This article analyses the impact of the public policies towards immigrants’ participation and incorporation on the associational field of immigrant-origin populations in Barcelona, Madrid and Murcia. The article shows that the reluctance of the local authorities in Barcelona to address policies that intend to manage immigration with the recourse to the wider notion of ‘integration’ and their rejection of the social category of ‘immigrant’ in their institutional discourse also has a reflection in the discursive categories appropriated by immigrants’ associations. Equally, the varying policies towards citizen participation and the promotion of immigrants’ associative formation in the three cities we study have a considerable effect on the associative density, the thematic variety and the availability of multiple resources of immigrants’ associative fields in each city.

Peer reviewed

pp. 119-145