Galician Migrations: A Case Study of Emerging Super-diversity (Migration, Minorities and Modernity, Band 3) - Softcover

Renée received her PhD in 2003 from the University of Delaware (USA), where she helped to establish La Red Mágica, a community-university collaborative project which aims to promote intercultural relationships between university students and minority children in an urban community center. From 2006-2009 she was Senior Researcher on the UK-based No Outsiders project, an action research project investigating approaches to address lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in primary schools. She held a Research Fellowship (Isidro Parga Pondal) at the University of Vigo (Spain) from December 2009 to September 2010, and has been a member of the Faculty of Education Sciences at UDC since September 2010. She is currently directing a research project investigating understandings and practices regarding integration of immigrants in Galicia (2014-2017, funded by the Xunta de Galicia).

Her research and teaching has focused on equalities and social justice in terms of race, ethnicity, language, sexuality and gender. She is mainly interested in the social construction of marginalization within and beyond schools, ways in which success and failure are co-constructed in institutional settings, and the design of counter-hegemonic institutional contexts and classroom practices.

This focused case study analyses the roots of super-diversity in a place where immigration is an emerging phenomenon, Northwestern Spain (Galicia). It is characterized by a mostly rural population, an aging demographic, and a historically depressed economy. Yet the region has recently experienced a significant increase in immigration - a reversal of the region’s historically pronounced trend of emigration.

To understand immigration in its early stages, this book takes a historical approach that focuses on diversities that go beyond nationality. It explores local yet international phenomena such as different patterns of return migration, transnational community and familial relationships, and niche labour markets.

The book takes a broad interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on sociology, anthropology, history, sociolinguistics, literature, and education, to provide a detailed case study analysis. While the case is specific, many other geographic regions will share some of the factors the book explores. Understanding how these factors interact will provide a useful point of contrast for analysing them in a range of other international contexts.