2 results
5 - Immigrants, Markets and Policies in Southern Europe: The Making of an Immigration Model?
- Edited by Marek Okolski
-
- Book:
- European Immigrations
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 03 February 2021
- Print publication:
- 21 August 2012, pp 107-148
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain have in common two long episodes of strong emigration – during the first period of globalisation and after World War II – and they now share comparable types of foreign immigration. During the first period of globalisation, in the second half of the nineteenth century and before World War I, these countries made an important contribution to intra-European migration and to settlement migration in North America and South America. After World War II, they were among the main suppliers of the growing economies of Western and Northern Europe. Currently, they are experiencing a significant inflow of foreigners. In a relatively short time span, Southern Europe underwent its migration transition, becoming one of the most important areas of attraction on the continent (Bonifazi 2008). According to the available statistics, the number of foreign immigrants in this area can be estimated as ranging from between 950,000 and 1.3 million in 1991 to between 8 million and 10 million in the period 2006-2007. This is a seven- to eight-fold increase in just fifteen years.
Despite some dissimilarities that stem from the different histories of these countries, their diverse social and economic characteristics and their specific cultural and colonial links to other geographical areas, many reasons for the growth of foreign immigration were similar across all four of them. It is worth mentioning several notable economic trends in recent decades: the improvement in living standards and educational levels of the native youth, both of which increased labour expectations; the persistence of significant informal economies and of segmentation processes in the labour markets; the effects of low fertility rates on labour supply; and the overall limitations of Mediterranean welfare systems, which are largely unable to provide for their populations’ evolving needs, including those attributable to the ageing process. Furthermore, the political and economic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) intensified the push forces into this area. While the gradual incorporation of most of those countries into the European Union migration system resulted in a relaxing of visa policies, labour migration from that area had been de facto tolerated even before the EU enlargement. This increased availability of foreign workers matched the growing needs of Southern European labour markets.
8 - Foreign Immigration in Southern European Receiving Countries: New Evidence From National Data Sources
- Edited by Corrado Bonifazi, Marek Okólski, Jeanette Schoorl, Patrick Simon
-
- Book:
- International Migration in Europe
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 June 2021
- Print publication:
- 03 August 2008, pp 153-178
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
The measurement of both the dimensions and main features of the foreign population in Southern European host countries (Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal) is not an easy task. In addition to the typical problems of statistics on migration flows and migrant population stocks, the presence of a sizeable and dynamic irregular component is a major hindrance. Even for the estimation of the legal presence, administrative sources are often not exhaustive, either because they capture different subsets of the whole universe of regular foreigners (as in the case of Italy) or because of very restrictive immigration policies preventing migrants from keeping legal status for long (Greece).
Moving within this context, this work sets out to highlight some new evidence on the recent evolution of foreign populations in Southern Europe. The approach is based on the comparison and integration of several data sources, jointly used to draw the quantitative evolution of the stock of foreigners living in the four countries in the last ten to fifteen years. Although the bulk of the analysis is focused on regular foreign presence, data from the periodic regularisation programmes are also used to stress the role of illegal migration and to emphasise the impact of such policies on the size and characteristics of the foreign population.
A strong focus of this paper is on the changes in the geographical origins of recent immigrants. Some patterns shared by all Southern European countries as well as some features specific to national contexts are pointed out. By analysing the changing structures by nationality, we try to understand how the role of the Southern European host countries has changed in the European migration scenario, making them increasingly attractive destinations especially for migrants leaving Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
From national data sources to the measurement of the stock of foreigners
In this section, Aslan evolution of the foreign population in Southern European host countries from the beginning of the 1990s is reconstructed. The most recent trends are considered with particular attention. Since the different national data sources capture diverse subsets of the foreign population and are characterised by a variable quality of registrations, our approach strives to draw a picture as comprehensive as possible by comparing and integrating the available information.