10% of the Spanish rural population was born abroad

The Social Observatory of "la Caixa" presented a monographic debate at CaixaForum Madrid on the challenges and opportunities of immigration, moderated by the journalist Rafael Vilasanjuan, as well as with the participation of UNED professor Luis Camarero and the University of Alcalá professor Olga Cantó. In this debate, data were presented from the article 'Immigration is revitalising rural Spain', published by the Social Observatory of "la Caixa", which concludes that the population of foreign origin is essential for rejuvenating and preserving activity in depopulated Spain. The study, carried out by Luis Camarero, from the UNED, and Rosario Sampedro, from the University of Valladolid, indicates that nearly 10% of residents in Spanish municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants were born abroad. In addition, the authors point out that in the group of 20-39 years old, the figure is around 16%, so that immigrants rejuvenate rural Spain.  

In this sense, rural mothers of foreign origin have more children than those born in Spain. The fertility of the former is over 1.5 children per woman, whereas the latter group has between 1.2 and 1.3 children per woman - and family regrouping is a determining phenomenon in the future demography of Spain's rural areas. According to the study, In 2019 one out of every five children under the age of 13 in rural Spain was the child of a foreign-background mother, a proportion that rises to one in four in municipalities with less than 1,000 inhabitants. These authors make a radiography of the evolution of the rural population according to which the settlement of the foreign population has followed a process of continuous diffusion from east to west, from the rural enclaves of the Mediterranean coastal regions, where it began to have a presence at the beginning of the 21st century, towards other areas of the interior, and has been opening up to new labour markets.  

According to the report, the geographical and cultural origins of the new settlers are also varied. Contrary to the rural imaginary of a stationary, permanent and local population, rural Spain is diverse and cosmopolitan. In terms of population flows, the study explains that, since late nineties, there has been a notable increase in the foreign population moving to rural municipalities thanks to export agriculture, construction, tourism and the demand for carers. However, the 2008 crisis led to the depopulation of rural areas as the arrival of immigrants was slowed down and they even left for their places of origin or urban environments. From 2015 onwards, the figures rebounded until, in 2017, the migration balance became positive again thanks to the population of foreign origin.  

With regard to the coronavirus crisis, Luis Camarero explains: "As a rule, economic crises have not been good for rural areas. The current context of strong economic uncertainty may slow down the arrival of people from abroad and also make family reunification processes more difficult. The fall in fertility inherent in times of crisis is added to this scenario of a foreseeable reduction in demographic vitality. But the days of the pandemic have also allowed us to become aware of the important contribution that the foreign population makes to guarantee food production and particularly the lives of our people.  

The debate also included the presentation of the 'Analysis of social needs of the immigrant population' by the Social Observatory of "la Caixa", which explains how employment plays a key role in the project of immigrant families (because it provides them with a livelihood and because the renewal of their permits to remain in Spain depends on this element). The 2007 crisis caused a gap that has not yet been closed: 16% of immigrant families had all their members unemployed in the central years of the recession (vs. 9.5% in the case of indigenous families).  

This collective is particularly punished by precarious employment, which accumulates almost twice as much job instability (in 2018, 16.8% of immigrant families lived in households where all employees had a temporary contract vs. 9.1% in the case of non-immigrants) and three times as much job poverty (33.7% vs. 10.6% of natives in the same year).  

Furthermore, the poverty risk rate for immigrants living in Spain (46% before covid-19), is clearly higher than that recorded for the same group across the whole of the EU-28 (29.1%). Only in Spain and Greece are the values above 40%. However, compared to the native population (18% risk of poverty in 2017), Spain is not the country with the highest differences: the contrast between immigrants and natives is even greater in countries such as Sweden, Austria or Belgium, where the risk of being poor is three times higher for families of foreign origin. The situation is also worse for women. Foreign women workers earned on average just over 14,000 euros gross per year in 2016, compared to almost 27,000 for men of Spanish nationality. Data from the Wage Structure Survey clearly illustrate the double gap, of gender and origin, which conditions the meagre earnings of immigrant women employed in our country. Similarly, housing is a social need that immigrant families have had difficulty covering adequately, in a context of high prices, insufficient supply on the rental market and lack of effective public assistance. The consequence has been a great economic overload due to the expense associated with it and the access to houses with worse habitability conditions. Excessive housing costs are a burden for 49% of immigrants (and 16.8% of natives), absorbing more than 30% of their income.