If we must determine which is the most relevant feature that defines the latest evolution of Spain in the international scene of migratory movements in the last decades, almost everybody would agree on pointing at the big shift of tendency that happened, in a very quick transition from being a country of emigration into a country of immigration.
The huge socio-political and economic transformations that affected Spain from the middle of the 19th century had also reshaped the demographical balance of the population, with an exodus from the rural spaces to the growing cities similar to what was also happening in other European countries. But unlike most of its Western European neighbors, Spain had never been able to divert all this surplus of population coming from the countryside into the regions in which industrialization was demanding manpower and therefore increasing their population – such as the Northern coastal regions from Asturias to the Basque Country, or Catalonia in the Mediterranean side. International migration, first of all to the Americas until the decade of 1950, and to some countries of the newly formed European Economic Community (EEC) during the two following decades, was consequently understood as a natural outcome of the impossibility of Spanish economic structure to secure the livelihoods of all its citizens. About three and a half million Spaniards are calculated to migrate to the Americas from 1900 to 1964 [1], while more than one million Spanish immigrants were registered in several European countries (specially France, Germany and the Netherlands) between 1960 and 1974. By the time Spain was granted its accession to the EEC in 1986, one of the key points of debate during the discussion for the agreement was related to the fear that some of those host countries had about the possibility of an “immigration flood” once Spain was accepted.
Nonetheless, those fears never materialized. It happened just the opposite: suddenly Spain became an attraction pole for international migrants, principally from Latin American countries and, to a lesser extent, from the Maghreb or other places of Africa, due to historical and cultural links (in the first case) or geographical proximity (in the second one). Moreover, after the implementation of the Schengen treaty in 1993 with its policy of freedom of movement within the European Union (EU), and the following process of expansion of the EU into Central and Balkan Europe, flows coming from the East of the continent started arriving to Spain. By the end of the 20th century about one million foreigners legally resided in Spain [2], a number that increased to more than five and a half only eight years later (making it 12% of the population) [3]. After a short halt due to the effects of the economic crisis of 2010, from 2016 immigration has been again on the rise, with an average yearly amount of about 300,000 new incomers in the last years [4].
To a certain extent, this evolution has conditioned the emergence of Migration Studies within the Spanish academia and, accordingly, the creation of journals devoted monographically to this topic. Of course, it does not mean that other, more generalist journals in several domains of Human and Social Sciences (Geography, Demography, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Sciences, International Relations, and others) have not accepted articles, or even monographic dossiers on the analysis of migratory movements, either outgoing or incoming, either historical or recent ones. But as the research interest grew, so did necessity for a specialized medium of publication of its outcome. In this article, we will focus on the journals of this field of specialization that were published in Spain in any moment during the 21st century.
The oldest one, and at the same time the only one that does not exist anymore, is “Estudos Migratorios. Revista galega de análise das migracións”. It was the only journal we will quote that was not published in Spanish language, but in Galician [5]. It lasted from 1995 to 2011 [6], under the auspices of the Arquivo da Emigración Galega (Archive of Galician Emigration), a state-funded institution backed by the regional government throughout the Consello da Cultura Galega (Council of Galician Culture). In fact, it was not an only journal, but two. The first one, known only as “Estudios Migratorios”, lasted until 2003 [7]. After a short hiatus a continuation started to be published in 2008 with the new, definitive name [8]. In both cases, the description provided by Dialnet (a University of La Rioja-based repository for Spanish scientific production) is wrong: unlike what it could be guessed from the title of the journal, most of the articles were focused on the analysis of historical emigration from Galicia and, in a wider perspective, from other regions of the Iberian Peninsula, from the 18th century onward. To a certain extent, it makes sense if we take into account that the primary direction of the journal was linked to an archive whose main goal was to contribute to the preservation of the historical documents pertinent to the knowledge of the experience of Galician emigrants abroad. It somehow changed in the last period of the journal, when some articles about present-day, incoming-to-Galicia migratory processes were also published, but as we have said before, it did not last very long.
