The National Immigrant Survey of Spain. A new data source for migration studies in Europe

Abstract

Abstract Spain has recently become the destination for large numbers of international migrants and now ranks as a key focal point for international migration in Europe. Currently, approximately one in ten residents in Spain are foreigners, up more than tenfold from figures existing at the outset of this century. Migration has now become a major social and political issue in the country. In order to provide reliable data about migrants in Spain for researchers and policy makers, acting on a proposal of a research team working within the context of the Population and Society Research Network (GEPS), the Spanish Statistical Office has recently carried out an extremely ambitious survey of foreign-born persons currently living in Spain. In the course of the survey, nearly 15,500 persons were interviewed regarding a large array of issues pertaining to their migration experience. Important documentation, including the project report, the methodological specifications of the survey, and the anonymized micro data have recently been made available to the scientific community and to policy makers at the website of the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica. The purpose of this paper is to describe this data source, its content, its methodological underpinnings, and the way the fieldwork and data cleaning were carried out. Examples of preliminary results will be presented so as to underscore the potential this survey affords for researchers everywhere. 1. Introduction Since the turn of the century, migration in Spain has become a subject of pressing social concern and the source of considerable public debate. The main reason for this is that in the past decade Spain has become an important destination for international migration, attracting immigrants from North Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and many other areas of the world. The intensity of these flows has increased yearly and has turned Spain into one of the major migration destinations in the world. This situation has been caused by a prolonged period of rapid economic growth, the needs of an increasingly fragmented labor market, and the result of incipient population shortages in key age groups due to the galloping process of aging underway in the country. The reality of migration has become a source of concern and public debate in this country both because of the intensity of the phenomenon and because for the first time in centuries Spain has become a country of immigration rather than one of emigration. The social relevance of this theme has also turned it into a key subject of social and economic research. Most of this research has concentrated on the political dimensions of migration, on the quantification of its main characteristics, on the study of its economic implications and the effects it has on the labor market, and on the social difficulties emerging from this entirely new situation. Less attention has been paid to the way migrants formulate their strategies and how these become operational. Our understanding of the truly social, economic, and cultural dimensions of migrant networks is less than sufficient. These deficiencies have become an important handicap not only for our understanding of migration and migrants themselves, but also for the ability of policy makers to design adequate policies for this new and pressing social phenomenon. The National Immigrant Survey -which will be depicted in this paper3- was originally proposed so as to contribute to alleviating this knowledge gap in our understanding of migration. The survey was originally proposed by a university-based research team working on migration issues within the context of the Population and Society Research Network (Grupo de Estudios Poblacion y Sociedad - GEPS)4 for the Spanish Statistical Office (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica - INE) in July 2004. Preparation took the better part of three years, fieldwork started in late 2006, and the final data were made available to the public in July of 2008. …