the Suitcase? Emigration during the Great Recession ...

South European Society and Politics

ISSN: 1360-8746 (Print) 1743-9612 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fses20

Back to the Suitcase? Emigration during the Great Recession in Spain Amparo González-Ferrer & Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes To cite this article: Amparo González-Ferrer & Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes (2017) Back to the Suitcase? Emigration during the Great Recession in Spain, South European Society and Politics, 22:4, 447-471, DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2017.1413051 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2017.1413051

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South European Society and Politics, 2017 VOL. 22, NO. 4, 447–471 https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2017.1413051

Back to the Suitcase? Emigration during the Great Recession in Spain Amparo González-Ferrer and Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes

ABSTRACT

The complex and multidimensional economic crisis experienced by Spain since 2008 significantly altered migration patterns in this country. Large scale unemployment contributed to slow down migrant inflows and accelerated out-migration flows in Spain. The media coverage of these processes created a distorted image of the patterns of migration affecting Spain during the crisis. Although the incipient economic recovery has not had a major impact in terms of modifying the migration dynamics triggered by the crisis, the media attention to this issue has substantially decreased without questioning its previous approach to the phenomenon. This article presents extensive data from a wide range of sources covering the period 2008–2016 to extract detailed information about the reality of crisis-era migration flows in Spain, and discusses the extent to which the media treatment of the issue has contributed to a partial and misleading view of the causes and consequences of the new Spanish emigration.

KEYWORDS

Migration flows; immigration; emigration; economic crisis; youth unemployment; brain drain; Spain

With record high unemployment and the grim economic situation derived from the complex and multidimensional crisis experienced by Spain since 2008, migration flows involving this country have become significantly more complex over the past decade. A traditional country of emigration until the mid-1970s, Spain became a country of net immigration in the 1990s, with accelerated incoming flows during the 2000s (the foreign population increased from one, to nearly six million in less than a decade). After the immigration boom, which according to the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) saw an average annual growth of 720,000 inhabitants for the period 2002–2008, the crisis considerably decreased the inflows, although without completely stopping them (family reunification, irregular migrants, etc.). Outgoing migration flows simultaneously accelerated, affecting both foreign-born residents (including long term foreign residents, as well as some who had already acquired Spanish citizenship), and native Spaniards in search of better opportunities abroad. At the beginning of 2011, the number of people leaving Spain was greater than the number coming into the country. In the second trimester of 2013, and for the first time in a decade, remittances to Spain exceeded the money sent by immigrants to their countries of origin (Banco de España 2013), a clear indicator of the shift in the net migration balance of Spain.

CONTACT Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes

[email protected]

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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A. GONZÁLEZ-FERRER AND F. J. MORENO-FUENTES

The intense media coverage of the phenomenon confronted Spaniards with a reality they associated with their past. The 1950s and 1960s images of workers leaving for other European countries with their cardboard suitcases epitomised a history of emigration induced by poverty which Spanish society had not expected to have to experience again. An oversimplified understanding of the effects of the economic cycle on population mobility patterns contributed to a distorted perception of migratory flows affecting this country, and to the emergence of a significant controversy about the nature, intensity and consequences of this recently re-discovered phenomenon. Equated with a forced exile of the youth due to the flaws of the Spanish economy and society, the idea that there was no alternative for young people but to leave the country became a very sensitive matter for Spanish public opinion. The scarce and incomplete statistical data available on the actual nature and intensity of the recent out-migration flows, combined with anecdotal evidence (knowing someone—a relative, friend or acquaintance—who left the country or was planning to do so), exacerbated societal anxieties about the re-emergence of an unwanted out-migration phenomenon. The main purpose of this article is thus to add complexity to an oversimplified image of the migratory flows affecting Spain over the last decade, a period strongly marked by the economic crisis and the fiscal consolidation policies implemented by Spanish public administrations. In a more precise manner, this paper has a triple goal. In the first place, it aims to review how media and civil society organisations (including key economic actors) framed the new migration dynamic triggered by the crisis in Spain, and the impact this image had on public opinion. The main argument here is that the attention given to this phenomenon was considerably out of focus, distorted by the shock of identifying Spain as a country of emigration once again, and with the (mistaken) perception that Spanish youth constituted the bulk of the significant out-migration flows experienced during the years of the crisis. Second, we assess the extent to which the somewhat simplistic account of migration dynamics provided by the media corresponds (or not) with the actual magnitude and composition of the out-migration flows experienced by Spain over this period. In particular, we discuss whether the signs of incipient recovery starting in early 2014 (INE 2017) had a visible impact on the evolution of those figures, and whether such an impact has been consistent with the widespread idea that emigration of Spaniards was caused by the crisis and would then stop when the crisis is over. To this end, the article analyses the data available on migration flows in Spain (with a special focus on emigration) in 2008–2016, trying to extract the most detailed information possible about their actual size, trends and profile. By analysing in a systematic way the official statistics available both in Spain and in some of the major destinations of outflows from Spain (‘mirror sources’), we are able to point out the limitations of the available figures, and how these incomplete data affected the public debate on this issue in Spain during the crisis. Finally, we examine the political response to the controversy about the new emigration patterns that emerged in Spain during the crisis, as well as the way in which these responses were modified as media attention declined and the economic recovery started. In order to study the media approach to out-migration flows we systematically searched for news dealing with the concept of ‘emigration’ in three of the main national-wide newspapers (El País, La Vanguardia and ABC) for the period 2011–2016.1 The revision of the coverage given to out-migration flows by those main newspapers (whose attention to this

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topic peaked in the years 2012 and 2013, when the highest number of items were published addressing this issue), shows a series of patterns that help us better understand the contribution of the media to shaping public perceptions about the changes in migration patterns and providing us with key insights into the political response to this phenomenon. With regard to migration figures, the analysis is based on the systematic exploitation of the official statistics on Spanish inflows and outflows over the period 2008–2016, in order to identify changes in size, destination and profile of migration flows. Focusing not only on Spanish emigration, but also on inflows and outflows of foreign origin population, we provide a more complete overview of the mobility patterns affecting Spanish society, showing how migration patterns in Spain are considerably more complex than suggested by the media and assumed by public opinion. This nine-year period covers the entire duration of the crisis (2008–2013/2014), as well as the beginning of the so-called recovery period, in order to better explore whether, and how, recent changes in the economic cycle might have impacted mobility patterns in and out of Spain. Official Spanish statistics on emigration are then compared with those available on Spanish immigration in two of the major destinations (‘mirror sources’) of those flows in that period (Germany and the UK), in order to better understand the undercounting and the biases in terms of age and sex in the former. In addition, complementary information from different surveys on migration intentions and aspirations in Spain and other EU countries are exploited, along with a systematic review of the specialised articles on this topic written during the last years. With all this material, we present a critical assessment of the Spanish figures and the (mis)-interpretations often fuelled by them with the help of the media. In the following section of the article, we contextualise the Spanish economic crisis and its main effects on the labour market as a structural factor explaining the increasing complexity of migratory patterns affecting this country over the last decade. We then proceed to look at how the media contributed to the creation of a distorted image of the nature of the migration flows affecting Spanish society since the crisis started, a partial image that focused mainly on the fate of young educated Spanish nationals having to leave their country because of the inability of Spanish society to provide them with life chances according to their expectations. The fourth and fifth sections of the article will then aim at disentangling the actual composition of the out- and in-migration flows experienced by Spain during these past years, revealing a significantly more complex image of the position occupied by Spain in the World Migration System. Next, we discuss the political response given to the changing migration dynamics triggered by the crisis and its socio-economic implications and, finally, the concluding section reviews the main findings of the article. It then speculates about future trends in the context of a partial economic recovery and an increasing questioning of freedom of movement within the EU.

