The increase in the foreign-born population in Catalonia during the 1990s and the first two decades of the 21st century has been paralleled by increasing support for political parties and platforms advocating for the secession of the region of Catalonia from Spain. While the latter process is independent of the former, the Catalan nationalists have presented themselves to be an inclusive and diverse political movement. Nonetheless, more research is needed to assess whether migrants are "buying into" this project. This paper explores the question of whether pro-European union attitudes or other explanations help elucidate migrants’ reluctance or support for this political movement. Using longitudinal data from the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió, I explore the role different migrants play in the secessionist movement. I compare attitudes towards secessionism among foreign born (“new minorities”) and internal migrants from other regions of Spain vis-à-vis native-born Catalonians without migrant descent (“old minorities”). The findings are contextualized using external political efficacy, socialization, and mobilization theories as well as recent theoretical discussions on sovereignty and citizenship.

Xavier Escandell's research explores immigration, transnationalism, and race/ethnic relations in the context of Western and Eastern Europe and Latin America. His published work appears in journals such as Annual Review of Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Science Research, International Migration, International Migration Review, and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies among others. His ethnographic work in Bolivia and Spain focuses on the socio-cultural integration of Bolivian families in pre and post-recession Spain, their transnational modes of parenting as well as processes of return migration. He has also published work on the contextual factors mediating the worrisome rise of racism and xenophobia in Western European countries and focuses on how demographic, civic, and political institutional environments impact perceptions towards migrants. Prior to obtaining his degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005, he was a fellow at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. At Grinnell, he teaches classes on Global Ethnography, Immigration and Transnationalism and quantitative methods.