This article is a study on the intersection between local anti-discrimination practices and official municipal immigrant integration policies. We sometimes think about “immigrant integration” as either an official and often coercive political agenda or a voluntary grassroots effort of social inclusion by/for immigrants. What happens is that when we see one side, we rarely see another side.
This study tried to go beyond the dualism shown above by focusing on “the Anti-Rumors” campaign in Barcelona, which is considered one of the best European urban practices in intercultural integration. The key to its “success” is in mobilizing local actors from civil society to counter negative stereotypes or the “rumors” about immigrants. The case choice is strategic, as the rumors are essential “observation points” in sociological classics (e.g., Rumor in Orléans by Edgar Morin). They help us understand social-relational dynamics from a public-sphere perspective beyond binary oppositions such as formal vs. informal, national vs. local, or legal exclusion vs. performative acts of inclusion.
Based on a policy analysis and in-depth interviews with active participants in “the Anti-Rumors” practices, the study investigated three common modes of (dis)articulation between the official project and the grassroots practices. Despite the mainstreaming discourse of the official “Anti-Rumors” strategy, it is locally improvised practices formed through daily interactions that make it sustainable and effective. The article points to the apparent fact that there is no panacea to dismantle all types of negative categorizations of immigrants. This demonstrates that public messages against prejudices are only effective when combined with the practical wisdom of the people concerned. For example, to tackle negative stereotypes of ethnic-racial categorizations, we need to learn from the daily experience of categorized and generalized people, but that is insufficient. Official policy discourses must be modified according to such experiences. Immigrants’ associations play a crucial role in this process: They intermediate the mainstream public sphere and counterpublics. New forms of solidarity can emerge as well.
Though the article is about a case study in Barcelona, the project started with an interest and concern about Japan’s dualistic situation. On the one hand, the central government has been highly reluctant to promote the integration of migrants for more than 30 years. On the other hand, the concept and practices of “multicultural coexistence” have gradually consolidated at the local level in grassroots civic activities and public administrations with clear limits. A lack of substantial authority, resources, and recognition leads to criticism of the hypocritical nature of “multicultural coexistence” for its inability to demand the protection of the human rights of foreign residents or to tackle socio-economic inequalities and socio-legal discrimination.
These criticisms are extremely important. However, those who try to break this deadlock by bringing in imported ideas for anti-discrimination or social inclusion sometimes end up repeating official policy accounts of foreign local governments. For example, the idea of “the Anti-Rumors” campaign was already introduced in Japan more than five years ago, and many practitioners knew its name. Some considered the use of pure grassroots practice without public support. Others skeptically saw it as a mere official agenda of the local government.
Nevertheless, even in the European literature, there has been little qualitative research exploring the relational and complex dynamics between them. That epistemological impasse (which itself could be a topic of sociology of knowledge) led me to go beyond the official account of the best practices.
I hope they provide an empirical and theoretical contribution to incorporating the everyday needs and practical wisdom of migrants into broader policy debates. At the same time, I would like to emphasize the importance of an extra-regional (for example, from East Asia to Europe) perspective in sociological research on public policies. It is not always easy to delve into the deeper context of European local policy-making as a Japanese visitor. However, I realized that, outside the local research–policy nexus and from another societal context, we could contribute “non-obvious” insights. In Japan, it is becoming more critical to question the simplistic and national accounts (for example, regarding “the failure of multiculturalism”) of foreign countries to tackle global issues. Public sociology is not only about engaging with issues of significant public concern “here” but also about providing a more careful comparative perspective by doing fieldwork “elsewhere.”
For those reasons, I am deeply grateful to all the people who are always helping me in Spanish cities for letting me “into” the realities of local practices. Moreover, I appreciate the Japan Sociological Society’s recognition of the value of fieldwork in remote places, which is becoming even more difficult during the pandemic.
As mentioned earlier, I am interested in the societal diffusion of knowledge, best practices, and implementation of immigrant integration policies. Therefore, I firmly believe that expanding the critical analysis of the best practices employed in this article to other cities is valuable.
I have already started a relational–comparative analysis of the “Anti-Rumors” implementation in the Barcelona and Bilbao metropolitan areas with a framework of institutional isomorphism. It attempts to look at how the history of the local construction of Others (such as minorities and internal immigrants) across different cities affects the articulation patterns between public policy and grassroots practices. The comparison also enables us to understand how local officials and professionals share know-how through city networks.
Of course, the situation regarding urban immigrant integration policies in Japan and East Asia, in general, is different from that in Europe. This is not simply because the migration patterns are different. The forms of local governance and international relations account for the divergence across and within the region. However, recently, there has been an interesting trend of importing the “intercultural cities” model from Europe to some Japanese and Korean cities. Therefore, I seek to apply methodological insights from previous research in Europe to the East Asian context. Do newly imported ideas and practices bring breakthroughs with governance reform, outreach, and intercity networking? Or is it just a kind of old wine (or sake) in a new bottle? We should not just replicate the official story to embrace it or reject it uncritically. Future research is needed to acquire practical knowledge on the dynamics under which society changes and with which we can bring changes to society.