However, this was not the only journal that put its primary focus on migration history. In 2002, the Asociación para el Estudios de los Exilios y Migraciones Contemporáneas (AEMIC) [9] started the publication of its annual journal, “Migraciones & Exilios. Cuadernos de AEMIC”. The index and abstracts of all the issues can be consulted either in the AEMIC website [10] or in Dialnet [11]. There is no way of accessing the digitalized versions of the articles in the AEMIC website; and in other websites, whole text articles in PDF can be downloaded only up to the number 14 (2014). Most articles are in Spanish, but a few articles in English also appear in the latest issues. In spite of what is declared in the title, the journal has shown a remarkable tendency to focus more on the study of politically induced forced migrations (exiles) rather than on economic-driven movements. Moreover, because of the specialization of the members of the association that backs it, “Migraciones & Exilios” devotes a huge space to articles on the exile after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), combining analysis from History and Literary Studies. It still appears as a living journal, even though no new issue has been published since 2021.
From the middle of the 1990s, the new status of Spain as an immigration receiving country led to the birth of a new kind of journals whose aim was not to study the presence of Spanish emigrants abroad, but the incoming flows that were becoming more visible. Thus in 1996 the private, Catholic Church-owned Pontifical University of Comillas in Madrid started being in charge of “Migraciones. Revista del Instituto Universitario de Estudios sobre Migraciones”. As it name declares, the journal is promoted by the Instituto Universitario para el Estudio de las Migraciones (IUEM), created under the support of the internationally functioning Jesuit Refugee Service, and its Spanish counterpart Servicio Jesuita a Migrantes – España (Comillas, of course, belongs to the Jesuit order). It was mainly addressed to Spanish researches, in order to offer them a space to publish, with a multidisciplinary point of view, but always focused on last decades’ migrations. As in the previous cases, it can be accessed both from the website of Comillas [12] and from Dialnet [13]. In both cases access to indexes, abstracts and full articles are granted. All articles are in Spanish. Most of the topics deal with legislation, sociology of immigration, integration, culture, problems and role of migratory movements within the wider scope of international relations in today’s world, mainly (but not only) departing from the immigratory experience of 21st century Spain. The journal comes is six-monthly; and it is alive.
Two years later, in 1998, the Instituto Interuniversitario de Desarrollo Social y Paz (IUDESP) based at the University of Alicante, started publishing the Spanish version of “Forced Migration Review” (of the Refugee Studies Center, University of Oxford), under the title “Revista Migraciones Forzadas” [14]. Although all its articles are in Spanish, a quick overview on the list of titles and authors of the articles, as well as the titles of the monographic dossiers that are included in each issue, clearly shows that this review is no more than a direct translation from the English, original version. Even the page layout and the general arrangement are totally the same, as we can notice, for instance, if we compare the issue #70 of both the English [15] and the Spanish edition [16].
In February 2000, the Spanish public opinion got astonished with the outbreak of the first large-scale, anti-immigration, xenophobic conflict ever in the country, that blew up in the Andalusian city of El Ejido. The combination of Spain accession to the EU market and the climatic features of the area turned the coastal part of Almería – province to which El Ejido belongs – into a veritable “sea of greenhouses” in which intensive production of vegetables was set up. The necessity of workers for greenhouses attracted strong currents of immigration from North African, Muslim countries. Population skyrocketed from 41,000 inhabitants in 1991 to 85,000 in 2010. After the murder of a Spanish woman by a mentally ill Moroccan immigrant, riots extended all across the city, with street fight, attacks into mosques, foreign owned shops, immigrant workers’ settlements and attempts of lynching. The impact of these events opened the eyes of Spanish public opinion about a new reality almost nobody was aware of [17]. In 2009, the University of Almeria agreed with the Secretariat for Immigration and Emigration of the Central Government of Spain the creation of an institute of research, the Centro de Estudio de las Migraciones y las Relaciones Interculturales (CEMYRI) [18], with the main objective of promoting the ellaboration of scientific knowledge on the topic to inform public policies and private stakeholders. One year later the center started the publication of its own review, “RIEM – Revista Internacional de Estudios Migratorios”. Because of the specificities of the social landscape that led to the creation of both the institute and the review, it has a strong interdisciplinary approach, with a deep interest in the analysis of the inter-ethnic and/or cultural relations in contexts of immigration. It is published twice a year, with the exception of its inception year, in which only one issue (labeled as #0) appeared. All articles are written in Spanish, and most of them are centered on the analysis of topics linked to immigrants living in or coming to Spain. Indexes and whole text articles are accessible from both the institutional repository of the University of Almeria [19] – not very user friendly – and Dialnet – texts only since 2019 [20].
