It has been announced that a Councilor of Sabadell of Uruguayan origin (with a good chance of being the new mayor in 2023) will head an electoral list, another of Moroccan origin Possibly he will aspire to preside over a Baix Llobregat city council and I have excellent references of the work carried out in the Tarragona city council by a councilor from Chile. Minimal examples that illustrate the work of a small group of elected officials of immigrant origin who, by way of icebreakers, command or seek to influence departments of new citizenship. People, all of them, integrated into candidates ideologically aligned with political projects to build a “Catalonia for the whole world and for the whole world & rdquor ;, who thanks to their commitment, to the immigrant experience lived and a good academic formation contribute to overcome prejudices, also installed in organized civil society and in the same political formations.
It is still a reduced number of people. It will therefore be necessary to check how far the political parties go when integrating, in 2023, this type of candidates and what place on the list is reserved for them. The sad reality is that, despite the fact that in our country the percentage of the newly arrived population reaches 16% of the total and that in Catalonia there are more than nine thousand councilors, the political party that has the most, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, only reaches quarantine. The rest are far behind.
From a progressive praxis, overcoming exclusion and of promotion of social and national cohesion, There are no excuses for not increasing the presence of councils occupied by new Catalans. Because, taking into account the context of social fracture caused by the economic crisis, by the restrictive Spanish legislation on immigration and by the cultural conflicts generated by all immigration phenomena, the implementation of municipal policies of reception, social protection and roots they depend a lot on the prominence of these elected positions. In fact, they constitute the necessary link to be able to move in the coming years from the policies designed for the ‘newcomers’ (steeped in a certain ‘paternalism of care’) to the policies made ‘with the newcomers’. An essential paradigm shift that is required by the need to assume immigration as a social reality and not as a social problem.
The absence of newly arrived councilors also explains why there are still reactionary municipal actions, such as the derived from the registration of foreigners. Recently, once again, the municipal ‘Síndics de greuges’ have once again shouted to heaven because municipal governments disobey the duty to register residents, regardless of their housing situation. The problem remains.
In fact, despite the fact that registration is the gateway to basic services of health, education and social assistance, there is no common position of the municipalities in this regard. There are those who do not make the paperwork difficult, but there are also those who pose all kinds of pitfalls, condemning people to live a true ordeal. There is a municipal power that shuns obligations, perhaps frightened by the demagoguery of the ‘call effect’ or by strict ideological and economic prejudices (“if they do it in a better city hall, fewer obligations for us”). That the governmental majority of the Barcelona Provincial Council has refused to involve the institution in the harmonization of protocols Regarding the registration, it denotes that the problem is deep and responds to the conservative quietism of municipal governments that are not considered as such.
Related news
How can it be admitted that registering a resident (that is, complying with the law) can become so difficult? It is true that, in some municipalities, considerable progress has been made as a result of fulfilled electoral commitments and due to pressure from the opposition or social movements, but in others, contradictory procedures have to be overcome that trap, as in a kafkaesque cobweb, to very vulnerable people. Because require a rental agreement sets often insurmountable limits for those who rent in black, ‘squat’ a house, live on the street or where they can. Ultimately, this normalization of exclusion is sustained by institutional insignificance, lelectoral invisibility, the inability to file a judicial complaint against the administration and the economic poverty of those affected. People, all of them, victims of all kinds of abuses, including those of homeowners, who rent rooms on the condition that they do not register.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com