Unemployment and labour market precariousness in Spain Although the contributions of the different social science disciplines have become increasingly salient in the academic understanding of human mobility (Hollifield 1992; Foner, Rumbaut, & Gold 2000), economic factors continue to constitute the core of the understanding of migration (Arango 2000). Beyond the parsimony of the neoclassical economic model underlying the ‘push–pull’ framework for the understanding of migration dynamics, based on the distribution of key production factors (capital and labour), the extremely complex

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nature of migration processes generally requires taking a plurality of other historical, sociological and/or political variables into consideration. The oscillations of the economic cycle create the general framework in which migratory processes are conceptualised in countries whose position in the World Migration System may have been, in one way or another, altered by those fluctuations (Papademetriou & Martin 1991). The general assumptions of the neoclassical approach imply that at times of recession, emigration is expected to occur (notably in countries with a tradition of outmigration), while countries whose economies are growing are expected to experience net positive migration. After the beginning of the crisis, unemployment rates in Spain skyrocketed. As Table 1 shows, from 8.2 per cent in 2007, unemployment peaked at 26.1 per cent in 2013, to go down only gradually to 19.6 per cent by the end of 2016 (Eurostat 2017a). These figures are striking, even when compared to other Southern European countries seriously affected by the financial crisis. This deterioration was particularly marked in the case of young workers (unemployment among workers aged 16–24 reached 55 per cent in 2013, and was still over 44 per cent in 2016). Between 2007 and 2013, more than 4.5 million jobs were lost in Spain (a drop from 20.2 to 16.1 million employed workers) (OECD 2017). Although 2.4 million of those jobs had been recovered by the end of 2016 (up to 18.5 million employed workers), long term unemployment still represented 48.8 per cent of all jobless workers in March 2017 (37 per cent in the EU-15) (Eurostat 2017b). Working conditions severely deteriorated as well. Between 2010 and 2013, the purchasing power of salaries decreased by eight per cent in constant terms as a consequence of the increasing salience of part-time contracts, the substitution of permanent workers by employees on temporary contracts and the changes in the general composition of the labour force (fewer industrial, construction and skilled jobs, more employment in the low value added service sector). Between 2013 and the end of 2016, nominal salaries remained practically stagnant, and real salaries (considering inflation) experienced only marginal improvements (Banco de España 2017). In fact, despite the significant economic growth and job creation experienced since 2016, by June 2017 Spain was one of the European countries where labour costs had increased the least in the previous year (0.4 per cent increase in the nominal labour hour cost, compared to a 2.4 per cent average increase in the EU28) (Eurostat 2017c). Table 1. Evolution of unemployment rates in Europe, 2007–2016. Unemployment Rate (%) Spain Greece Portugal Italy Germany UK France EU28 Eurozone

2007 8.2 8.4 9.1 6.1 8.5 5.3 8.0 7.2 7.5

2009 17.9 9.6 10.7 7.7 7.6 7.6 9.1 9.0 9.6

2011 21.4 17.9 12.9 8.4 5.8 8.1 9.2 9.7 10.2

2013 26.1 27.5 16.4 12.1 5.2 7.6 10.3 10.9 12.0

2015 22.1 24.9 12.6 11.9 4.6 5.3 10.4 9.4 10.9

Youth Unemployment Rate (%)* 2016 19.6 23.6 11.2 11.7 4.1 4.8 10.1 8.5 10.0

2007 18.1 22.7 21.4 20.4 11.8 14.3 19.5 15.9 15.6

2014 53.2 52.4 34.7 42.7 7.7 17.0 24.2 22.2 23.8

2015 48.3 49.8 32.0 40.3 7.2 14.6 24.7 20.3 22.4

2016 44.4 47.3 28.2 37.8 7.0 13.0 24.6 18.7 20.9

Source: Eurostat. Note: *Youth unemployment rate: percentage of the unemployed in the age group 15–24 compared to the total labour force (both employed and unemployed) in that age group.


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The number of part-time contracts increased from 11.1 per cent in 2007 to 16.3 per cent of the total in 2014 (they only gradually went down to 15.4 per cent in 2016) (Eurostat 2017b). More than 93 per cent of contracts signed in 2013 were temporary (in July 2017 that percentage was still 92.1), and around 60 per cent of all workers in the age group 16–24 held a temporary contract not leading to a permanent job. In July 2017, 26.8 per cent of all contracts in Spain were temporary (compared to 14.2 per cent average in the EU-28) (Eurostat 2017c). The difficulty for the Spanish youth in accessing jobs matching their qualifications has been identified as a structural characteristic of this country’s labour market (Dolado et al. 2013). In 2009, nearly 20 per cent of those aged 15–34 still had not found their first regular job after finishing their degrees three to five years earlier (compared to only five per cent in the Netherlands, or six per cent in the UK). Those who did find a regular job within their first five years after graduating had waited on average 12 months (compared to only six months in the Netherlands, and four in the UK), while only 23 per cent of them found a job within the first month (by comparison to 57 per cent in the Netherlands). The high level of temporality has negative effects on the school-to-work transition process as well, and Spain became one of the countries with the highest numbers of young people ‘Not in Employment, Education or Training’ (NEET) (nearly 23 per cent among those 15–29 in 2015, compared to around 13.8 per cent in the EU-15) (Eurofound 2012; OECD 2017). Although education generally improves the position in the labour market, the extremely high level of unemployment does not spare those with formal qualifications and degrees: a university degree in Spain reduces the risk of unemployment by 55 per cent —compared to a 63 per cent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average (OECD 2014). Thus, 14 per cent of tertiary-educated adults, and 22 per cent of those with upper secondary education in Spain were unemployed in 2012 (compared to OECD averages of five per cent, and 13.6 per cent respectively). The worst situation was nevertheless experienced by those with lower education levels (more than 31 per cent of them were unemployed, compared to a 14 per cent OECD average). As INE labour market statistics show, the difference in employability between those different groups remained quite significant in 2017 (9.7 per cent of tertiary-educated adults were unemployed, compared to 16.7 per cent of those with upper secondary education, and nearly 30 per cent of those with only primary education) despite the relative improvement in the labour market situation. An additional indicator of the malfunctioning of the Spanish labour market is the high degree of mismatch, both in terms of qualifications and skills, which implies that many overqualified individuals with a university degree end up in jobs that are better suited for workers with upper-secondary level education, in turn forcing many workers with uppersecondary education to take jobs below their level of qualification. Spain is, in fact, the OECD and EU country with the highest levels of both over- and under-qualified workers (OECD 2014). These forms of mismatch affect more than 30 per cent of Spanish workers, in contrast with the 25.3 per cent OECD average (Dolado et al. 2013). At the beginning of the crisis the social protection system operated as a buffer for unemployed workers, partly compensating for the loss of salaries. However, the long duration of the economic downturn, the structural weakness of the Spanish welfare safety net and the restrictive reforms introduced by the government in the social protection system, meant that the percentage of unemployed workers receiving some kind of cash transfer steadily declined. Thus, while in January 2010 the coverage rate with some kind of monetary transfer

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reached a peak (82.1 per cent), by September 2016 that rate had declined to 54.8 per cent of the unemployed, according to INE labour market statistics. Escalating unemployment rates, and a weakened capacity of families to function as ‘shock absorbers’, placed young people in a particularly difficult position during the crisis. This situation has been additionally worsened by cuts in other domains of welfare policies (housing, personal social services, active labour market policies) which were already relatively unfriendly to the youth (Moreno & Marí-Klose 2013). This all pointed at a situation in which young people in Spain, similarly to their counterparts in other crisis-stricken countries (Lafleur & Stanek 2016), had strong incentives to look abroad for better professional prospects.

