Abstract
Migratory flows from Latin America to Spain experienced a dramatic increase since the late nineties, followed by a period of expansion and diversification of the origins. Recently, a decline in the flows and an increase in return migration has been recorded. Literature has pointed out the existence of intense forces driving the emergence and expansion of this migration system. On the one side, (i) the Spanish economic growth, (ii) the arrival at young adult ages of small Spanish cohorts and the upwards mobility of Spanish females, and (iii) the immigration policy, specially favorable to the settlement of the Latin American population, are commonly quoted as some of the main pull factors. On the other side, push factors as (i) the relative income differentials and several economic shocks in Latin American economies, (ii) the demographic structure with the concentration of individuals in young-adult ages, (iii) a labor market offering few opportunities, (iv) the educational expansion of this region are named as factors that together with demographic potential to migration might have contributed to the development of mobility. This chapter analyzes the characteristics of the recent Latin American migration into Spain by countries of origin, and its bilateral determinants.
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Notes
- 1.
The terminology “push/pull” was coined by Lee (1966), and it has been recurrently used within migration studies in order to identify the factors promoting the exit of flows from origin places (“push”) and factors that attract the flows towards certain place (“pull”). Lee’s perspective also introduced the taking into account of multiple levels of analysis of migration determinants at micro, mid and macro levels.
- 2.
Despite the high levels of women activity, the longitudinal analysis of job careers in the origin country and Spain reveals a decreasing socio-professional mobility pattern, and a limited job promotion once settled in Spain, restricted to the economic sector where the first insertion occurs (Vono 2010). Therefore, there is a strong inequality between migrants and native population, which Domingo and Gil (2007) called “the other side of complementarity”. Even though the working situation has improved within migrants, inequality decreases as the staying in Spain prolongs, but it remains.
- 3.
Figures derived from the analysis of the National Immigrant Survey carried out in Spain in 2007. The data presented herein were gathered from the online version of the survey (2012). Site: http://www.ine.es/jaxi/menu.do?type=pcaxis&path=%2Ft20 %2Fp319&file=inebase&L=0. Access: June 2012.
- 4.
This is an administrative register where local residents are recorded. Its function is controlled by Law 4/1996, from January 10, 1996, which modifies Law 7/1985 from April 2, 1985. According to this regulation, local councils must record monthly variations in the register and communicate them to the NSI, who subsequently conduct a consistency analysis and prior to publishing. The register is also known as the continuous register, a name that refers to the permanent nature of its being kept current since 1996. Previously, the register’s updates were less frequent, being conducted annually on May 1, but since 1998 there has been continuous management, using the January 1st of each year as the reference date.
- 5.
The decrease of the GDP was of 10 % in both countries in 2002, with respect to the GDP in 1997 (Becker 2010). Poverty exceeded the 20 % in both countries and the unemployment rate reached its historic highest exceeding the 22 % in Argentina in 2002 and the 17 % in Uruguay in 2003.
- 6.
The “pull effect” was not confirmed in other origins which were also subject of the Schengen visa requirement in 1999. This is the case of the people from the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Peru (Vono 2010). The people of these three countries were subject to the unilateral visa requirement from Spain at the beginning of the 1990’s (Peru and the Dominican Republic) or even before that time (Cuba).
- 7.
The effects of regularizations were visible also at the statistical system scope since one of the requirements to access the legal status change was that of registration. For example, in the case of the regularization in 2005, it required to prove to have been registered before August 2004 (Santolaya 2005).
- 8.
Since 2003 there was another return program but of humanitarian nature, managed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) by means of non-governmental organizations.
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Acknowledgements
This contribution has been conducted in the context of the “Inflexión del ciclo económico y transformaciones de las migraciones en España” (Ref. CSO2010-19177) and “Inmigración internacional y familia en España: trayectorias de pareja en perspectiva transnacional” (CSO2011-24544).
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Prieto Rosas, V., López Gay, A. (2015). Push and Pull Factors of Latin American Migration. In: Domingo, A., Sabater, A., Verdugo, R. (eds) Demographic Analysis of Latin American Immigrants in Spain. Applied Demography Series, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12361-5_1
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