After a brief introduction on the development of the immigration process for the largest number of non-EU citizen populations in Spain and the variety of situations that are concealed, this analysis focuses on the definition of citizenship and the main sources of vulnerability it generates for non-citizens. In addition to the other consequences of public strategies (legal rights regulations, the regulation of flows, the intensification of obstacles and requirements…) and the economic and political-administrative structure, it emphasises that the institutionalisation of classification procedures not only legitimises practices of exclusion —ethnic, social, employment— but it also operates in the implicit support of discredit, subordination and the negative construction of the immigrant. Therefore, the most perennial cultural prejudices are strengthened, the effects of which are exacerbated in a general context of precariousness and diminishing economic and social rights.
Immigration, citizenship, immigration law, discriminatory process, human rights.