A few weeks ago, someone asked me what it’s like to work as an immigrant in a Spanish public institution. The question came as a result of information that I published in our conversation and that I read days ago in the report on the work integration of immigration of the Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia (OBERAXE) 2022. While 20% of working Spaniards work as civil servants, only 2.5% of foreigners fill an administrative vacancy at local, regional or national level. In the Madrid City Council, where I work, it’s 1.95%.
I was pondering the answer when an image popped into my head. In one of the city’s economic plenary sessions that I attended, the issue of unemployment among foreigners was raised, namely the fact that the only unemployment that has increased in Madrid since mid-2022 has been that of non-EU citizens.
Debate opened and positions moved, with few exceptions, from empathy to condescension and hostility. They were mostly ethnocentric, economistic and paternalistic constructions. When I realized I was the only immigrant in the room, I figured that as anonymous as I was on this forum, at least one of “ours” was listening. For me, having lived the journey of unemployment, self-employment and entrepreneurship, it was a crucial debate. However, I could not read myself in most of these stories and reflections. They talked about us without us. And it’s happening in politics, in the private sector, in NGOs, in the media, and in many scenarios that build the concepts and narratives that revolve around migrants.
While 20% of employed Spaniards work for the public sector, only 2.5% of foreigners hold a position in local, regional or national government
As well-intentioned and as necessary as the debates may be, one thing cannot be completely resolved: We foreigners are silent. Only in Madrid do 15.7% of the population have foreign nationality. None of their accents, their experiences, and their contributions to various corners of daily life could be heard that morning. Neither in the definition of the recent immigration law reform, nor in the structural debates surrounding entrepreneurship and employment, nor in the creation of urban or rural models. The plurality that lives in migrant diversity is ignored, the voices that question the paradigm in which we are victims or perpetrators are avoided. Always subject to problem, challenge, challenge and rarely opportunity.
And then, when a note of diversity is needed, when a nod to multiculturalism is required, or when holding hands is profitable, parts of our identity and history are stripped away. And each time that happens, it deepens the dissatisfaction of those who can’t read themselves a line of these narratives, those who have learned to live (and survive) on the edge of the NIE, and those who do so much have say can only listen. .
When I had to give an answer, all I could think of was that I would write something about it in the hope that the next time a migrant takes part in a public debate, they will also have the opportunity to comment on what as for her.
Santiago Sanchez Benanvides He is an entrepreneur, consultant and journalist. In 2018 he founded Voice (ES) to promote the economic empowerment of the foreign population in Spain.
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