Southern Europe · data through 2024
Spain moved in one generation from sending workers abroad to hosting one of Europe's largest foreign born populations, with strong Latin American ties.
Twenty five year view
These lines show migrant stock, meaning people living outside their birth country at each point in time. They do not show annual arrivals.
Why people move
Arrivals from Morocco, Romania, Colombia, and Venezuela are the largest groups, with shared language easing Latin American settlement. Regularisation through documented residence and work, known as arraigo, is a distinctive feature of the system.
Connections
Common destinations
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, United States
Common origins
Morocco, Romania, Colombia, Venezuela, United Kingdom, Italy
Adapting and finding support
Seasonal agricultural work concentrates hardship in specific regions and housing. Arraigo requires documented time in the country, which rewards keeping careful records from day one.
Municipal social services and immigrant associations guide the arraigo process.
Use the support guideResearch that explains this pattern
Psychology
Arriving people navigate two questions at once: how much of the culture of origin to keep, and how much of the new culture to take on. The combinations give integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalisation.
Integration, keeping both, is consistently linked to better wellbeing than any of the other three.
John W. Berry, acculturation theory
Anthropology
Each person who arrives lowers the cost and risk for the next, through housing, jobs, information, and trust. The route becomes self sustaining.
Corridors persist long after the original cause has faded, and policy alone rarely closes them.
Douglas Massey and colleagues, cumulative causation and network theory
Behavioural economics
Living with too little money, time, or certainty consumes attention itself, leaving less capacity for planning and paperwork.
Missed appointments and delayed applications are effects of hardship rather than proof of carelessness.
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity, 2013
Support inside and beyond Spain
Official procedures for residence, work authorisation, and regularisation.
Foreign nationals in Spain
OpenLegal aid, reception, and integration support for people seeking asylum.
Refugees and people seeking asylum
OpenAssistance, voluntary return, reintegration, and counter trafficking support through the local office.
Anyone moving, arriving, or returning
OpenThese are public organisations. The project is not affiliated with them and cannot guarantee outcomes. Nothing here is legal advice or an emergency service.
Figures are rounded published estimates. Causes and adaptation differ within every country and should not be read as a verdict about any person.