The controversy about new emigration patterns: media and society In the context of the socio-economic shock produced by the crisis, the emergence of youth out-migration flows should not have come as a surprise. However, an oversimplified understanding of the effects of the economic cycle on population mobility patterns dominated the public debate. The echo of the 1950s and 1960s images of Spanish workers leaving for other European countries with their cardboard suitcases representing centuries of emigration induced by poverty and lack of opportunities, shocked Spanish society. These memories, along with the very limited geographical mobility of the Spanish population over the three previous decades (Andreotti, Le Galès & Moreno-Fuentes 2015), contributed to a relatively distorted depiction of migratory flows affecting the country, and to the emergence of a significant controversy about the nature, intensity and consequences of this phenomenon. During the Christmas Royal speech of December 2012 (and for the first time since 1983), King Juan Carlos I mentioned the situation of those Spaniards who had had to emigrate in search of professional opportunities abroad, as well as the sacrifices they made by going away from their families and friends. That speech also referred to the positive effects their return should have on the Spanish economy once it occurs. This unusual event reflected the social and political salience gained by out-migration flows in Spain in the midst of the fiscal and economic crisis. A relatively ‘traumatic’ conceptualisation of out-migration flows established among wide sectors of the Spanish population appeared closely associated to the perception of the lack of alternatives for workers in a labour market characterised by very high unemployment rates, underemployment and extremely precarious working conditions. Although the difficult situations affected all age groups, the concern about emigration generally focused on the youth. Stories about young Spaniards leaving the country occupied newspapers and TV programmes, and a growing worry emerged about the impact of a possible ‘brain drain’ affecting Spanish professionals. The image depicted by the media was that of a generation of educated young workers forced to emigrate, draining away with it the ‘talent’ financed by Spanish tax-payers for the benefit of the receiving countries. Newspapers associated the growth of emigration flows to the difficult situation experienced by Spanish society, although they substantially differed in the general tone with which they referred to this process, depending on their own respective editorial lines. Conservative newspapers such as ABC, as well as Catalonia-based La Vanguardia, emphasised the different motivations of Spaniards leaving the country (learning foreign languages, capital accumulation, personal advantage in future professional trajectories, etc.). They tended to depict out-migration processes as a normal phenomenon in a society exposed


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to powerful globalisation and transnationalisation dynamics. The more progressive El País, on the other hand, placed a greater emphasis on the lack of choices for the youth due to the mass unemployment and labour market precariousness affecting the Spanish economy. References to the results of surveys conducted both in Spain and other European countries were periodically published by these newspapers to illustrate the extent to which the crisis exacerbated the migration aspirations of young Spaniards. In October 2012, after the figures on emigration published by the INE stirred a first public discussion on the Spanish ‘brain drain’, newspapers such as eldiario.es (a national digital newspaper, leftist oriented),2 pointed out that 48 per cent of young Spaniards stated that they would be willing to move to other countries (CIS 2012), in contrast to 30 per cent of Swedish, or 35 per cent of Germans in the IPSOS 2012 survey.3 One year later, in February 2013, the Barometer from the Real Instituto Elcano, concluded that half of adults below 45 had seriously considered the possibility of emigrating (BRIE 2013). The Flash Eurobarometer 395 on European Youth surveyed young Europeans aged between 16 and 30 at the end of March 2014, and showed that 42 per cent of Spaniards reported to have felt compelled to emigrate, very close to the 45 per cent among Italians, 46 per cent of the Portuguese and 50 per cent of Greeks. Particularly relevant for the public debate was that ten per cent of Spaniards felt compelled, but did not want to emigrate, a figure somewhat lower than that reported by Italians (11 per cent), Portuguese (13 per cent) and Greeks (18 per cent).4 The image provided by the aforementioned surveys was often reinforced by statements and studies coming from different socio-economic actors. Thus, the main association of temporary employment agencies (Asempleo) warned in September 2014 that the relatively large scale emigration affecting workers aged 25–35 could seriously hinder the development of the Spanish economy after the crisis. A few days later, the Bank of Spain published its quarterly report concluding that emigration would have a negative impact on the evolution of the Spanish gross domestic product (GDP), by reducing its future potential growth (Banco de España 2014). This report also emphasised that efforts needed to be made to reduce unemployment, so that emigration would not appear as the only option for young workers, arguing that the return of those who had emigrated should be facilitated by Spanish public administrations. The media contributed to providing visibility and voice to social movements and groups which emerged with the objective of denouncing the difficult situation experienced by the youth and about how emigration had become one of the few available options open to them. Several movements could be included in this category—Juventud Sin Futuro (Youth without Future) or the Marea Granate (Crimson Tide)—as well as the initiatives they set in motion, like the campaign ‘No nos vamos, nos echan’ (We are not leaving, we are kicked out), which to a large extent constituted the 15-M or ‘Indignados’ movement of young Spaniards abroad. A large number of newspaper articles focused on the situation of specific professions (scientists, architects, engineers, health professionals, etc.), emphasising how emigration had become one of the few options open to those qualified workers. Some of those professional groups had a relatively long history of emigration (scientists completing their education abroad; medical doctors and nurses working in the UK, Portugal, France or Sweden, etc.). Others had also been leaving the country in previous years as ‘expatriates’ working for Spanish multinational corporations operating in Latin America or Africa (architects, engineers and managers). Nevertheless, the crisis transformed this scenario quite significantly. Since

