Ethnicity and Social Recognition. A perspective on social integration from a historical analysis of the Swedish collective in Madrid

Abstract

This article analyzes one dimension of the move towards social integration: the social recognition of expressions of ethnicity. Which are the factors that contribute to the social integration of an ethnic minority? How can certain ethnic forms function as symbolic capital in Spain? And which are the social conditions for such an ethnic recognition? Based on a PhD studying the social space of Swedes in Madrid during the XX century, it indicates that the cultural politics of the Nation-State in Spain has had a limited influence of the possibilities ethnic minorities have on social recognition. There are other factors that contribute substantially to the recognition of ethnic forms among immigrant groups: the social structure and the cultural forms in the reception context, the structure of the relation between the sending and the receiving country, the institutionalisation of the bilateral relations actively backed up by the Nation-State, the social integration inside the social space of the immigrant group as well as the social work of the immigrants to cumulate economic, social and cultural capital.