That damn financial crisis: A turning point in the linguistic integration of the migrant population?

Carmen Valero-Garcés

doi:10.1515/opli-2020-0011

Abstract

Abstract Spain’s sluggish recovery from the financial crisis of the past decade, changing domestic and international politics, armed conflicts and natural disasters, all constitute factors that prompt migration and lead to significant changes in the composition of society. The main objective of this article is to compare and contrast the level of linguistic integration of the migrant population at two different moments during the twenty-first century. The study is focused mainly on central Spain and two specific public-service settings: police and health care. A descriptive–comparative method is used to observe, collect and analyze data and describe and compare them to previous studies. A quantitative and qualitative approach is followed. The results indicate that the situation has changed only slightly over the past two decades. Communication between immigrants and public-service providers is still far from fluent, and the financial crisis has negatively affected the development of public service interpreting and translation.

Highlights

Migration in Central Spain in the twenty-first centuryA brief review of the evolution of the migrant population in Central Spain since the year 2000 indicates that the foreign population has undergone drastic changes
The financial crisis of this past decade is working against immigration and, has had an impact on the demand for public service interpreting and translation (PSIT) at a national level and, in the two communities this study has focused on
The following quotation from 2006 corroborates this fact: the results of the study conclude that, in general, healthcare providers resort to gestures and colleagues with some knowledge of the other language to solve communication difficulties, simplifying linguistic content as much as possible. (Valero-Garcés 2006: 70). These words, written in 2006, perfectly match the data gathered in the 2016 study and presented here, as is the case with the following quotation taken from the results of the survey completed at the University Hospital of Guadalajara in 2006: A total of 90% of doctors who responded to the survey report having visited patients with a native language other than Spanish

Summary

Introduction

Migration in Central Spain in the twenty-first centuryA brief review of the evolution of the migrant population in Central Spain since the year 2000 indicates that the foreign population has undergone drastic changes. Data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (in Spanish INE) – Portal de Migraciones (Portal de Migraciones) – show a steep rise in the number of immigrants arriving in Spain between 2000 and 2010 and a successive drop over the following years. This phenomenon began in the region of Madrid (Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid, CAM) around 2010 and in Junta de Comunidades de Castilla la Mancha (JCCM) in 2012. The most significant difference was the presence of a larger Chinese population in Madrid than in JCCM in 2016 Both regions previously had a high percentage of Romanians and Moroccans

Objectives

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion