Narrativas identitarias en la frontera entre Ceuta y TetuánUn análisis desde la psicología cultural

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is structured around the research question about how people who usually cross the border between Ceuta (Spain) and Tétouan (Morocco) create their identity according to their different reasons for crossing. This question is broken down into three specific aims that guide and organize the three publications that make up the basis of the dissertation. In the first place, it became necessary to know what people cross the border between Spain and Morocco and what the main activities that motivate these crossings are. Next, a theoretical framework was developed that allowed understanding the psychological processes that occur in the border scenario. Finally, it was proposed to describe what meanings the border has for some of the people who cross it on a daily basis and its relationship with the self, understood as a set of positions and voices. First, we present some data about the concrete context of data production, which will allow to outline the particular characteristics of the aforementioned border. In particular, the socio-demographic, economic, political and historical data that shape the discourses and practices of this context. These characteristics mediate the relations among the border inhabitants and are part of the conflicts and voices to which they appeal in their selves. The theoretical pillars that sustain this work are studies on identity and self from a psychological perspective, border studies and cultural psychology. The self is understood as a narrative and dynamic creation that is constantly being revised and adapted according to the audiences and cultural canons. It is a story that gives meaning to the person’s experience that is composed of multiple significant other’s voices that surround them. On the other hand, the context on focus, being the international border zone, has certain specific characteristics indicated by border studies, such as the separation and union that occur at the same time since its establishment. Likewise, the border materialization is translated into concrete practices that continue to reproduce the border dynamics, titled as bordering practices. If we understand these practices from the concepts proposed by cultural psychology, we can glimpse their implications at the psychological level. The border is understood from this proposal as the artefact created by people that allows it to mediate its relationship with the environment. This artefact is internalized through participation in the border scenario and ends up constituting the tool for the perception, guidance and management of the psychological world and the relationship with the environment and others. Thus, the border and its associated practices end up being a constituting part of the mind. The main results of the publications are: the description of the people living around the Spanish-Moroccan border and the main activities they carry out, as well as the methodological assumptions that guide the process of identification and definition of border people; the development and application of the theoretical framework proposed by cultural psychology in two European Union’s external borders cases based on the description of the embodied figures of national borders: the border guard and the diplomatic corps; and the main meanings of the border (border experience) for two groups of women who use it for different reasons (Moroccan women who cross to work as domestic workers and Spanish women who cross for leisure purposes) and the positions (border positions) and voices (border inner-Other) related to these experiences, which make up their personal identities. In view of these results, we propose the activities and reasons for crossing as an explanatory factor to understand the functions that the border fulfils in the inhabitants’ daily life. Second, we understand the border functions at the psychological level and the triadic system that generates its establishment, to create links between the disciplines of cultural psychology and border studies. Finally, we emphasize the importance of personal meanings in order to understand the impact of border experience at the identity level and the relevance of social conflicts materialized in the voices of significant others as a constituting part of selves. These different factors help to understand how people who usually cross the border between Ceuta (Spain) and Tétouan (Morocco) create their selves according to their reasons for crossing. It depends on people’s meanings about the border established from their particular border experience, given the activities that facilitate or prevent the border, the relevant practices, and significant others’ discourses that the person internalizes and constitutes their selves, among others. As well as the triadic and co-genetic system that generates the materialization of the border, producing a continuous tension between the separation and connection generated by the border dynamics and, therefore, in the one's self.