The Diplomat
Spain is the second country that receives the most migrants from the European Union, only below Germany and above France, Italy and the Netherlands, according to a report.
According to data from the recent study Migration in Spain, conducted by the business school TBS Education-Barcelona, the European country that received the most migration in 2020 was Germany (994,819 migrants), followed by Spain (415,150), France (200,495), Italy (191,766) and the Netherlands). The report also reveals that the gap between the countries receiving the most and the fewest migrants is increasingly narrowing. In 2017, there was a difference of approximately 1,380,000 migrants between Germany and Slovakia, countries with the highest and lowest number of foreign migrants respectively, but this difference is decreasing over the years.
In total, the data analyzed for the period between 2017 and 2020 reveals that Spain receives an average of more than 400,000 international migrants each year (a figure double the EU average). The peak in that period occurred in 2019, the year immediately preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, when as many as 666,022 were registered.
By autonomous communities, Catalonia, Madrid, Andalusia, Valencia and the Canary Islands account for more than 74% of total national and international migration in Spain. The Community of Madrid, which registers more than 85,000 migrants (including both Spaniards and foreigners) per year, is the community with the largest Spanish migratory flow, with more than 19,000 Spaniards from other communities per year. The main profile of migrants that Madrid receives are young adults between 15 and 29 years old. Despite this, between 2017 and 2021, Madrid presents a 14% annual decrease in migrant numbers, mainly due to the pandemic and movement restrictions between 2019 and 2020. These numbers started to increase again between 2020 and 2021.
The study was prepared by the TBS Education business school, which was founded in Toulouse (France) and has been training future talents in the business sector for more than 100 years. Through its four campuses (Toulouse, Barcelona, Casablanca and Paris) and its programs, the business school has 25% of students of more than 80 nationalities. TBS Education’s alumni network amounts to 41,000 students worldwide.
According to Edgar Sanchez, collaborating professor at TBS Education-Barcelona and expert in Consumer Behavior and Neuromarketing, the impact of migratory flows is multifactorial: “On an economic level it can represent more workers, poverty and demand for products and services. At the social level, it means greater cultural diversity at the ethnic, linguistic and religious levels. At the political level, for example, it fosters the development and rise of anti-migration ideologies. And finally, in international politics, it can influence bilateral relations between nations.