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the crisis started, more professionals look abroad for ways to develop their careers, but the conditions under which ‘expatriates’ move to foreign countries considerably deteriorated since companies offer less generous compensation packages for re-locating given the larger availability of candidates to move abroad. Regularly reminded of the importance of out-migration flows by demographic statistical reports pointing to the shrinking of the Spanish population, the media talked about the difficulty of measuring the intensity and exact nature of migration flows. Although the complexity and multidimensionality of these processes was acknowledged, the media focused on the Spaniards (most notably the youth) leaving the country, their personal and professional profiles, the motives behind their emigration, as well as their trajectories (including their working and living conditions) in the receiving societies. As an example of this take on the phenomenon of emigration, only about ten per cent of the nearly 70 pieces (articles, opinion columns, letters to the editor, etc.) published by El País addressing the issue in 2013 (the year with the highest number of published items on the topic), referred to the fact that a significant fraction of those leaving the country were workers of immigrant origin who were re-emigrating, while a large majority of those pieces focused on how emigration was affecting young graduates and professionals. The same trend can be identified in the other main newspapers, showing the way in which the ‘reactivation’ of emigration was conceptualised as a consequence of the failure of Spanish society to absorb the human capital it had generated during the previous years of economic growth. The difficulties associated with living abroad (Favell 2008) constituted an additional topic for newspapers discussing the daily life and working conditions of recent Spanish emigrants. In contrast to the relatively rosy image depicted in some TV programmes talking about Spanish people living in foreign countries, a series of events involving Spanish emigrants allowed for the publication of newspaper articles discussing the difficulties that may arise when looking for a better life abroad. Thus, the case of the young Spaniards cheated by an employment agency that offered them professional training and seasonal jobs, and ended up abandoned in Germany without money or assistance (Negrete 2013), or the cases of the hundreds of Spanish emigrants expelled from Belgium because of their inability to find jobs (Simón 2014), attracted significant attention. In November 2014, when the incipient economic recovery had already been developing for three consecutive quarters, the newspaper El País reported the results from a comparative survey in six European countries carried out by the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications (2014). According to this survey, 58 per cent of young Spaniards— completely (17 per cent) or somewhat (41 per cent)—agreed with the statement ‘I plan to move to another country in the future because of better job opportunities’, compared to only 40 per cent (11+29) in the Netherlands, 31 per cent (8+23) in the UK and 27 per cent (6+21) in Denmark. In contrast, both Italians and Portuguese youth reported very similar attitudes towards emigration to that of Spaniards—with 61 (21+40) and 58 (19+39) per cent, respectively.5 A positive trend in the macroeconomic variables did not seem to have much of a discouraging effect yet on the intentions of Spanish youth to emigrate, and the economic crisis continued being conceptualised as the driving factor behind the evolution of migratory flows in Spain. The idea of a flow of return migration of those who had left the country during the recent years of economic downturn continued to appear as a desideratum in the public discourse and the media depiction of this phenomenon, although one that remained far from reality for most of those who left the country to settle abroad.


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The not so simple story of recent emigration flows How many did actually leave? Quite contrary to what public opinion discussion reflected, most of those leaving the country during the crisis were actually foreigners. Since 2008, the figures of total migration balance and foreigners’ net migration had largely overlapped, indicating that a significant fraction of the outflows corresponded to immigrants leaving Spain (see dotted black line representing total migratory balance, in relation to the dotted grey one showing foreign migratory balance in Figure 1). In 2012, when the crisis was at its peak, outflows of foreigners still represented 82 per cent of the negative migration balance of that year (116,850 people out of the total 142,552 as shown in Figure 1). Nevertheless, the contribution of Spanish nationals to the negative migration balance grew since 2011, as indicated by the increasing divergence of the dotted black line (Spaniards) and the dotted grey one (foreigners). In 2015, when the economic recovery seemed certain (although still weak), foreigners’ net migration became positive once again (more entries than exists) for the first time since 2010, and the outmigration of Spaniards became responsible for the negative migration balance still observed. In any case, the reliability of the previous figures is quite contested due to the inaccuracy of existing data. Official figures on migration flows are based on registrations and de-registrations from the Municipal Population Registry (Padrón). However, the procedures to de-register differ significantly, depending on an individual’s citizenship. In the case of foreigners, individuals very rarely inform the Spanish authorities that they are leaving the country, since there is no need (or incentive) to do so. For this reason, the statistical authorities approved, as early as 2005, a mechanism to deal with this situation (known as the Expiration Procedure, ‘bajas por caducidad’).6 This procedure takes some time to be completed, so the

Figure 1. Changes in the migration cycle by nationality (foreign and total population), 2008–2015. Source: Migration Statistics, National Institute of Statistics (INE).

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de-registration date only shows the emigration of foreigners with some delay with respect to the actual departure date. The main limitation of official emigration figures for foreigners is, therefore, date inaccuracy, rather than under-counting. No similar procedure to update or correct the registration figures of Spanish citizens exists. Leaving aside cases of death, Spanish citizens are almost exclusively de-registered if the individual personally communicates to the Spanish authorities (through a consulate abroad) that he/she has moved to settle in another country. We know that it is quite uncommon for this communication to occur, even when the person stays abroad for a long period of time. The reason is simple: you can have a completely normal life abroad regardless of whether you register at the Spanish consulate or not. In other words, registration for Spaniards abroad entails practically no benefits,7 and may actually imply significant costs. As a consequence, the figures of Spanish statistics are not a precise estimate of the number of Spaniards leaving the country, nor can they account for the exact moment they left. In fact, the figures provided by these statistical sources capture only a small and biased sample of the people who emigrated. These deficiencies are likely to be accentuated when the country of destination is another EU member state, since the favourable conditions of entry, residence and work applicable for EU citizens render registration at the Spanish consulate even less attractive. The limitations of the available sources to measure the size, intensity, composition and trends of Spanish out-migration flows largely derive from the functioning of the Register of Spaniards Residing Abroad (PERE).8 This considers as emigrants only those who live abroad for at least one year, can prove it and register as permanent residents abroad. The lack of reliable data definitely contributed to the public debate about this issue, often in a very unproductive way. To verify the extent of under-registration, and the potential biases in the figures provided by Spanish sources, we compared them with the official figures of Spanish immigration published by the UK and Germany (the so-called ‘mirror statistics’). As can be observed, according to the data provided by these two countries, the immigration of Spaniards to their territory at the very beginning of the crisis was approximately four times larger in the case of Germany, and 3.5 times in the case of the UK, compared to those published by Spanish sources. The mismatch between Spanish and destination country sources substantially increased at the peak of the crisis. In 2012, the German Population Register counted almost 21,000 registrations of Spanish citizens, versus only 3,700 registrations according to Spanish Migration Statistics (which are mainly based on the residential variations registered in the PERE with some corrections). In the case of the UK, the number of Spanish nationals applying for a National Insurance Number (NINo)9 for the first time in 2013 was eight times larger than the ‘equivalent’ number of de-registrations in Spain caused by registration at the Spanish consulates in the UK. These figures confirmed that many Spaniards leaving the country did not register at Spanish consulates abroad, as a survey carried out on this issue revealed: 68 per cent of more than 700 surveyed young Spaniards living abroad had not registered at their consulate (Observatorio de la Juventud en España 2014, p. 27). This is the reason why González-Ferrer (2013), in a relatively conservative estimate, calculated that the number of Spaniards who emigrated between 2008 and 2013 might be over 700,000 persons, more than triple the figure suggested by Spanish official sources. However, as can be also observed in Table 2, the gap between Spanish figures and their mirror sources has substantially decreased since 2012/2013, to 2.8 times in the case of Germany in 2015, and to 4.5 times for the UK in 2016. The reason for such a decline has to

