Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Facing the Specter of Immigration in Biutiful

2015; Routledge; Volume: 69; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00397709.2015.1004273

1931-0676

Maria DiFrancesco,

Migration, Refugees, and Integration

While news reporters and academic scholars alike have often linked the specter of immigration in Spain to a history of Muslim conquest and Christian reconquest, very little scholarship seems to connect Spain's ability—or inability—to grapple with the “ghost” of contemporary immigration to a pattern and history of emigration. This analysis of the award-winning film Biutiful (2010), by Mexican director, cowriter, and producer Alejandro González Iñárritu (1963–present), aspires to do precisely this: to examine divergent ghosts, to consider how they dialogue with each other, and to see what an analysis of these specters might indicate to us about Spain's relationship to migrants and migration in the present day.