Political rights of immigrants in Spain R. Zapata-Barrero and J. Zaragoza Grup de Recerca Interdisciplinari sobre Immigració (GRITIM) Department of Social and Political Science Universitat Pompeu Fabra Contract no. CIT5-CT-2005-028205 WP5 Spanish report on political rights Final Version – February 2009 0. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 3 1. The public debate on voting rights............................................................................ 4 2. The terms of the debate on voting rights:................................................................. 7 2.1 Restriction of the debate: Legal Framework .......................................................... 7 2.2 Key-Issues of the Pragmatic debate........................................................................ 8 2.2.1 The Territorial dimension................................................................................ 8 2.2.2. The Legal dimension ...................................................................................... 9 2.3 The position of political parties and social actors: ............................................... 12 2.3.1 The social actors ............................................................................................ 13 2.3.2. The Parliamentary Debate ............................................................................ 14 3. Institutional channelling: The Foro para la Integración de los Inmigrantes...... 19 4. Case Study: A Comparison of the Management of Immigrant Associations between the Councils of Madrid and Barcelona: ...................................................... 24 4.1 The Foro Madrid de Diálogo y Convivencia and the Mesas Distritales de Dialogo y Convivencia:.............................................................................................. 24 4.2 The Consell Municipal d’Immigració de Barcelona: ........................................... 26 4.3 Comparison between the City Councils of Madrid and Barcelona ...................... 28 5. Final reflections and recommendations.................................................................. 29 6. Bibliography.............................................................................................................. 32 Annex: Interview respondents .................................................................................... 36 1 Abbreviations Social Organizations and Political Parties: Abrev. Complete Name Complete Name Description (Spanish) (English) CC Coalición Canaria Canarian Coalition Regionalist Party of the Canary Islands CCOO Comisiones Obreras Workers Commissions Trade Union CSM Consenso Social sobre Social Consensus on Social Body composed of different Migraciones Migrations social associations and organizations and supported by academic experts, on the political rights of immigrants. ERC Esquerra Republicana per Republican Left for Independentist Left-wing Party of Catalunya Catalonia Catalonia IU Izquierda Unida- Iniciativa Green United Left Party Green Left-wing Party per Catalunya Verds CIU Convergencia i Unió Convergence and Union Nationalist Party of Catalonia Platform Plataforma tod@s iguales. Platform all equals, All union of different associations of Tod@s ciudadan@s. citizens immigrants and pro-immigrants, that campaign for voting right of immigrants. PNV Partido Nacionalista Vasco Basque National Party Nationalist Basque Party PP Partido Popular Popular Party Right-Wing Party (Liberal and Conservative, main opposition party) PSOE Partido Socialista Obrero Spanish Worker Socialist Socialist Party (currently in the Español Party government) UGT Unión General de General Union of Trade Union Trabajadores Workers Institucional Councils: Abrev. Complete Name Complete Name Description (Spanish) (English) CMIB Consell Municipal Municipal Council of See Chapter 4. d’Immigració de Barcelona Immigration of Barcelona FII Foro para la Integración de Forum for the Integration See Chapter 3. los Inmigrantes of Immigrants FM Foro Madrid de Diálogo y Madrid Forum on See Chapter 4. Convivencia Dialogue and peaceful coexistence 2 0. Introduction If we take the two socialist governments of J. L. Rodriguez Zapatero (From April 2004 to March 2008, from April 2008-today) as a point of reference, we can say that the main Spanish focus of immigration policies has been the labour market and the treatment of the immigrant as a worker. This institutional emphasis was established by one of the first political decisions of the current government, which moved immigration management from the Social Affairs Ministry to a new Ministry: the Ministry of Labour and Immigration. (Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigración) .1 This institutional framework poses problems for the debate on immigrant participation, as the social, political and even cultural dimension of immigrants are clearly of secondary interest. Instead the main focus is the treatment of immigrants as workers. This explicit conceptualization of the immigrant as homo economicus also makes it difficult to enter into a debate on participation, as there is no discursive framework within which this can be done. In addition to this institutional setup, the debate has also another important restriction: It is a “prisoner” of the constitutional framework, and as we will see, this limits innovation on this particular issue, and provides a legitimate basis for the conservative discourses that use it to counter all demands for the granting of voting rights. Taking into account this framework, when social and political dimensions enter the debate, they do so mainly under the topic of voting rights. This is why we will deal with this issue in more detail. In the first chapter, we describe the public debate on voting rights based on an analysis of newspapers from the beginning of 2006 to today. Our main purpose is to identify the main distinctive trends in the Spanish debate in order to later help us interpret the terms under which the social and political debate takes place, which is the aim of the second chapter. The second chapter is articulated in three main sections. In the first, we introduce the main limit of the debate: the legal framework. Any argument on voting rights must take into account this legal framework. This is why we argue that this system of legal restrictions forcefully leads to a pragmatic debate. It is this pragmatic debate that is the focus of the second section. Three main key-issues will be introduced. What we have labelled “the territorial dimension”, which means the level of elections. We will see that this first cleavage is important, as it introduces the logic of voting rights as a process: “first local elections, and after, general ones.” The second key-issue is the “legal dimension”, which tries to include at least three kinds of arguments: the nationality-dependence argument: before granting voting rights, immigrants must stop being immigrants and become Spanish citizens; the second argument is related to the reciprocity principle that characterizes the constitutional restriction. Some argue for its abolishment, others argue to not only keep this principle but also base the debate on trying to implement it. Finally, length of stay is introduced. That is, the determination of time in granting voting rights, independently of being or not being a Spanish citizen. In the third section, we introduce the positions of political parties and social actors with respect to these cleavages. The third chapter studies Spain’s main institutional consultative body, the Foro para la Integración de los Inmigrantes (Forum for the Integration of Immigrants ). In the last chapter, we will present the main characteristics for further comparative research based on two different local approaches to the management of immigrant associations: the case of Madrid and Barcelona in comparative perspective. 1 See webpage: www.mtas.es 3 1. The public debate on voting rights The public debate on voting rights can be divided into four important periods : 1) When for the first time the government said, that they considered “very improbable” the granting of voting rights to immigrants in time for the local elections of 2007. 2) Before the local elections held on the 27 th of May 2007. 3) Before the national elections of March 2008. 4) Before and after the 37º Congress of the PSOE where immigrants’ voting rights was one of the important media issues. Table 1: Main periods of the voting rights debate End of August 2006 From March 2007 to May From February 2008 to June – July 2008 2007 March 2008 After the declarations of Vice-President De Before the local elections Before the national Before and after the la Vega admitting the of the 27 th of May 2007 elections of March 2008 37º Congress of the improbability of PSOE where the giving the voting right voting right of to immigrants on the immigrants was one of local elections of 2007 the important issues. Let us describe the main features of each period. From 2002 to 2006, Izquierda Unida-Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (Green United Left Party) tried, on several occasions, and without success, to introduce a law on voting rights for immigrants. During this period, no public debate about political rights for immigrants appeared in the media. This did not occur until the approval, in august 2006, of a parliamentary initiative presented by the PSOE and IU to extend the right to vote in municipal elections to foreign legal residents. 2 The public debate on voting