Emigration of Spaniards to Germany

Emigration of Spaniards to the UK

Spanish Migration (2) German (3) Spanish Ratio Column 2/ (5) NINo requests (6) Spanish Ratio Column 5/ Source Statistics Population Register Migration Statistics Column 3 in UK Migration Statistics Column 6 2008 33,505 6,648 1,686 3.9 11,693 3,301 3.5 2009 35,990 8,198 1,727 4.7 14,158 3,554 4.0 2010 40,157 9,620 2,055 4.7 19,666 4,160 4.7 2011 55,472 14,605 3,414 4.3 29,743 6,090 4.9 2012 57,267 20,979 3,662 5.7 37,718 5,512 6.8 2013 73,329 25,358 5,041 5.0 51,191 6,322 8.1 2014 80,441 23,040 6,157 3.7 49,600 8,205 6.0 2015 94,645 19,996 7,153 2.8 49,158 9,863 5.0 2016 88,112 N.A. 6,376 N.A. 46,63 10,338* 4.5 Total/average 62,102 16,055 3,862 4.4 34,395 6,372 5.4 Sources: Spain: Migrations Statistics (INE); Germany: Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit, Statistisches Bundesamt; UK: Department for Work and Pensions 2017. Notes: British figures show the applications for the NINo, necessary to obtain a job in the UK. The German figures are derived from new entries in the Municipal Register of Population. Figures for 2008 and 2009 are estimated by the authors applying a 30 per cent reduction to the actual figure of non-German registrations of individuals coming from Spain to Germany in these years. Average for Germany and comparison with Spanish figures is calculated only for the period 2008–2015, since Germany figures for 2016 were not yet available. Figures for 2015 refer to those published on 1 January 2016. *Spanish figures for 2016 are provisional.

Total Spanish Emigration

Table 2. Spanish emigration 2008–2016: comparison of figures from Spanish statistical sources and sources in destination countries.

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do with the catch-up effect derived from delayed registration of Spaniards in their consulates abroad. Many of the Spaniards who migrated to Germany or to the UK, and stayed there long enough to realise the convenience or necessity of registering at the consulate, ended up doing so, and appeared in the Spanish statistics as having left much later than they actually did. Regardless of the limitations of the available data sources, it is clear that the size of the Spanish outflows to these two countries multiplied by three or four times during the period under study. According to British figures, for instance, entries of Spaniards into the UK steadily increased after the end of 2009. In March 2010, Spain was in the 14th place among sending countries to the UK. In 2011, it went up to sixth place, to fifth in 2012, and to second in 2013 (immediately after Poland). In 2014, Spanish citizens fell in the ranking to the fourth position, behind Poland, Romania and Italy, but still remained in that position in 2016. Moreover, the annual growth rate of Spanish immigration to the UK between 2010 and 2013 increased at a higher rate than that from Italy and Portugal, as shown in Table 3. Table 3. Growth rates of flows to UK and Germany 2010–2016/2017 from South European countries (per cent annual increase). UK (31 March) Greece Italy Portugal Spain

2010–2011 70 53 41 85

2011–2012 54 10 24 25

2012–2013 43 35 42 50

2013–2014 4 28 11 0

2014–2015 19 39 28 20

2015–2016 −22 1 6 11

2016–2017 15 8 −8 −9

GERMANY (1 January)

2010–2011 2011–2012 2012–2013 2013–2014 2014–2015 2015–2016 2016–2017 Greece 44 90 43 −2 −2 −10 NA Italy 11 23 40 36 1 19 NA Portugal −3 28 43 16 −11 −16 NA Spain 16 52 45 22 −13 −7 NA Source: UK: NINos Registrations to Adult Overseas Nationals entering the UK. Department for Work and Pensions. Germany: Statistisches Bundesamt, several years.

Even though growth rates of Spanish emigration to Germany and the UK slowed down with the first signs of economic recovery in Spain, the current levels of Spanish flows to both destinations remain at levels between three and four times higher than in 2008. The relative growth of Spanish emigration to the UK continued to be positive in 2015 and 2016. In other words, a new equilibrium at much higher levels of emigration compared to the pre-crisis period seems to have consolidated, and signs of economic recovery in Spain do not seem to have reversed that trend yet, especially with regard to flows towards the UK.

Who were the new Spanish emigrants? It is well known that education levels increase the likelihood of long-distance mobility within Europe (Mau 2010), something which is reflected as well in the higher propensity of managers and engineers to be more transnationally mobile than the rest of the population (Recchi & Favell 2009). Besides social class and educational considerations, age also appears to play a significant role in explaining transnational mobility. Study of the available data shows that the profile of those leaving Spain evolved during the years of economic downturn, with a


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gradual decline in those leaving Spain to improve their level of education, and a parallel increase in those doing so for professional reasons. In the years prior to the crisis, out-migration flows of Spanish nationals were relatively small in scale, and often concentrated on the better off segments of the population. The internationalisation of those groups, pursuing educational or professional goals, operated as a mechanism for the accumulation of capitals (not so much monetary, as linguistic, cultural, relational and/or educational) which they could cash in as better professional opportunities back in Spain (Andreotti, Le Galès & Moreno-Fuentes 2015). The notably middle-class, highly educated nature of the cross-border movement of young highly educated people before the crisis was considered a positive process, both for those spending time abroad, and for Spanish society as a whole, due to the human capital accumulation derived from that (generally temporary) emigration. For these younger cohorts, being mobile and crossing borders is almost a natural way of being, and part of how they try to advance their careers and acquire skills and expertise (Ester, Braun & Mohler 2006). Neither the Spanish, nor the UK or German statistical sources include information on the level of education or skills of recent Spanish emigrants. In Spain, 47 per cent of women and 35 per cent of men in the 25–34 age group have a higher education degree (INE 2014). Accordingly, and knowing that the propensity to migrate generally increases with education, it is very likely that a large proportion of recent out-migration flows are made up of highly educated workers. The study carried out in 2013 by the Observatorio de la Juventud en España pointed out that 83.3 per cent of the 700 young Spaniards living abroad included in their survey had completed tertiary education. The proportion of individuals with a Master, postgraduate studies or a PhD was 34 per cent among Spanish migrants abroad, versus 32.6 per cent among the control group of comparable non-migrants surveyed in Spain. However, the largest difference between migrant and non-migrant youth appeared in relation to the group of people with three-year technical college degrees, who constituted 13 per cent of the group residing in Spain, versus 18 per cent of the migrants (p. 211). The Eurobarometer mobility survey, conducted in January 2011 among Europeans aged 15–35, showed how younger, university-educated groups are more internationally oriented than older, less educated ones, and this is reflected in the higher chances that they may spend time abroad. The percentage of young Spaniards not willing to work in another European country was systematically lower among those with higher education. Furthermore, for those who have already finished their university degrees (25–35), the wish/intention to leave Spain for a long time was higher than for those in the same age group with lower education levels. In his multilevel analysis of migration aspirations for all EU28 countries included in the Eurobarometer on Youth conducted in 2014, Van Mol (2016) concluded that the odds of moving abroad for education, training or work (without the possibility to distinguish among those reasons), were significantly higher among those who received education to at least the age of 20, as well as for those who are still studying, compared to young people who studied only until age 19 or less. A basic examination of percentages for the case of Spain which we conducted suggests the same results for this country. All of this would be consistent with Van Mol’s findings about how higher educated people are more likely to move abroad when the youth unemployment ratio is higher (Van Mol 2016). Unfortunately, we do not have enough data to analyse changes in migration intentions by level of education and age of young Spaniards since 2014, when the incipient economic recovery started. However, we know that the relative weight of the older age groups (35–44

