Relationships
Immigrants from the past
and nowadays in The Basque Country.
An important point in our project
was to investigate and learn about relationships. And here we wanted to focus in immigrants and
refugees.
In the
last years, here in our school, it is more and more often to have students
coming from other countries among us.
We see them every day close to us
but rarely do we ask ourselves for the reason they or they families had to come
to live to our town. We don’t normally know about the problems they have to
face in their daily lives to come to school.
In fact we don’t even realize that
a lot of our families were also immigrants some years ago. Our parents or
grandparents came from other communities in Spain and now we consider ourselves
Basques, exactly the same as those ones whose families have been living here
for generations.
We
don’t know if the problems that the immigrants coming nowadays and the problems
our relatives had some years ago are similar or if they also suffered from
discrimination and racism.
Between the 50s and the 80s a lot of people, mainly
coming from other communities in Spain, arrived to the Basque Country seeking
for a better or easier life for themselves and their families.
People left rural and poor areas
like Andalusia and Extremadura towards richer and more industrial zones like
Madrid, Catalonia or the Basque Country.
In Spain, the Civil War induced a
revival of rural activity, with the number of people working in agriculture
increasing between 1930 and 1940. However, this meant a surplus of badly paid
people in agriculture which would lead eventually to a massive exodus from the
rural areas during the 1940's and continuing through the 1950's and 1960's.
The
period 1960-1973 is known as a very intensive period for internal migration as
well as for emigration abroad. It was a period of strong economic growth but
with very substantial regional differentials. People left rural and poor areas
towards the richer industrial towns.
But what happens over recent years?
Most immigration to the Basque country now comes from abroad, chiefly from
South America or northern Africa. And we wanted to know if the reasons are
similar and if the conditions that these new immigrants face every day can be comparable
along the years.
We have prepared a video with
interviews to people who came to our town in the 50s and 60s and also to people
who have recently come to live among us.
We have asked them the same
questions because we wanted to know their reasons to come to Laudio and also if
their conditions, and problems could be comparable.