The Galician Diaspora in the Twenty-First Century: Demographic Renovation as a Response to the Economic Crisis

Abstract

With the dawn of the twenty-first century and the international immigration boom in Galicia, some considered the century-long Galician diaspora to have reached its end. Nevertheless, the dramatic outbreak of the 2008 economic crisis has reactivated outward migration, now in much more complex forms. The more recent flows of Galician emigration have been fed by return trajectories of previous immigrants, some of whom have become naturalized Spanish citizens, and some of whom are accompanied by Galician-born children and spouses. These flows also include re-immigration to third countries, a process that includes those who returned home during the bonanza period only to find themselves faced with the need to emigrate yet again, as well as a new wave of Galician youth emigration. These patterns of movement take advantage of family networks established during the twentieth-century diaspora and are revitalizing the exterior population with ties to Galicia as well as the geographic extension encompassed by the Galician diaspora. The relative importance of the countries included in this territory has shifted, as has the composition of the populations in flux. In this chapter, we will pay particular attention to analyzing these latest flows and the composition of the population of the Galician expatriate community.