Looking for Daisies: The Hidden Attraction and Arrival Infrastructures of Welcoming Spaces in Rural Spain

Abstract

In recent decades, shrinking areas in rural Spain have sought the arrival of newcomers. This migration is driven mainly by economic reasons and is not related to regionalizing or redistribution migration policies. The main contribution of this article is to highlight how the articulation between social agents' (public administrations, third sector, enterprises, migrant communities, and civil society) strategies and infrastructuring practices, within the framework of political, social, and economic structural contexts, has crystalized into specific "welcoming spaces," impacting newcomers' access to resources. The main innovation lies in the identification of an analysis model applied to three different types of "welcoming spaces" of attraction, arrival, and settlement, considering their impact on other mobilities. We have named them in order to represent the connection of rural territories with nature: the waves, the oak, and the river. The analysis reveals the factors that favor but also block access to resources for newcomers. This has allowed us to design an ideal type of welcoming space, which we have called "Daisy," and which beyond its theoretical value, could facilitate the revitalization of shrinking areas. "Looking for Daisies" represents the desire of local social actors, lost in the disjointed way in which infrastructuring practices are managed, to reach this goal. Framed under the Horizon 2020-funded program Welcoming Spaces - Investing in "Welcoming Spaces" in Europe: Revitalizing Shrinking Areas by Hosting non-EU Migrants (H2020-SC6-Migration-2019-870952), the research is based on qualitative fieldwork (comprising 75 semi-structured interviews and participant observation), carried out in three localities in two regions of Spain (Galicia and Castilla León).