AE Wk 3 to Wk 12 Focus: European Emigration and Immigration

Worldwide questions of emigration and immigration are among key interests for governments and individuals.  Opposition to particular immigrant groups, and immigration in general, has become a major issue in both local and world politics today, perhaps second only to the climate change crisis, and "globalization," as a driver of both informed and uninformed discourse, and cognizant and unapprised government policy and debate. 

Whether you are party to them or not, debates and diatribes over emigration and immigration have changed the political landscapes that many of us—maybe even most of us—were born into. 

And both the disciplined debates and vitriolic protests over emigration and immigration will likely continue in the foreseeable future.

So this week we focus on one of the major virtually global concerns, by having a look at real people in real places, viz. Spain and Scotland, to try to understand some of the human dimensions of modern-day emigration and immigration within and to Europe.

What are emigrants and immigrants like? What do they do? What kind of lives do they live? What makes them laugh? Cry? Angry? Sad? Worried? And what do neighbors and governments do about them?

We’re going to look at immigrants coming to Spain, and Spanish emigrants going to Scotland.  That is, we’re going to look at people coming to Madrid, Spain, and other people leaving Spain (for Edinburgh, Scotland), and what appears in the current news of those two countries.

The free movement of people in the European Union (EU) is one of four basic rights guaranteed by the EU charter. “There were over 37.7 million foreigners in EU and EFTA [European Free Trade Association] countries in 2015—8% of the total population. More than 45% of these foreigners were from an EU or EFTA state” (“Which European countries attract the most immigrants?” Links to an external site. swissinfo.ch, 5 December 2017).

Note that this topic is covered this week both by the videos, and discussion assignments.

See the class "What's Happening Week 3?" memo of 8 September 2019 for further details.