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and 45–54), who are less likely to have left the country to study abroad, and which more clearly correspond to a worker’s profile, have substantially increased since 2008, as can be observed in the British and Spanish figures summarised in Figure 2. For instance, the age group 35–44 increased its weight over the total outflows by approximately 50 per cent according to the Spanish Migration Statistics, and 36 per cent according to the British data for NINos (the increase is even stronger in relative terms for the group aged 45–54). Note also that, according to British data, immigrants in the age group 18–24 represented approximately 35 per cent of the total applications by Spaniards in the analysed period, while the corresponding percentage in the Spanish data was only 13 per cent (even if it included people aged 15 and older, therefore a larger age group). In other words, Spanish sources not only suffer from a clear under-estimation of Spanish recent emigration, but this under-coverage is not randomly distributed across emigration flows, affecting more strongly the youngest groups who are the least likely to register in the PERE shortly after arriving at their destination country.

Figure 2. Change in the age composition of Spanish emigration to the UK, according to Spanish and British sources, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Source: Migration Statistics, INE. NINos, Department for Work and Pensions. Several years.


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Finally, an important aspect to comment on regarding the socio-demographic profile of recent Spanish emigrants is the presence of naturalised immigrants among them. According to Spanish Migration Statistics (INE), the proportion of naturalised immigrants among officially recorded emigration of Spaniards increased from 25 to 37 per cent between 2008 and 2016.10 In several aspects, the migration behaviour of naturalised immigrants may certainly differ from that of Spanish-born emigrants, due to their willingness to move facilitated by their previous experience of migration, their relatively weaker social attachments in Spain, denser social networks in other countries, etc. However, it is obvious that their departure represents an additional loss of human capital for Spain since they are, in fact, the foreigners considered to be better integrated in Spanish society (by their length of residence, having created bonds with other Spaniards, possessing economic resources and language skills, etc.).

Where did out-migrants go? The increasing salience of recently naturalised immigrants in the total outflows of Spaniards is clearly reflected in the position of Ecuador as a main country of destination for recent Spanish migrants. This country evolved from receiving less than two per cent of total Spanish emigration in 2008, to more than 12 per cent of the total outflows registered by Spanish sources at the peak of the crisis in 2013. This accounts for the return migration of many Ecuadorian immigrants who came to Spain in previous years and have already acquired Spanish citizenship. In 2016, once the hardest years of the crisis were over, emigration to Ecuador still represented seven per cent of total Spanish exits, but only three per cent among Spanish-born citizens, which highlights the importance of the return of naturalised Ecuadorians living in Spain. Although the weight of EU destinations did not increase over the period 2008–2016 (it represented approximately 45 per cent of the total over all these years), the distribution of Spanish outflows across the EU substantially changed, as shown in Figure 3. The UK, and especially Germany, increased their role as reception countries during the crisis, and both

Figure 3. Changes in major destinations of Spanish emigration, 2008–2016 (percentages of total Spanish outflows). Source: Migration Statistics, INE.

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seem to have consolidated this position during the recovery. Meanwhile, the attractiveness of France as a potential destination experienced no variations over this period, and other countries like Belgium lost their position in this ranking. In contrast, the flow of Spaniards moving to the USA steadily decreased between 2008 and 2012, losing more than four percentage points of total outflows in this period, only to substantially recover in the latest years of the period studied. In sum, during the peak of the crisis, the relative importance of the USA as a destination for Spanish emigration was clearly replaced by European countries and, especially, by Latin American ones, reflecting the return of large numbers of immigrants who had naturalised during their years of stay in Spain. However, with the start of the economic recovery, Latin American countries lost their position in the ranking, while the USA and, especially, the UK and Germany, clearly consolidated a more stable position in the list of preferred destinations for Spanish emigrants.

Is anyone still coming to Spain? Foreign immigration and return migration of Spaniards In the middle of the crisis, immigration flows to Spain continued, making the migratory profile of Spain more complex than that of simply a country of emigration (again). As Table 4 shows, total legal inflows of non-EU foreigners decreased from almost 400,000 in 2008, to half that figure in 2016. Nevertheless, and taking into consideration the hardship of the economic recession hitting Spain, the magnitude of those inflows remained quite significant. A large fraction of those immigration flows was linked to the very quick pace of family reunification experienced by Spain (González-Ferrer 2011). Nevertheless, more than a fifth of the 211,000 new first permits granted to non-EU nationals in 2016 were linked to work-related reasons. In addition to this, arrivals of EU citizens also remained at relatively high levels, with more than 100,000 entries registered in 2016, mostly Romanians (22,000), British (21,600) and Italians (16,500) according to Spanish Migration Statistics. Together with the arrival of foreigners to Spain, an additional flow of entry worth considering is that of Spanish nationals returning from abroad. The data available do not allow us to draw a very precise profile of who is coming back, but we may have some

Table 4. First permits granted to non-EU foreigners in Spain (2008–2016). Reason to migrate Family % Study % Work % Other % Total %

2008 150,101 38 21,665 5 96,319 24 131,742 33 399,827 100

Source: Eurostat.

2009 125,288 43 22,068 8 102,736 35 40,721 14 290,813 100

2010 141,891 55 24,864 10 79,315 31 12,239 5 258,309 100

2011 148,061 52 35,037 12 86,468 31 13,197 5 282,763 100

2012 119,863 54 27,114 12 63,713 29 12,628 6 223,318 100

2013 107,051 55 26,416 13 49,525 25 13,252 7 196,244 100

2014 100,841 53 29,438 16 42,379 22 15,915 8 188,573 100

2015 102,454 53 33,096 17 41,566 21 15,815 8 192,931 100

2016 115,143 54 35,636 17 38,154 18 22,600 11 211,533 100


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Table 5. Flows of Spanish citizens between Germany and Spain, 2010–2015. Arrivals in Germany Returns from Germany Proportion Returns/Arrivals (%)

2010 9,620 7,278 75.7

2011 14,605 7,169 49.1

2012 20,979 8,696 41.5

2013 25,358 11,341 44.7

2014 23,040 14,596 63.4

2015 19,996 14,965 74.8

Source: Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit, Statistisches Bundesamt, several years.

