Abstract
When analyzing the integration of foreign immigrants in Spain, "love" is a key phenomenon for building bridges across social and cultural divides. Although it has been underestimated and even neglected by most migration studies and scholars, successful instances of immigrants' integration in a diversity of localities are related to inter-cultural marriage or couple formation. At the same time, the complexities of a multicultural living-together are a challenge for international couples and, some times, divorce and separation become especially hard, once away from their country of origin. In this chapter, some original data is offered regarding the love experiences of foreign immigrants settled in Spain. Concretely, this chapter is based on results from a five-year qualitative research project on migration into small towns and rural areas in Spain, funded by the Spanish Science and Technology Ministry, and coordinated by the author. The fieldwork was carried out from 2003 to 2005 in several counties of five peripheral provinces in Spain: Girona (Catalonia), Alicante (Valencia Community), Huelva (Andalusia), Caceres (Extremadura) and Leon (Castille and Leon). © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | International Marriages in the Time of Globalization |
| Pages | 103-116 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2011 |