Identity-Based Dynamics and Public Spaces

• Main Author: Manuel Delgado Ruiz
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) 1998-12-01
• Series: Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals
• Online Access: http://www.cidob.org/es/content/download/5483/54027/file/43-44delgado.pdf

Manuel Delgado questions whether anyone can be described as an “immigrant” in the city. Urban centers are precisely characterized for being heterogeneous and unstable spaces, in which nobody is a foreigner since, in the city, all are in a state of transit. Thecity is thus a space of interculturality, of a generalized cultural hybridization in which, even as the fear of excessive hybridization might appear to reinforce identities, identities remain volatile. Indeed, identity is a relational phenomenon; and, in spite of its being indispensable, identity is more a matter of form than of content. To put a stop to the tendencies of intolerance and exclusion a reality should have to be created out of two apparent antagonisms: the right to be different and the right to be equal.