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Occidental College Graduate Luana Espana Wins Fulbright Scholarship
Luana España of San Leandro, a 2001 graduate of Occidental College, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Spain for nine months to study that nation’s foreign status law and the measure’s relationship to overall immigration policy with the European Union (EU).
She is planning to attend Madrid’s University of Pontificia Comillas in September.
“Spain is a new country of immigration,” said España, who earned degrees in politics and Spanish literary studies. “In the last 15 years, the Spaniards have created control measures and institutions that are still developing in response to the ever-changing international environment of immigration in a globalized economic market.” While Spain is a principal doorway for Moroccan, Sub-Saharan and Latin American immigrants, España said the trend has received little international attention. “The study of Spanish immigration policy is worthy of research because the impetus for the development of immigration policy has coincided with Spain’s efforts to achieve European integration,” she added.
Specifically, España will research Spain’s 1985 foreign status law and amendments to the measure in 1991, 1996 and 2000. She will also study the impact of the Schengen Treaty, which Spain signed in 1985 to remove internal borders and allow travel without background checks among seven participating EU nations.
España, a graduate of Hayward’s Moreau Catholic High School, said that after she completes her Fulbright studies she plans to enroll in an international relations graduate program that specializes in economic development. “I would like to work on economic development policy that would improve the economic structure in migrant-sending countries,” she said. España wrote her politics senior comprehensive on U.S. immigration policy with Mexico. The paper was titled “Open Borders: Economic Integration and the Reduction of Labor Migration in the Long Run.”
España is the fourth Occidental student since 1992 to receive a Fulbright Scholarship. The award covers the cost of travel, education and living expenses. The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 under legislation introduced by former Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. About 234,000 scholars, 88,000 of them from the United States, have participated in the program since its inception.