interesting hints. German data on Spanish migration summarised in Table 5 indicate that return flows in 2010 represented approximately 76 per cent of the total of new arrivals of Spanish citizens to that country, as had been the case for most of the period before emigration reactivated. During the period when Spanish outflows peaked (2011–2013), the ratio of returns of Spanish citizens from Germany steadily decreased, to represent only between 40 and 50 per cent of the annual number of new arrivals to that country. However, along with the recent decline in Spanish emigration, the proportion of returns started to recover: German statistics suggest again an average of almost eight Spanish returnees for every ten arrivals in 2015.11 Previous studies indicate that most of those who return do so in the initial stages of their adult life and, therefore, while they are still relatively young (McKenzie 2007). In order to have a more precise idea of the age profile of Spanish returnees who came back during the years of the crisis, we compared those who left for Germany and registered at the consulates in 2015, with deregistered emigrants after their return from the three main destination countries of Spanish emigration in that same year (see Figure 4). The results are quite interesting. Even if we have to limit our exploration to those who ever registered as permanent residents abroad, the presence of young people among those who left for France and Germany is much higher than among the Spanish returnees from those two countries, confirming the idea that recent return flows from France and Germany are mostly composed of people who emigrated a long time ago. In contrast, the proportion of people below 30 is higher among emigrants to the UK than among returnees. However, the relation between emigration and return migration becomes almost balanced for those older than 30. This suggests, once again, a major incidence of short term migration (five years or less) in the case of flows towards the UK. As previous studies concluded, return patterns substantially vary by occupation, with scientists and academics being considerably less likely to return—around ten per cent, according to Gaulé (2011)—than migrants in other professions. Moreover, among other skilled workers return is likely to be higher and more dependent on the stage of their life cycle when migration took place, and on their lifestyle preferences, more than on the job opportunities available in the country of origin (Gibson & McKenzie 2011). Recent qualitative analyses of youth who left Southern European countries suggest that many of them, especially the most resourceful ones, did not migrate mainly due to the crisis, but rather because of a sense of ‘anomia’ (Bygnes 2017) and relative deprivation compared, not to other people in their own society of origin, but rather with respect to the expectations and plans they had imagined for their own future (Triandafyllidou & Gropas 2014).

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Figure 4. Comparison of the age profile of Spanish emigrants and returnees from France, Germany and UK, 2016.

The political response to changing migration dynamics in Spain At the peak of the crisis, civil society and most notably youth organisations expressed their frustration with a country that could not offer a future to its citizens. The response of the


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conservative government of the Partido Popular (Popular Party, PP) was, in fact, quite timid. The first reactions were directed at minimising the significance and potential impact of those flows on Spanish society. The downplaying responses were combined with efforts to place out-migration flows within a positive frame, emphasising the ‘normality’ of mobility patterns within the EU (particularly when affecting youngsters), and pointing out that international mobility and experiences are supposed to bring positive returns, both for the individual, and for the whole of society once they return. In November 2012, the Secretary General of Immigration and Emigration, Marina del Corral, referred to the ‘adventurous spirit of the youth’ when explaining the increasing magnitude of out-migration flows in Spain (La Vanguardia 2012). She claimed that the emigration of young workers could not be exclusively associated to the crisis, and the fact that qualified Spanish workers ‘have finally stopped being local’, and have reached the level of internationalisation of other European workers, was a positive development. This line of argument was strongly contested by opposition parties, as well as by associations of young emigrants who claimed they were not working abroad because they were ‘adventurous’, but because they needed a job they could not find in Spain (Global Voices 2012). The Minister of Labour, Fatima Báñez, reinforced this official line of discourse in April 2013, when she stated that the international ‘mobility’ of the Spanish youth implied a higher density of exchanges within European societies, something which would favour mutual learning, and personal enrichment (El País 2013b). When asked by a socialist MP in Parliament about which measures the government was planning on taking to respond to the ‘tragedy’ of those forced to go into ‘economic exile’, the minister argued that they aimed at allowing all those who wanted to work abroad to be able to do so, but with the possibility of coming back whenever they wanted, bringing back the ‘talent’ they carry with them. Other high-ranking officials made similar statements emphasising the positive aspects derived from the increasing out-migration flows of Spanish youth. Thus, the High Commissioner for the brand ‘Spain’ (a public agency aimed at promoting the image of Spain abroad), Carlos Espinosa de los Monteros, stated that there were no negative consequences derived from young Spanish professionals working abroad, and that very much on the contrary, this situation constitutes a factor of enrichment for Spanish society and economy since they would (eventually) come back with an international experience, foreign languages and professional qualifications acquired abroad (El País 2013c). The Minister of Education, José Ignacio Wert, insisted on the positive effects of emigration when he pointed out the importance of spending time abroad for young workers in order to improve their training and education and to acquire professional skills and experience which could then be brought back to Spain (ABC 2012). Taking a similar line Esperanza Aguirre, President of the PP in the Madrid region, declared that the fact that large numbers of young Spanish professionals were working abroad was a ‘reason for optimism’, since this should have a very positive impact on the future of the Spanish economy (El País 2013d). Finally, the Vice-President of the PP, responsible for the party programme, Esteban González Pons, stated that if young Spaniards are in the EU, they are at home, so ‘we should not consider this strictly speaking working abroad’ (El País 2013e). The response to these statements from opposition parties, trade unions and civil society organisations was quite harsh. As the leader of the Communist trade union Comisiones Obreras (Workers’ Commissions, CCOO), Ignacio Fernández Toxo, summarised it, ‘changing the name of things does not help to solve problems’. He argued that young Spanish workers

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were escaping Spain because they do not have opportunities to find jobs in this country, and that this was a classic case of ‘economic emigration’ (El País 2013a). The criticisms made, and the perceived sensitivity of Spanish society towards this issue, made the government change its communication strategy, stopping any efforts to try to change the framing of this issue, and adopting a much lower profile on the topic. The media continued to discuss this issue, pointing out the relatively hands-off approach of the government towards it. In 2014, the government started to support some initiatives launched by firms in different sectors to encourage the return of the youth working abroad. However, the government itself did not lead any of these programmes and, partially because of that, the number of young people actually benefitting from them remained very small.12 Activities to encourage and support return were mainly reduced to providing online information on administrative procedures for the recognition of studies and work experience acquired abroad, some training opportunities and, in some cases, an online platform with job offers in specific sectors like hotels and the catering industry, or opportunities for young entrepreneurship. Different regional governments also set in motion programmes to facilitate the return of the youth, ‘talent’ or ‘entrepreneurs’ who moved abroad, starting small scale initiatives in late 2016. These programmes were also strongly criticised by those organisations who aim to represent young migrants because of their elitism (they aim at facilitating the return of the most skilled, and those with higher capitals), and inefficiency. They were accused of functioning mainly as ‘window dressing’ initiatives for political purposes, more than as schemes to actually facilitate the return of those forced to leave by the crisis (Marea Granate 2017).

Conclusion The economic crisis experienced by Spain between 2008 and 2013 made migration flows affecting this country significantly more complex. While immigration and emigration coexisted, immigration flows considerably decreased and out-migration significantly expanded. At the same time, the profiles of people coming to Spain, and those leaving the country, became considerably more heterogeneous, combining foreign immigrants, naturalised foreigners and native-born Spanish citizens in multiple manners, not always easy to detect in the available statistics. Unfortunately, media attention to the migration dynamics during the crisis has contributed to spread a particular narrative of the causes and consequences of this phenomenon which remains significantly partial and incomplete. First of all, as our review of some of the major newspapers reveals, the media focus was most of the time placed on the emigration of Spanish youth, obscuring the important numbers of foreign immigrants who were leaving the country since 2011 onwards, as official statistics clearly reveal. Omitting references to this major outflow reinforced a public opinion misinterpretation of the figures on Spanish emigration, re-enacting a modern version of the economic migrants leaving Spain in the 1950s and 1960s with a cardboard suitcase. For instance, the growing number of Spaniards leaving for Ecuador was sometimes mistakenly presented as additional proof of the desperation of Spanish youth, and the dramatic impact the crisis was having on them, instead of being used to explain that those flows were led by naturalised immigrants returning to their country of origin, and how those groups represented approximately one-third of the outflow of Spaniards leaving the country during that period.


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The data on outflows of Spanish citizens analysed in this article show that, despite not being massive, out-migration flows substantially increased with, and because of, the crisis. The incipient economic recovery initiated in 2014 does not seems to have been strong enough to reverse to the situation existing before the crisis. Although emigration of foreigners started declining already in 2014, the outflows of Spanish citizens in 2016 remained at much higher levels than in the pre-crisis period. The number of Spaniards entering the UK or Germany in 2016 was still three times higher than in 2008, suggesting that (at least some of ) the new migration streams triggered by the crisis have consolidated and remain active three years after the beginning of the economic recovery. In other words, the crisis seems to have generated a new migration dynamic that the incipient economic recovery has not been able to reverse (at least yet). New destination countries, like the UK, seem to have consolidated as major magnets for Spanish emigrants (although the impact of Brexit on this pattern remains to be seen). At the same time outflows of Spanish citizens to other European countries, like Germany, remain at much higher levels than before the crisis. In spite of the magnitude of those out-migration flows, the Spanish government decided to underplay this reality, keeping a low profile about it during the years of the crisis, and doing very little to address it since the recovery started. The Spanish statistical apparatus has not been updated to better understand the increasing complexity of contemporary mobility patterns affecting this country. The multiple indications that the current system fails to grasp in a precise manner the magnitude and complexity of the outflows experienced in recent years, providing only a systematically biased profile of our emigrants, have been largely ignored. No innovative methodology has been launched, or even attempted, to better measure such an important phenomenon, and only minor improvements, consisting of minor corrections in the figures produced by the traditional system, have been made. Programmes and policies aimed at encouraging the return of those who left Spain during the years of the crisis, and wanted to do so, have been almost non-existent in terms of budget allocation (and therefore in the number of beneficiaries). Not even the widely extended belief that Spain was suffering a major ‘brain drain’ (something on the other hand never properly demonstrated) has triggered the design of any significant action to promote the return of those professionals who had left, once the economic situation improved. In fact, patterns of return migration by these new Spanish emigrants remain to be fully understood. Although return rates from other EU countries decreased overall between 2010 and 2013, they have started to recover since then. However, many of these new returnees are probably not part of the more recent emigration cohorts, but older Spanish emigrants coming back for retirement, as suggested by the different age profile of emigrants and returnees to/from different European destinations. This is one additional indication that job prospects in Spain remain very limited, and scarcely attractive to many of the recent emigrants, due to the extremely poor performance of the Spanish labour market in the current context of economic recovery (OECD 2017).

Notes 1. These are the three most important newspapers in Spain by number of readers and more clearly placed in an ideological scale: liberal centre-left El País; pro-business centre-right La Vanguardia; conservative ABC. 2. https://goo.gl/vxb1Dj.

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3. IPSOS Global @dvisor Polls, February 2012. ‘Two in Ten (19%) Global Employees “Very Likely” to Take Full-time Job Abroad for 2–3 Years, 10% Pay Raise’, available online at: http://goo.gl/E6Zuyq. 4. Eurobarometer 395 asked young people ‘Do you want to study, undergo training or work in another EU country than (OUR COUNTRY)’, and if ‘because of the crisis, you feel compelled to study, undergo training or work in another EU country than (OUR COUNTRY)’. Unfortunately, in this case, it was not possible to identify separately people who wanted or intended to migrate to work abroad, from those who moved abroad for other reasons (study or training) and, therefore, a rigorous comparison across time between these two surveys is not possible. 5. https://goo.gl/L7vFYk. 6. Non-EU foreigners without a permanent resident permit are required to renew their registration in the Padrón every two years. If they fail to do so, they are automatically de-registered. For non-Spanish EU foreigners, a similar procedure was also introduced in 2013. 7. Voting rights, for example, are actually not effectively guaranteed since the person must notify his/her intention to vote in advance, and often the ballot does not arrive on time at his/her residence abroad. It is, in fact, easier to vote by mail, claiming to be temporarily absent from the ‘permanent’ address in Spain. Registration must be made at a Spanish consulate, which can be hundreds of kilometres from where the migrant lives. Consulate opening hours are restricted to mornings of work days, which may make it even more difficult to register. Inscription as a resident abroad implies deletion from the Municipal Register in Spain, thus losing certain social and political rights. To register as a resident abroad, migrants have to prove that their move is ‘permanent’ by producing a work permit valid for at least one year (a requirement that may take a long time to fulfil). Registering at the consulate as a non-resident (temporary registration) does not imply deletion from the Municipal Population Register in Spain, and is included in the Poll of Spaniards Residing Abroad (PERE), the Electoral Census of Absent Residents (CERA), the Statistics of Residential Variations (EVR) and other official statistics. This temporary registration only lasts for one year. 8. Royal Decree 3425/2000, about inscription of Spaniards in the Consular Offices Registers abroad: http://goo.gl/D5l8ZJ. 9. The UK data cover adult overseas nationals entering the UK and allocated a NINo on the National Insurance Recording & Pay as You Earn System (NPS). Allocation of a NINo includes all reasons (i.e., the figures cover benefit/tax credit recipients as well as workers). All adult overseas nationals allocated a NINo are included, regardless of their length of stay in the UK. 10. The under-counting of recently naturalised immigrants who moved to other countries, or have returned to their countries of birth, is likely to be smaller than that of the rest of Spanish citizens, since their incentives to keep bureaucratic and administrative links with Spain (i.e., being able to pass their recently acquired citizenship to close relatives) are stronger. 11. Unfortunately, the equivalent calculations are not possible for Spanish emigration to the UK because British return figures (International Passenger Survey) do not break down by nationality in the EU-15 group due to small sample size. 12. Programme Welcome Back Reloaded, for instance, only reached 50 people for information and training activities in 2016 (https://goo.gl/4oMBwY).

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding This work was supported by the VII Framework Programme (EU Commission) under Grant 613468, TEMPER Project; and the Spanish Programa Estatal de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad, under Grant CSO2013-44717-R.


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Notes on contributors Amparo González-Ferrer is a Senior Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (IEGD-CSIC) and member of the Research Group on Demographic Dynamics. She has extensively worked on international migration to Europe, with special attention to family-linked migration, political integration of migrants and determinants of international migration. She is currently coordinating the TEMPERTemporary versus Permanent Migration project, and was main investigator of the Spanish team of MAFE-Migration between Africa and Europe, both funded by the VII Framework Programme of the EU Commission. Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes is a Senior Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (IPP-CSIC) and member of the Research Group on Social and Welfare Policies (POSEB). He has a BA in Sociology from the Universidad Complutense, a Master in Social Sciences from the Juan March Institute, an MSc in Social Policy from the LSE and a PhD in Political Science from the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. His main areas of interest are the comparative analysis of public policies, with a special focus on immigration, welfare regimes, healthcare and urban policies. He is currently the PI of the PRASINE Project, funded by the Programa Estatal de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovaciación Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad.

ORCID Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1393-6225

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