Although the movement of peoples has continually reshaped Spanish identity for millenia, since the 1990s Spain has undergone a particularly marked transformation as a result of the massive influx of immigrants. Indeed, Spain now has (proportionally) the largest immigrant population in the world after the U.S. This large-scale (and growing) presence of immigrants and the profound social changes that follow from it are the demographic and social face of the most salient national and international tensions affecting Spanish society today. If the Spain of the Civil War and the Franco regmine is the Spain of the past, the Spain of immigration is the Spain of the future. This course studies the phenomenon of immigration through diverse cultural representations (narrative, film, comics, and journalism), emphasizing such aspects as the social and political discourse about immigration, exclusion, difference, racism, gender, spatial segregation, agency, power, and national identity. |