• UABDivulga
20/10/2016

How has population diversity caused by immigration and the economic crisis been managed?

Nou llibre: Inmigración y Diversidad en España. Crisis económica y gestión municipal
Inmigración y Diversidad en España. Crisis econòmica y gestión municipal (Immigration and Diversity in Spain: Economic Crisis and Municipal Management), which was recently published by Icaria, is a jointly-authored work edited by Andreu Domingo. It is the culmination of five years’ research in which the Grup d’Estudis de Demografia i Migracions (GEDEM - Group for Demographic and Migration Studies) of the Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED - Centre for Demographic Studies) at the UAB has studied the emergence of population diversity resulting from international migration and the impact of the economic crisis in Spain.

The book is organised into three parts, which are complementary both thematically and methodologically.
 
In the first section, Demospatial Analysis, the relationship between territorial distribution and diversity is systematically studied. The results disprove many of the myths about the creation and existence of ghettos and, for the first time, establishes an empirical measure of diversity in Spain on the basis of the minimum geographic scale: the census section. The researchers Juan Galeano (CED) and Albert Sabater (University of St Andrews) offer a broad overview of the effects of waves of migration on the frameworks of territorial concentration and residential segregation used by all Spanish municipalities at the level of the census section, this being the first analysis carried out in such exhaustive detail. In the second chapter, Juan Galeano and Jordi Bayona (CED) approach the measurement of diversity in six of Spain’s most important metropolitan areas -Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Malaga and Bilbao- in order to examine its evolution over time, while taking into account the effects of the economic crisis.
 
In the second part, Practices and Discourse, which is concerned with municipal management of diversity, the first chapter by Rocío Treviño (CED) and Amparo González-Ferrer (CSIC-Spanish National Research Council), presents the results of an online survey, the only one of its kind, which was carried out in 2013 among senior municipal authorities working in the area of immigration in the Autonomous Communities of Madrid, Andalusia and Catalonia. The aim was to study the impact of the crisis on municipal practice in the sphere of migration and how a number of different aspects are emphasised in the models of management in these communities. In the second and third chapters, Xiana Bueno (Harvard University) and  Andreu Domingo (CED), carry out a qualitative analysis of 64 interviews with municipal authorities (ten of them with politicians) working in the area of migration management to establish, also for the first time, the specific discourse on management and diversity among authorities responsible for producing municipal policies inspired by, and within the normative framework of interculturality, how the economic crisis has affected their reformulation, application and future prospects, and the contradictions entailed in this work.
 
Finally, the third part, Sociodemographic Laboratory offers several case studies in order to give a broader picture of diversity and to test a range of groups and territorial scales. Hence in the first chapter Pau Miret and Rocío Treviño (CED), analyse the impact of international immigration on diversification of households in Spain, and also the vulnerability caused by the crisis in immigrant households.
Jordi Bayona and Hicham Acheback (CED) inquire into the diversity and territorial concentration of the Moroccan population in Spain while, in the final chapter, Nachatter Singh Garha, Andreu Domingo (CED) and Ana María López Sala (CSIC), study and compare the situation of segregation and diversity of the South Asian population (Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi) residing in Madrid and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona.
 

Andreu Domingo
Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED - Centre for Demographic Studies)

References

Andreu Domingo. Inmigración y diversidad en España. Crisis económica y gestión municipal. Icaria editorial. 2016, 240 páginas.

 
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