ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims – from social sciences, and from human geography – to answer the following question: how are capital, governments and social movements organised in the processes of integration and resistance that affect 'foreign immigrants' and other people in Barcelona and Lisbon? Social organisations are key to understanding of socio-political changes, and in societies under capitalism they follow class interests. The book shows that most 'foreign immigrant' associations and other social organisations related to international immigrants based in Lisbon and Barcelona have to position themselves in class terms in both polities. In the case of 'foreign immigrants' main resistance may be to legislation, but it is also resistance to Eurocentric cultural imperialism. In Southern Europe it is necessary to study forms of participation that social movements and organisations have adopted in relation to international immigration and how new associations have been created.
