Spain and Portugal’s Huddled Masses Seek Jobs in Former Colonies
Spain and Portugal’s Huddled Masses Seek Jobs in Former Colonies
“If the Spanish economy does not improve, we’ll see a continuation of this trend,” says AS/COA’s Jason Marczak on Spain and Portugal’s migration wave to Latin America.
There are few better places that illustrate the impact of the Spanish conquest of Latin America than the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco, Peru. Cathedrals with foundations of perfectly hewn Incan stone sit atop the ruins of what was once the mountain capital of the great Incan empire….
These Spanish youth represent a wider phenomenon: with Spain’s economy in crisis, and youth unemployment above 50%, many are upping sticks to seek a livelihood on the other side of the Atlantic. Latin America now boasts some of the world’s hottest economies, including Peru, whose GDP grew at more than a 6% rate in 2012. “Ten years ago, it would have been far more likely to see Peruvian pipers in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor,” says Jason Marczak, director of policy at the Council of the Americas. Now, the heady days of Spain’s construction boom are long gone and not only are job-seeking Spaniards seeking work in their country’s former colonies, but many Latin American migrants are returning home as well.
Data charting this new trend of migration are still sparse. A recent study published in Americas Quarterly by two professors of human geography at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid found a 6.7% increase in Spanish citizens living abroad between 2011 and ’12. Of more than 1.8 million Spaniards living abroad in 2012, 57% were in Latin America — Argentina and Venezuela counted more than 100,000 Spanish nationals each while countries like Mexico, Chile, Cuba and Peru hosted more than 50,000. Meanwhile, in 2011, nearly 50,100 more people emigrated from Spain than immigrated to it — this following a decade when hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans had joined the Spanish workforce….
