Back Barcelona’s Strategic Framework for Immigration and Interculturality

A city plan which is more faithful to the principles of ICC than any other

The Barcelona Interculturality Plan (2010) was a mandate of the City Council’s  Immigration Working Plan 2008 and its main goal was to define a clear intercultural policy strategy about how the city faces the challenges posed by the increase in sociocultural diversity for the next 15 years.

The elaboration of the Plan was in itself intercultural and transversal: over 3,000 people and 250 organizations collaborated to create the plan through an interactive web in which participated all section of the City Council as an active agent along with all citizenship that need to be involved in the intercultural process. Transversality was one of the key questions in terms of methodology. Every area of the Barcelona City Council participated in the elaboration by observing their policies through intercultural lens, and giving answer to improve its service and policies from an intercultural approach.

This Plan is based in a triangle of principles: equity, recognition of diversity and positive interaction. These are three pillars that guide the Interculturality Plan and that later would serve as groundwork to elaborate the Immigration Plan 2012-2015. It also proposes the establishment of an institutional innovation: Espai Avinyó -  cultural structure that was created in March 2011, after the approval of the Barcelona Interculturality Plan, with two objectives: 1) to offer a cultural program for all citizens (immigrants and natives) to promote interculturalism values and 2) to provide specific activities to promote the social use of Catalan and the historical and cultural understanding of the city. Espai Avinyó is working to become a benchmark for interculturalism in Barcelona.

The Interculturality Plan was developed as a “local global strategy to promote interaction, being the best way of guarantying normalized socialization of diversity in all spheres and spaces of the city”. Without interaction there is no socialization and without socialization citizens miss the possibility of reinforcing the common and shared aspects that lead them to individual and social development. Interaction is normally determined by many factors: if there is a real rights and obligations equity, if there is social mobility, a common language, if public spaces promote inclusion or exclusion, etc. The purpose of the Plan of Interculturality is to provide for a scenario where citizens from diverse origin are able to interact and socialize in a positive and free way.

The current Barcelona Immigration Plan (2012-2015) (Pla d’Immigració de Barcelona) emphasizes three strategic axes: promote equity, recognize diversity and motivate interaction in order to create common areas within the city. The new Plan makes a clear commitment to encourage transversality in all areas and sectors of the City Council. It remarks the idea of bidirectional process, considering immigrants as active actors in all levels. There is a change of priorities in terms of immigrations policy and therefore of paradigm: Barcelona has to move from reception strategies to accommodation diversity strategies in an urban context, where immigrants are not seen any longer as passive and assisted actors, as welfare-holders, they are seen as participative citizens in all spheres of the city.

Diversity is categorised clearly as an added value for society, and follows the focus of diversity advantages, because it means creativity and social and urban innovation that contribute to the city development, a community of citizens that interact in an urban space. The major challenge of this Plan is that immigrants and native citizens get to share the public spaces. For this purpose the Plan includes a conceptual innovation of community of citizens. This conceptual innovation of is one of the evidence that interculturalism, as policy strategy is now consolidated. However in order to achieve a community of citizen, it is necessary that all people share a common core: feeling of belonging to the city, far more realistic than the national sentiment. The urban identity is created from the daily proximity, taking the kids to school, going to market, walking the streets of his neighbourhood, enjoying their holiday. This concept also reflects the idea that everyone, being part of the same local community should feel protagonists to build this local identity.

The Barcelona Immigration Plan 2012-2015 has had to face a new changing reality, which has to do with the stagnation of the immigrant population arriving in Barcelona and the decrease of reception services. This new socio-demographic context together with the decrease of the use of public reception services leads the City Council to elaborate a new Plan of immigration. The new Immigration Plan includes the all the intercultural approaches included in the Intercultural Plan, based on 3 strategic axes: promote equity, recognize diversity and promote interaction in order to create common areas within the city.

The communicational aspect is also crucial for the City Council immigration policies and intercultural strategies’ effect. It is important to highlight that in 2009 Barcelona launched the website portal information called “New Citizens”, whose objective is to provide all basic information for newcomers, general public, all people interested in learning about the immigration reality in the municipality of Barcelona. Through this website the Council endorses the principles of the new Immigration Plan and the Intercultural Plan: equality between rights and duties; cultural diversity recognition and interaction and improvement of relations and social cohesion. In 2006, the Council’s Immigration Department also launched also the “Barcelona City Reception Guidelines” hence newcomers could access easily basic information. Currently, the Guidelines serve to promote intercultural relations through the development of common areas and initiatives. The other website was created in 2010 after the approval of the Intercultural Plan and is focused on diversity and interculturality and it can be considered as a platform of all strategies and good practices related to interculturalism that are carried out in Barcelona.

The communicational aspect is, in fact, very significant because it allows the City Council to reach all citizens and to provide information to both the newcomers and the rest of citizens. Not only for the city of Barcelona interculturality represents a new policy trend; it is at crossroad of various new European perspectives on dealing with diversity advantages. Put it in other words, Europe, both the EU and local authorities, are increasingly engaging to diversity thought the strategy of interculturalism.

2016
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