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Since 1990, an irregular migration industry has flourished in different cities of Indian Punjab because of the eagerness among young men to emigrate at any cost and increased border controls imposed by the European Union. In Europe, the majority of irregular immigrants from Punjab end up in Spain or Italy due to continuous regularisation programmes, support from social networks and the availability of informal jobs. In this paper, with a thematic analysis of 72 in-depth interviews with irregular immigrants from Punjab in Italy or Spain, their relatives in Punjab and members of the host community, this paper explores the main causes and consequences of Punjabi irregular immigration in Italy and Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration policies have a considerable impact on the influx and settlement process of immigrants, including ways and routes of immigration, regularisation, access to public services (such as education, housing and medical services), entry into the labour market, family reunification and access to citizenship. Consequently, changes in immigration policy determine the pace and direction of migrant integration and status mobility in host countries. Drawing from 64 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Indian immigrants in Spain, this paper explores the perceived effects of changes in immigration policies in Spain on immigration conditions, status mobility and integration of Indian immigrants, and strategies adopted by them to deal with these policies, during the period between 1985 and 2018. Results show that the Spanish immigration policies had several unintended negative effects on immigration conditions, regularisation, family reunification and access to Spanish citizenship, which in turn have slowed down their pace of integration and upward social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the immigrant educational optimism hypothesis using data from Spain. Specifically, we examine the nature of higher educational expectations among migrant-origin families in comparison to non-migrant families, conditional upon students' prior school performance and social background. Our dataset includes more than two thousand students in secondary schools in Madrid and, as an innovation in the literature, allows identical analyses for dyads of parents and children. Our results suggest that immigrant optimism is more likely the result of positive selection of parents as first movers than lack of understanding among migrant families of how to process information regarding their children's educational prospects in the host country. Interestingly, students from migrant-origin families themselves do not share the same optimism as their parents. We argue that migration is linked with "hopeful" aspirations and identities, which is in line with research showing selection among labour migrants on the basis of unobservable characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tele-revista was a biweekly Swiss television broadcast for Spanish immigrants living in Switzerland. It dealt with labour and migration-related issues in Switzerland, information about Spanish cultural manifestations, political rights and interviews with committed immigrants and key figures of Spanish politics in transit on Swiss soil. First aired in 1973, in the final years of General Franco's authoritarian regime, the TV magazine, initially broadcast on the three Swiss TV channels, is an unique source of the Spanish transition to democracy, seen through the eyes of Swiss TV-makers with the collaboration of some Spanish journalists. Tele-revista was aimed for a better integration of Spaniards within Swiss society, who were considered worse integrated than the Italians. The paper pursues to present a general portrayal of the broadcast with a special attention to the years of the Spanish transition to democracy by means of focussing on the information about social, cultural and political issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a stochastic dynamic mathematical model, in which a Family Policy Index (XFPI) is included to measure and compare two different models of provision of resources to support families with children from 0 to 3 years old. The main variables in this model are the XFPI, fertility, mortality, emigration and immigration rates. This mathematical model was validated in two different countries, Spain and Norway, during the 2007–2015 period. A sensitivity analysis was applied to simulate the future trend (2016–2030), examining the influence of providing public pre-school services (0 to 3 years) on (XISF). The results obtained show that these services may indeed have an influence on fertility rates, as long as they are developed extensively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the connection between European migration policies and digital technologies, with a look at the significant changes that have affected the formation and meaning of borders on the continent. Particular attention is paid to the primary digital surveillance systems (SIS II, VIS, EURODAC) in Italy and Spain, importantly 'Europe's gatekeepers' over the last decade. The results of the research contradict the thesis that there is persistence non-compliance with surveillance systems in the Southern European member states, and also highlight important areas of divergence between the two countries' migration policy pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2008, dramatic economic crises have brought falling GDP, rapidly rising unemployment and pressure on government to limit public spending to Spain and Italy. These are two countries with similar experiences of migration but quite different politics of immigration over the past two decades, with public order