Gibraltar as a Gated Community: A Critical Look at Gibraltarian Nationalism

Orsini, Giacomo;et.al.
(2018) Barrier and Bridge Spanish and Gibraltarian Perspectives on Their Border — ISBN: [9781845199050], p. 163-184, published

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While studies on gated communities and nationalism abound, almost no works exist that combine the analysis of both forms of socio-spatial organization. However, nation states and gated communities have much in common. Both national borders and the fences of gated communities symbolically and physically produce and reproduce otherness – against those from the other side – and sameness – amongst those from the same side. Here, Gibraltar constitutes an extremely interesting case study to combine the analysis of both nations and gated communities. With a population of about 30,000, until half a century ago most of the inhabitant of this tiny British Overseas Territory experienced cultural and social symbiosis with the inhabitants of the surrounding Spanish area of the Campo de Gibraltar. Yet, today the people of this tiny (post-)colonial peninsula identify themselves as a distinct nation whose collective identity is constructed in opposition to Spain and everything Spanish. Nevertheless, our research - an oral history project interviewing over 300 people - shows that the key difference between Gibraltarians and Spaniards has been economic and political security – with the border and its complete closure between 1969 and 1982 playing a key role in cementing those differences. As such, the border functions as those fences that mark gated communities, so that one way of understanding Gibraltar, then, is as a large gated community.
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Orsini, G., & et al. (2018). Gibraltar as a Gated Community: A Critical Look at Gibraltarian Nationalism. In Andrew Canessa (ed.), Barrier and Bridge Spanish and Gibraltarian Perspectives on Their Border (Sussex Academic Press, p. p. 163-184). Sussex Academic Press. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/223829