Migrants, New Citizens, Co-Citizens and Citizens by Adoption – Regionalist Parties’ Framing of Immigrants in the Basque Country, Corsica, South Tyrol, Scotland and Wales

Abstract

AbstractRelying on a structured comparison of the various Stateless Nationalist and Regionalist Parties (SNRPs) in the Basque Country (Spain), Corsica (France), South Tyrol (Italy), and Scotland and Wales (UK) I show that these parties engage, through processes of ‘othering’, in the creation of a hierarchy of diversities, differentiating between markers of diversity based on the perceived proximity of immigrants to the collective identity of the in-group, as well as their constructed distance to the identity of the state in which the minority region is situated. Hence, the construction of ‘wanted’ and ‘unwanted’ migrants and, in the long run, ‘wanted’ and ‘unwanted’ citizens, reflects the perceived potential of newcomers to strengthen the SNRPs’ vision of the territory, their nationalist mobilization and their nation-building project, which then becomes the salient criterion for the inclusion or exclusion of migrants into the construction of regional citizenship.