Social Attitudes and Political Debate on Immigration: Spanish Perceptions of Romanian Immigrants

Prior to 2002 the Romanian population in Spain was negligible, yet today it constitutes the largest immigrant population, raising questions of how this country receives and integrates new migrant groups and negotiates perceptions of similarity and difference between natives and foreigners. Using survey data from the Centro de Investigaciones Científicas and political debates from the Congreso de los Diputados this paper asks how perceptions of Romanian immigrants develop over time. The paper finds that social perceptions of Romanian immigration and political debate on the Romanian population in Spain are somewhat disconnected, as social attitudes develop independently of elite-level political discourse. Therefore, just as immigrants are not perceived or presented in the same way in politics and society, or on a national and a local level, neither do the processes based on these perceptions, such as discrimination or exclusion, play out in the same way.