Suburbanisation through Residential Mobility of the Immigrant Population in Spain: Between Dispersion and the Emergence of New Spaces of Concentration

Jordi Bayona Carrasco , Universitat de Barcelona
Jenniffer Thiers, Universitat de Barcelona

The intense growth of international immigration in the case of Spain, from barely 1.4 million and 3.6% of the population to over 8.2 million and 17.1% in only two decades, has led to significant changes in the territorial settlement patterns of the different immigrant groups. Initially, large urban centres such as Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia acted as gateways to Spain, but this trend has gradually shifted towards a sustained expansion of immigrant populations in metropolitan peripheries. This process has taken place with remarkable intensity, with some peripheral municipalities now hosting more immigrants than the central cities themselves. In addition to direct arrivals from abroad, a substantial portion of this growth has resulted from residential mobility, in a process of suburbanisation that does not necessarily coincide in its characteristics with that experienced by the native-born population. In the case of Spain, this mobility has been collected annually by the Residential Variation Statistics, and by the recent Statistics on Migrations and Changes of Residence. This communication analyses these patterns for the six largest metropolitan areas in Spain and for the main immigrant groups, focusing on: 1) the evolution of the flows in relation to the different economic periods (2000-2008; 2019-2014; 2014-2019; 2020 and 2021-2024); 2) the impact of the flows on the concentration and dispersion of the different groups in the territory; and 3) the effect of distance on migration flows by age.

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 Presented in Session 100. Heterogeneity of Internal Migration Patterns