By: maría antonia casanova

Education of immigrant students in the community of madrid

María Antonia Casanova

Advancements in knowledge and technology, as well as facility of global communication and movement characterize modern society in developed countries. In a globalized culture, very different people (in ideas, religions, ethnic groups, customs, cultures, etc.) must coexist with each other (actual or virtually) in the same space or use a technological route to communicate. All of this takes place so quickly that some do not sufficiently adapt to newly created situations. Movements to preserve traditions, customs, and local culture arise in the face of this exhausting globalization, in order to avoid sinking into a homogenous whole. With these expansive movements, we are walking reductively toward “glocales” cultures, according to the term and concept coined by Ulrich Beck (1998, p. 80).

Population movements constitute for some astonishing situations in the history of humanity due to the rapidity with which they take place. Migration, individually or collectively, forms part of society. In order to distinguish this phenomenon from the individual processes of change, migratory movements to the displacements of population from a more or less distant region to another, or from one country to another, are usually denominated. In general, it alludes to changes that will maintain temporal continuity and never to conjunctural transfers. The European continent has been an historical scene of numerous of types of these movements. Indeed, each European town or nation has surely inherited, or been the result of a great migration, whether pacific or warlike. Spain and its population in particular, are the consequence of multiple progressive invasions of different nations throughout its history, as it is easily observed with a superficial glance of its geography. Multiple previous cultures compose the architectonic rest of Spain and their “culture” (literature, customs, religion, gastronomy, vocabulary, numeration, etc.). It is reasonable and correct to refer to cultures as that of each and every one of us that form part of that nation.

Moving on to other examples, the growth of the colonial empires of Portugal and Spain during the 15th through the 17th centuries constitutes a landmark in the conformation of the American population. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch and British extended their navigation, with ships reaching remote zones of the East. In the 19th century, the industrial revolution entailed great changes in the population of the planet because new industrialization mechanisms penetrated and modified their particular societies. One of the most significant changes was the total increase of the population. In 1750, the total world-wide population amounted to about 800 million people, and a century later it reached 1.3 billion. Concretely, Europe went from 145 million in 1750 to 400 million in 1900. Pushed by this internal demographic pressure and with the advantage of technological superiority, Europeans were scattered throughout the globe, pacifically or by means of conquests. According to the UN, the great European exodus has been the most important migratory movement of the modern age, and perhaps the greatest one of humanity’s history.