and security concerns coming to the fore in Italy during the 1990s and 2000s, whilst there was a general avoidance of the issue in Spain. Spain and Italy therefore provide a useful opportunity to examine the interaction between the economic crisis and political debates on immigration. Examining political debates on immigration in the parliaments of both countries from 2008 to 2011, this paper finds that during the crisis there was not a mainstream negative politicisation of immigration in these countries, despite high migration flows, rising high unemployment, aggressive austerity from government and uncertainty regarding the economy. This is explained by showing how the political debate in each country is mediated by different configurations of public opinion, institutions and discursive structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the seminal research of O'Reilly, Karen [2000.TheBritish on the Costa del Sol. London: Routledge] and King, Russell, Anthony Warnes, Allan Williams [2000.Sunset Lives: British Retirement Migration to the Mediterranean. New York: Berg Publishers] about British citizens on the Costa del Sol there has been a surge in the publication of lifestyle migration papers, books and research. Nonetheless, there is a part of the lifestyle migration process that has been rarely explored: a return move to the country of origin following retirement migration. Research has indicated a broad increase in the number of older British returnees, yet there has been no substantive research on the topic. This paper therefore attempts to fill this gap by using Spanish registry data to examine the number of British retirees since 2009 who have returned to the UK. In addition, the results of an electronic survey to older British people in Spain are presented which suggest that considerable numbers of British citizens aged over 55 living in the Northern Costa Blanca are likely to return in the next few years. These data therefore indicate the relevance of return migration from Spain to the UK as a significant issue to the academic community as well as to British and Spanish policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores status relations in a Romanian migrant ‘community’ in Spain, developing a model of social differentiation within the ‘community’ based on ethnographic material. On a theoretical level, the paper builds on the distinction between ‘class’ and ‘status’, emphasising the latter's significance for migration research. Empirically, it aims to complement the study of status in the localities of origin, with a focus on status in the ‘communities’ at the destination. The paper suggests the existence of a developmental line in differentiation practices, from the most basic strategies of economic status improvement through the complex mechanisms of ‘prestige’ status recovery to the first occupational advancements with an associated status relevant in the receiving society, shaped by internal factors and external structural forces. Based on this, the paper proposes the model of social differentiation as a schematic tool that could become helpful in examining other phenomena related to migrant communities, especially their ‘adaptation possibilities’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During recent years, Spain has experienced an important revolution in its migration flows. With the 2008–2013 Spanish financial crisis, the model of economic growth that attracted a large number of foreign people disappeared, and the entry of immigrants for reasons other than economic issues gained relevance. Linked with this phenomenon are the new patterns of locational choice across provinces and the variation in the nature of immigrants. In this paper, we examine the differential patterns and drivers of immigration across Spanish regions before and after the financial crisis. Special attention is paid to the question of how the characteristics of individual migrants influence their locational preferences. To answer this question, we use the Dirichlet multinomial regression model. The results obtained show a sharp change in the locational patterns of Spanish immigrants after the economic recession, confirming that traditional economic incentives are less relevant, while non-economic factors linked with a better lifestyle gain importance. They also reveal that, regardless of the economic conditions, network effects are strong. Finally, and what is probably more important for us, our estimates support the hypothesis that the locational preferences rely on the interaction between the immigrants’ characteristics and the underlying locational features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the impact that the current economic crisis is having on the extent to which education protects migrants and natives from unemployment in Spain. To do so, we use random constant models on a pooled sample of respondents to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 2003 to 2012. Specifically, we analyse the market value of the educational credentials held by African, Latin American and East European migrants compared with Spanish males aged 16–50. Our conclusions indicate that inequality in the returns provided by education to migrants and natives has been growing fast in recent years. In other words, migrants have been less able to grant themselves an employment through their education than natives since 2008 when the Spanish economy started to contract and that this process has also been speeding up since. We also identify important differences within the migrant category: while the potential to prevent unemployment among better-educated migrants from Eastern Europe decreased during the economic recession, it is Africans and Latin Americans who are worse off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]