Frontier hybridisation or culture clash? Transnational migrant communities and sub-national identity politics in Andalusia, Spain

In this paper, ethnographically focused on the southern Spanish frontier region of Andalusia, the intercultural support activities of local voluntary associations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are analysed in the context of ethnicised islamophobia. Currently, the recently emerging islamophobic actors, which tend to combine narrowly localist and Spanish nationalist identity horizons with an emphasis on Catholicism as a decisive 'ethnic marker' of Spanish-ness, are being countered by Andalusian regionalist strategies of islamophilia, which claim that a 'return of Islam' and/or the pluri-religious legacy of Al-Andalus will empower the region's ongoing search for a supra-local, but sub-national and non-Castilian common identity. The specific context and problematics of migrant community formation are illustrated for the Andalusian region, and then contrasted with the 'identity politics' of the non-migrant Andalusian host society and its struggle for regional autonomy inside the Spanish state. Finally, the increasingly important role of Andalusian NGOs as intercultural mediators and spaces of cultural hybridisation is analysed with regard to its socio-political as well as theoretical consequences for the study of identity politics.