SOJOURNPOSSE: CONNECTED BARCELONA, TRANSNATIONAL CITIZENS

Photo © www.museuhistoria.bcn.cat

"Question: When does one stop becoming an immigrant? Answer: When you feel at home."

Connected Barcelona, Transnational Citizens, Museu d'Historia de Barcelona
Words by Salina Christmas

At last. An event which discusses that awkward issue of immigration in a highbrow manner, with no mention of "foreign-born mothers". Even better, this exhibition is being held at the History Museum of Barcelona.

Getting the public to understand the importance of immigration in attracting "knowledge nomads" is all nice and well, but even with the best intention, this effort can easily fall into a cheesy rhetoric of political correctness.

The show is divided into several themes: “Imaginaries”, “Connections”, “Intimacies”, “Businesses” and “Asymmetries”.

The experience begins as you enter the exhibition via a set designed to mimic the inside of an airplane. You leave this section and walk through a corridor reminiscent of an airport’s airside area to get into the heart of the show.

As you walk through each vividly themed section, you are presented with the organiser's findings on immigrants in Barcelona: what they do, who they are, what they read, their contribution to the city, what concerns them the most, the effect on the sociocultural landscapes and so on.

The show also asks some interesting questions, such as: What are they, immigrants or cosmopolitans? When does one stop becoming an immigrant?

I like the fact that it acknowledges us as "transnational citizens". This is true not only of the "knowledge nomads" like several of us at Sojournposse, but also of many of the EU citizens who choose not to be confined to one European city. It's nice to belong to a country, but it's nicer to feel at home anywhere. Nothing beats freedom.

There are bits that barely move beyond the usual pro-immigration arguments, however, which is predictable. The usual stuff like what this one Frenchman called Moritz contributed to the gastronomical landscape of Barcelona (he gave the Catalan city its local beer).

I also notice that in the "Connections" section, where the show talks at length about the immigrants' preferred modes of media consumption, there is little mention of the use of internet and mobile phones.

It goes on and on in charts and text displays about the ethnic magazines and newspapers, and the TV channels watched by these foreigners. Didn't the researchers check any of the internet cafes at Las Ramblas? There, you'll see many 'ethnic' types Skyping, Facebooking, emailing - while text-messaging on mobile phones - to families back in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Given the pervasiveness of mobile phones and the world wide web, and the digital footprints they leave behind, you'd think these clever researchers would be able to give us a picture of how the nomads keep in touch with loved ones abroad.

Also, in this section, many of the case studies on display are those of highly skilled or educated transnational citizens from Latin America who happen to be doing their PhDs in engineering, medicine and anthropology.

What about including samples from those Pakistani men who peddle beer on the beach and outside the Sonar festival, or those Chinese restaurant workers? Of course it's easier to ask foreign university students to participate in the research, but the researchers must move beyond their linguistical and cultural comfort zones and meet some real people on the streets.

But before one judges the show too harshly, one must bear in mind that the theme is about Barcelona, the "unexpected city". Unlike London, this kind of connectedness and migratory waves are relatively new to Barcelona. So this show is simply an 'introduction' that hints at the shape of things to come.

So it would be premature for the organiser to discuss complex issues such as the EU "open borders" (a move away from "brain drain" to "brain circulation") and the booming human population (yup, there'll be more of us in the future, and most of us are going to live in cities). It'll be too distracting. This show is simple to understand and easy on the eye, and that's good enough.

Anyway, I still like the organiser's decision to place this exhibition at a history museum.

Maybe it's merely an issue of logistics and location - Placa del Rei is after all a famous tourist spot. But it is a good idea to have a contemporary conversation about Barcelona's place in the increasingly connected world alongside existing exhibitions, such as the one on the ancient Roman city of Barcino. This other exhibition is located permanently in the basement of the museum.

And would you believe it? The city had seen transnational citizens in Roman times, as it has now.