Discursos y Representaciones de la etnicidad: politica, identidade y conflicto en el siglo XX (EtniXX)

This Project explores how the concept of ethnic minority has been historically constructed within the framework of the modern nation-state aiming at the study of a set of representations elaborated by political-legal, scientific, scholarly and artistic discourses that contributed to define it as a category applied to certain social groups. Resting on the suppositions that “race” and “ethnicity” are shifting concepts through time, the historical meaningfulness of the study of racialization or ethnicization processes is due to the scrutiny of mechanisms through which a society defines, labels and treats a group differently. From this same approach, challenging reactions to those practices of othering will be accordingly assessed. Moreover, the analysis of these historical processes may also shed light on the complex system of political and cultural operations that sustained contemporary national and civic identities, having been the backbone of the definition of minorities in terms of alterity. This proposal widens the scope of a long-term research program starting with the project History of the Roma: Exclusion, Stereotypes and Citizenship. From the 18th to the 20th Century [HAR2015-64744-P]. The new Project has a twofold purpose: making breakthroughs in the historical knowledge of ethnic minorities in contemporary times and reflecting theoretical and methodologically on the potentials of the research tools already implemented. EtniXX will study discourses and representations of three communities with a long historical trajectory in Spain that respectively have been ethnically labelled: Roma, Jews and Muslims who are groups that have been defined in terms of racial alterity since old times. Laws, social practices and cultural constructions entailing different degrees of racism shaped their historical experience, either in Spain or in Europe. This project covers the chronological range from the last decades of the XIXth century to a long XXth century coinciding with historical milestones marked by legacy issues.