implications related to this analysis. Sub-national jurisdictions – particularly those that are facing rapid depopulation – may consider how to better encourage natives to stay and potential immigrant residents to come by matching skills with local labour market needs. In 2000, the US state of Iowa made such a


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proposal, with “immigrant enterprise zones” that would seek out immigrants with needed skills as a centrepiece (Oman and Brandsgard, 2000: 10). The state of Utah moved in a similar direction in 2011, with two bills meant to address population issues by implementing targeted guest worker programmes (Siegler, 2014). Notably, these efforts centre on immigrants’ work and skills, rather than on their ethnicity and culture. This analysis also provides a launching point for an ambitious comparative research agenda on co-ethnic immigrants’ integration into local labour markets. I argue that in Aguaviva, the presence of other immigrant groups is a key moderating variable that determines how Argentine co-ethnics integrate into the local labour markets. This premise could be tested and expanded upon with fieldwork in other nation-states with immigration and citizenship preferences for ethnic affinity migrants. For instance, co-ethnic labour market integration in South Korea and Japan – destinations with relatively low numbers of non co-ethnic immigrants – could be compared with that in Germany and Italy – destinations with a great deal of ethno-racial immigrant diversity. Such a global and comparative scope of co-ethnics’ labour market experiences may cast doubt on the assimilability function of policies that offer privileged access and membership based on ethnicity.

NOTES 1. Morocco has never been included in Spain’s preferential policies despite colonial ties. Primarily for politically symbolic purposes, even Sephardic Jews are incorporated into the comunidad hispana because of their 1492 expulsion, while Muslims, who also were expelled, remain excluded (Joppke, 2005: 126). 2. Romania joined the EU in 2007, and Spain introduced a two-year restriction on the entry of Romanian workers. In 2011, in the midst of Spain’s economic crisis, the government reversed its decision to give Romanians full access to the Spanish labour market. The 2011 restrictions require Romanians to acquire a work permit and a work contract before entering the country.

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