Beliefs, values and political attitudes of foreign immigration : towards a conceptual and methodological framework to study transnational immigration in Spain ; paper presented at the conference on ‘Transnationalisation and Development(s): Towards a North-South Perspective’

"Based on the idea that the beliefs, values and political attitudes of the subjects explain the political processes taking place in the core of modern society, the main aim of this paper is to discuss a conceptual and methodological framework which makes it possible to determine the political culture of the transnational immigration residing in Spain. Taking into account that political cultures can be dramatically modified by the transnational migratory experience, we try to find the best way to establish whether the political culture of the transnational immigrants based in Spain has indeed been transformed as they have faced the values prevailing in Spanish society, as well as those associated to democracy, i.e., those valid all over the European Union. Hence, the paper focuses on the different tools available to analyze the interaction between political institutions, civil society, community-level organizations and transnational immigrants. Also, we ask whether such interaction affects, and in what ways, democratic governance. It must be highlighted that, despite the relevance of the subject matter and of its relationship with the entrenchment of democratic governance in the transnational space, the kind of research we propose, i.e., based on the political culture of immigrants, on the elements mentioned above and relying on a methodology that combines both a theoretical and an empirical approach, has not been developed in Spain yet." (author's abstract