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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]

During the early 2010s, creditor states and EU institutions demanded that the Southern states of the eurozone liberalise their labour markets to facilitate internal devaluation and export-led recoveries. With some variation, the Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian governments complied. This article explains why such a strategy of internal devaluation within the eurozone might fail to produce adequate employment growth to put these countries on stable financial footing. It exploits variation in the timing and intensity of reforms to evaluate the record of the internal devaluation strategy. Our findings suggest that there is no linear relationship between internal devaluation and export-growth. Even where the latter has been impressive, dualism persists and the employment recovery has been weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]