Moro

From September 2011 to August 2013, I undertook my fieldwork in Salt, a small town of 30,000 inhabitants in Girona, the northern region of Catalonia. A significant number of African immigrants live in this location. Of these, the majority are Moroccan, who are often stereotyped as moros. Comprehending the social category moro is fundamental to understanding Spanish identity as an imagined national community, since moro functions as its foundational antithesis. The hegemonic idea of Spain (and Spanishness) is built on the historic negation of Muslim and Jewish identity, a construction also adopted by the dominant perception of Catalan national identity (Prado 2008). Indeed, both Spanish and Catalan ideas of selfhood have been in continuous transformation broadly as a result of changing political-economic and geopolitical circumstances. More specifically selfhood has been linked to Spanish and Catalan involvement in colonialism in Africa and America. Yet in spite of identitarian transformations, recent constructions of el moro resemble earlier ones, and it is precisely the interplay of these forms and their historical foundations that inform this chapter. It examines the social relations entrenched in the social imagery of el moro, as well as its intrinsic relation to changing socioeconomic contexts.
It is crucial to understand the social effects of el moro and the concept’s relation to racist structures in contemporary Spanish society. In the chapter, I relate examples from my fieldwork in Salt and explain how the concept of el moro prevails, detailing how recently it has developed in relation to the socioeconomic context as yet another level of stratification among the working-class population of Spain, where it is used to privilege older citizens over more recent arrivals. In this regard it is important to analyse the politicaleconomic structuring involved. Such analysis is generally avoided in recent reductive ‘culturalist’ readings that perceive and produce culture as the main cause, for instance, of social conflict.

Americans don’t need to learn another language – Everyone speaks English! In today’s global marketplace, this attitude is “très démodé”. After 9/11, President Bush allocated substantial funding to the study of foreign languages, study abroad programs, and the training of foreign language teachers. President Obama has spoken publicly about the importance of speaking foreign languages Familiarity with the diversity of culture in other countries is a major advantage for careers in today’s global economy. Candidates with proficiency in a language other than English earn higher salaries In a listing of international jobs distributed by the U.S. State Department on August 25, 2008: 78 required or