Ricard Zapata-Barrero (born 12 November, 1965) is a scholar of migration studies, specializing in migration governance, citizenship, and diversity. He is a full professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and the director of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Immigration (GRITIM-UPF). [1]
Zapata-Barrero was born in 1965 in Sabadell (Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain). He is the son of a political refugee under the Francoist regime. At the age of seven, together with his mother and two sisters, he crossed The Portbou border with a family false passport and spent his childhood in Paris, France. Once there, he helped to organize the Spanish diaspora, learnt from his father political activities against the francoist regime and followed critically the democratic transition. In 1984, he returned to Spain to study philosophy at the Autonomous University in Barcelona. In 1989, he studied in Paris at Ecole des Hautes Etudes, with Pierre Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski and Raymond Boudon, where he obtained a Diplôme d'études Approfondies (DEA). In 1996, he completed his Ph.D. at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. [1]
Afterwards, he went to the University of Caen (with Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut) and the University of Leeds (with David Beetham). He then spent the next year at the Universities of Political Science in Berlin and Munich and attended courses at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of Political Science (OSI) of the Freie Universitat Berlin. In 1996, Ricard completed his Ph.D. at the Barcelona Autonomous University with a research entitled Ciudadanía, Democracia, y Pluralismo Cultural: Hacia un Nuevo Contrato Social (Citizenship, Democracy, and Cultural Pluralism: towards a new social contract), published by Editorial Anthropos in 2001.
Ricard Zapata-Barrero is a full professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. Since 2011, he has been the director of the Master's degree in Migration studies at the university. [2] He is a founder and coordinator of the Euro-Mediterranean Research Network on Migration (EuroMedMig), an independent interdisciplinary research network on migration and diversity in the Mediterranean. [3] Since 2017, he has been a board member of the International Migration and Social Cohesion (IMISCOE) in Europe and the chair of its external affairs committee. [4]
Through his publications, his main fields of research are: borders and human mobility, [5] diversity and citizenship, [6] and methodology in migration studies . [7]
In the last few years, Zapata-Barrero has been engaged in the normative debate on interculturalism. He is also promoting the development of migration studies in the Mediterranean region, and deepening the research on Urban Migration Governance. [8] [9] Regarding the latter, he has contributed to framing the local turn in migration studies and this track of research from urban politics [10] [11] As an Applied Political Theorist, he is promoting interdisciplinary knowledge on immigration, combining theory and case studies, and following contextual, conceptual, normative, and interpretive approaches. [1] His academic research has often explored the research-policy-society nexus so that his findings can contribute to social and political change. [12] [13]
Pompeu Fabra University is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia in Spain. The university was created by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia in 1990 and was named after Pompeu Fabra. It is highly competitive in research and has as its goal the transformation of education to meet the challenges of the future. UPF has been ranked the best university in Spain since 2015 and 16th best young university in the world in 2022 by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
Cultural diversity is the quality of diverse or different cultures, as opposed to monoculture. It has a variety of meanings in different contexts, sometimes applying to cultural products like art works in museums or entertainment available online, and sometimes applying to the variety of human cultures or traditions in a specific region, or in the world as a whole. It can also refer to the inclusion of different cultural perspectives in an organization or society.
Cross-cultural communication is a field of study investigating how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavor to communicate across cultures. Intercultural communication is a related field of study.
Interculturalism is a political movement that supports cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cultures. Interculturalism involves moving beyond mere passive acceptance of multiple cultures existing in a society and instead promotes dialogue and interaction between cultures. Interculturalism is often used to describe the set of relations between indigenous and western ideals, grounded in values of mutual respect.
Intercultural communication is a discipline that studies communication across different cultures and social groups, or how culture affects communication. It describes the wide range of communication processes and problems that naturally appear within an organization or social context made up of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. In this sense, it seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures act, communicate, and perceive the world around them. Intercultural communication focuses on the recognition and respect of those with cultural differences. The goal is mutual adaptation between two or more distinct cultures which leads to biculturalism/multiculturalism rather than complete assimilation. It promotes the development of cultural sensitivity and allows for empathic understanding across different cultures.
Osnabrück University is a public research university located in the city of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony, Germany.
Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a range of cognitive, affective, behavioural, and linguistic skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures. Intercultural or cross-cultural education are terms used for the training to achieve cultural competence.
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Daniel Innerarity Grau is a Spanish philosopher and essayist.
The Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures is a network of civil society organisations dedicated to promoting intercultural dialogue in the Mediterranean region.
The Union for the Mediterranean is an intergovernmental organization of 43 member states from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin: the 27 EU member states and 16 Mediterranean partner countries from North Africa, Western Asia and Southern Europe. It was founded on 13 July 2008 at the Paris Summit for the Mediterranean, with an aim of reinforcing the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (Euromed) that was set up in 1995 as the Barcelona Process. Its general secretariat is located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
The Centre of Research in Theories and Practices that Overcome Inequalities (CREA) was founded in 1991 by a current professor of Sociology at the University of Barcelona, Doctor Honoris Causa of West University of Timișoara and also a recognized researcher in Europe in the Social Science area, Ramon Flecha. After Ramon Flecha's resignation as the Director of CREA, in 2006; Marta Soler, Doctor by Harvard, a current Professor of Sociological Theory, assumed the post. Nowadays, the name of the research centre has changed for this other CREA-Community of Researchers on Excellence for All. CREA, one of the centres that first joined the Scientific Park of Barcelona ; is interdisciplinary; multicultural and open accepting different ideologies, religions, lifestyles, sexual orientations; transparent, since its knowledge is at everyone's disposal; and it is a centre where the validity of arguments prevails over the positions of power of their members, creating, in this way, an environment of an egalitarian dialogue. This centre is formed by University research professors, researchers and professional collaborators of diverse disciplines.
Migration studies is the academic study of human migration. Migration studies is an interdisciplinary field which draws on anthropology, prehistory, history, economics, law, sociology and postcolonial studies.
Jan Rath is a Dutch social scientist who is holding a chair in Urban Sociology in the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His academic studies have focused on the nexus of urban structures and processes on the one hand and their social, ethnic and religious dimensions on the other. His work is highly cited in the sub-fields related to the problematization of immigrant ethnic minorities, and on urban economies, entrepreneurship, and cultural consumption.
Karma R. Chávez is a rhetorical critic who utilizes textual and field-based methods and studies the rhetorical practices of people marginalized within existing power structures. She has published numerous scholarly articles and books, including Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities, as well as co-founding the Queer Migration Research Network. She works with social justice organizations and her scholarship is informed by queer of color theory, women of color feminism, poststructuralism, and cultural studies.
Núria López Bigas is a Spanish biologist and research professor with expertise in medical genetics, computational biology, and bioinformatics. She is an ICREA professor at Pompeu Fabra University and she also leads the Biomedical Genomics Research Group at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, Spain. Her research is focused on developing computational approaches to investigate cancer genomes.
Rainer Bauböck is an Austrian sociologist, political scientist and migration researcher. Bauböck is a former Chair in Social and Political theory at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, part time professor in the Global Governance Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and Chair of the Commission for Migration and Integration Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.
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