For the past year, the Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) has been engaged in a study of the social and cultural capital represented by immigration and the scarce attention given to this capital in the receiver society. This issue is even more relevant at a time in which the uncertainties and sense of unease generated by the global economic crisis are fuelling the temptation throughout Europe to adopt new discriminatory policies and xenophobic positions vis-à-vis an immigrant population that is almost always seen as a mere unskilled workforce.

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of Washington D.C. has also been working on similar studies in different cities and regions – in particular in the United States and countries of Central and East Europe.

This is the background of the debate organised by the two organizations in which analysis and discussion of these issues as they pertain to Barcelona and Catalonia – with particular attention to the social and cultural values of immigration as an essential factor in articulating new forms of social cohesion and sustainability in a milieu of complex and diversified growth – took place in the framework of similar situations, experiences and problems as they are experienced on the international scale.

The event took place at the Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona and is available online on this website.

PANEL I
Immigrants of New Citizens? Integration and/or Exclusion?
Josep Ramoneda, director, CCCB
Pep Subirós, writer and philosopher

Cultural Capital: Potential and Limits
Lamin Cham, immigration specialist
Eunice Romero, political scientist
Mostafà S'haimi, community organizer

Moderator: Pep Subirós

PANEL II
The Hispanic/Latin Experience in the United States
José Walter Tejada, member of the Arlington County Board (USA)

Gaspar Rivera-Slagado, director of projects, Institute for Research in Labor and Employment, University of California at Los Angeles

Kate Brick, Master's candidate, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

Moderator: Andrew Selee, director, Mexico Institute, WWICS

PANEL III
Migration Phenomena in the Post-Soviet Space
Andrei Korobkov, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Middle Tennessee State University

Johannesburg: From Apartheid to Xenophobia
Loren Landau, Research Coordinator, Forced Migration Studies Programme, University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg

France: Assimilation and/or Exclusion?
Marc Hatzfield, sociologist and lecturer at the École d'Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Moderator: Blair Ruble, Director, Kennan Institute and Comparative Urban Studies Project, WWICS

PANEL IV
Panel Discussion: Immigration and Citizenship. Assistance and Obstacles
Carmen Bermúdez, graduate in Business Administration and Social Economics
Ernesto Carrión, graduate in Political Science

Taoufik Cheddadi El Harrak, Islamologist Studies and sociologist

Huma Jamshed, Vice-President, Municipal Immigration Council of Barcelona

Brahim Yaabed, head of the Citizenship, Diversity and Identities Commission of the Fundació CatDem-Trias Fargas (CatDem-Trias-Fargas Foundation)

Moderator: Xavier Besalú, Lecturer, Educational Studies, University of Girona.