Paper short abstract:

Catalan nationalist ideology and notions of "race" and "culture" and "mixture."

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the manner in which "race" and "culture" is used in nationalist discourses, especially in the idea of biological or cultural "mixture" which is drawn on to define the socio-political identity of offspring of parents of different nationality. This will be analyzed in the ethnographic context of Catalan nationalism, one kind of "civic nationalism" that basically defines Catalan identity in cultural terms. The paper contrast this nationalistic rhetoric, with a form of xenophobic ideology that was developed in Catalonia in the past (in the 1960s-1970s, against the offspring of mixed-marriages between Catalans and Spanish immigrants) and that seems to have new expressions against non-European immigrants in the contemporary economic crisis situation. This case shows that at any point in time a nationalist ideology adapts its argumentative criteria and may shift from, and/or combine, culturalist and biologist principles of social classification.