The impact of immigration on interregional migrations: an input–output analysis with an application for Spain

Abstract

Developed countries in general, Spain in particular, have experienced a dramatic rise in the reception of foreign workers in the last decade. Among all the economic and social effects originated by the arrivals of immigrants, the literature has paid some attention to the potential effect that this immigration can produce on the internal migration patterns (the so-called “displacement effect”). This paper proposes the use of a multi-region input–output model of migrations for measuring how the reception of immigrants in one region displaces population among all the regions included in the model. From some basic assumptions, the input–output methodology proposed describes how the arrival of one immigrant in one region i, by the dissemination of internal population from i, generates indirect effects on other region j. To illustrate the methodology proposed in the paper, an empirical application for Spain is also included.