Determinants of immigrants' concentration at local level in Spain: Why size and position still matter

Abstract

In the 2000s, and with natural population growth rates close to zero, Spain experienced an inflow of almost 5 million immigrants. These new Spanish residents did not tend to locate evenly across the territory and contributed to putting pressure on the already large spatial population imbalances between cities and rural areas, between the coast and the interior and between the central and peripheral areas. Covering the whole Spanish territory and using the 804 Spanish local labour markets as units of analysis, the objective of this paper is to analyse the local determinants of the attractiveness of a place for immigrants. The estimation of geographically weighted regressions (GWR) shows the necessity of including spatial heterogeneity in the analysis, as the effect of the traditional factors explaining immigrant concentration processes—such as job‐related characteristics or the networks established by previous immigrants—exert different and even contrary effects across the Spanish territory. Although global estimations would reject the significance of agglomeration economies or the relative location of a place, the adoption of the GWR approach shows that these regional economic factors are key to understanding the geographical concentration of immigrants in Spain but show different—even contrary—responses across space. Spatial heterogeneity supports the idea that any national/regional policy to enhance (or contain) immigrant concentration should be designed a la carte and be implemented at the local level.

Immigrants' spatial concentration: Region or locality attractiveness?

“…To analyse the factors explaining the attractiveness of a locality as opposed to a region and the extent to which these factors can explain the foreign‐population concentration (), following Viñuela et al (2019) and the literature cited therein we can divide the set of plausible explanatory variables () into three groups: (a) socio‐economic and demographic variables related to the labour opportunities and the demographic and economic structure of the territory; (b) NEG variables; and (c) other geographical variables that act as indicators of the quality of life or the existing natural amenities.…”

“…There are some studies that have focused on foreign‐born population concentration at local level but covering only one European country (e.g., Buch et al, 2013 for Germany; Détang‐Dessendre et al, 2016 for France; Golini & Bartolomeu, 2009 for Italy; Jayet et al, 2010; Jayet et al, 2016 for Belgium; Melguizo & Royuela, 2020, and Viñuela et al, 2019 for Spain). As far as we know, this is the first comparative analysis at local level that manages to compile data for three large European countries.…”

“…Our aim in this paper is therefore to determine the features that make a place attractive to immigrants by using local data from France, Italy, and Spain. We draw on the NEG literature by including size and distance as fundamental variables in our analysis, while recognising that other socio-demographic and geographical factors also have a role to play (see Viñuela et al, 2019). The size, quality, and detailed nature of our dataset, which comprises observations for a series of variables for each local area unit for the three countries under study, allows us to make precise estimations of the relationships between the immigrant population and the explanatory variables.…”

What drives migration moves to urban areas in Spain? Evidence from the Great Recession

“…In many migration models, personal characteristics have been included as regressors (Antolín and Bover, 1997;Bover and Arellano, 2002;Recaño, 2014). Other studies have focused on a collective of migrants to study their specific motivations for moving or to develop a comparative analysis between groups, such as nationals and foreign born (Reher andSilvestre, 2009, Maza et al, 2013;Clemente et al, 2016, Ramos andGutiérrez-Portilla et al, 2018;Maza et al 2019, Liu, 2018, Viñuela et al, 2019. In this work, we look not only at the national / foreign pattern, but also at life cycle patterns and the phenomenon of return migration.…”

The mediating and moderating role of neighbourhoods and regions on second‐generation immigrant youths' school‐to‐work transitions in the Netherlands

“…Immigrants are known to be not evenly distributed across residential areas. Factors such as economic conditions and the presence of coethnics influence the place of residence of immigrants (Beckers & Boschman, 2017; Viñuela, Gutiérrez Posada, & Rubiera Morollón, 2019; Wang & Ramsden, 2018; Zorlu & Mulder, 2011). This concentration in residential areas suggests that spatial contexts are particularly important for ethnic minorities' employment prospects.…”