Finally, other two more specialized journals can be mentioned. On the one hand, the oldest one is “Revista de Derecho Migratorio y Extranjería”. Unlike the rest of journals, this is neither published by a university or supported by a scientific association, but created in 2002 and maintained by a for-profit Spanish scientific publisher. As its name reflects, it is devoted to the legal implications of immigration, the development of bodies of legislation regarding regulation of immigration, settlement of foreigners, status of illegal aliens and, overall, any matter regarding the situation of immigrants and immigration within the Spanish, and European law. It was first published by the publisher Lex Nova, that had also other journals on Law and Legal issues about different topics (Fiscal law, Criminal law, Labour law…). Lex Nova was afterwards acquired by the international publishing house Thomson Reuters, that has put the journal into the catalog of Aranzadi Editorial – its Spanish brand for Law related publications. There is no free access to the content of the review, neither from the website of Aranzadi [21], nor from Dialnet [22]. Issues are four-monthly, with all articles in Spanish.
On the other hand, “Lengua y Migración / Language and Migration” is a half-yearly published journal whose main topic is the analysis of the linguistic, communication issues that are connected with migration. It is therefore highly focused on Linguistics and Philology, even though other scientific fields are also sometimes introduced, such as Education, Political Science or Sociology, but almost without any historical perspective. Articles in both Spanish and English seem to be accepted, but the vast majority of them are in Spanish – with English abstracts. As other open access journals, it is possible to consult all its issues, abstracts and articles from both the website of e-journals of the University of Alcalá de Henares [23] and Dialnet [24].
[1] Antonio Izquierdo, La inmigración en España, 1900-1990, Madrid, Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, 1992.
[2] Data taken from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística: http://www.ine.es. Also Joaquín Arango, La inmigración en España a comienzos del siglo XXI, in Informe sobre la situación demográfica en España 2004, Madrid, Fundación Fernando Abril Martorell, 2004, pp. 161-186.
[3] Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigración. Anuario estadístico de inmigración 2008, Madrid, Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigración, 2010.
[4] Data taken from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística: http://www.ine.es.
[5] Articles originally written in other languages were always translated. Nonetheless, we must take into account that Spanish or Portuguese speakers can easily understand written Galician, as they all are closely related.
[6] Available at http://consellodacultura.gal/libros-coleccion.php?tipo=Revista&coleccion=Estudos%20Migratorios (consulted on April 27, 2023). The website of the journal gives access to the digitalized versions of the published papers, as well as two out-of-collection books that appeared in 2015 and 2016.
[7] Access to the index, abstracts, and in some cases complete texts of the articles, available at https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=19675 (consulted on April 27, 2023). This reference page mistakenly names the journal as Estudos instead of Estudios, a mistake that can easily be amended by looking into the image of the title page.
[8] Access to the index, and abstracts available at https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=19957 (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[9] Cf. http://www.aemic.org/ (consulted on April 27, 2023). It can be translated as Association for the Study of Contemporary Iberian Exiles and Migrations. This association was created in 1996 in order to contribute to the promotion of the study, dissemination and understanding of the multiple aspects related to the knowledge of contemporary migrations in Spain, as well as forced displacements of population. Let’s remember that within the Spanish academia, “contemporary history” usually comprises the period from 1800 to the present.
[10] Cf. http://www.aemic.org/revista/ (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[11] Cf.https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=6483 (consulted on April 27, 2023). As it happened for previous journals we have mentioned, Dialnet makes the mistake of labelling “Migraciones & Exilios” within the domain of Social Sciences, Sociology and Social Work.
[12] Cf.https://revistas.comillas.edu/index.php/revistamigraciones/index (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[13] Cf.https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=944 (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[14] Cf.https://rua.ua.es/dspace/handle/10045/2944 (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[15] Cf. https://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/issue70/magazine.pdf (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[16] Cf.https://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/129015/1/RMF_70.pdf (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[17] Manuel Ángel Río Ruiz, El disturbio de El Ejido y la segregación de los inmigrantes, “Andull. Revista andaluza de ciencias sociales”, 2 (2002), pp. 79-108. Also, Ricard Zapata Barrero, The “Discovery” of Immigration in Spain: The Politization of Immigration in the Case of El Ejido, “Journal of International Migration and Integration / Revue de l’integration et dela migration international”, 4 (2003), pp. 523-539.
[18] Seehttps://cemyri.es/es/objetivos-cemyri/ (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[19] Cf. http://repositorio.ual.es/handle/10835/1822 (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[20] Cf.https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=21951 (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[21] Cf.https://www.thomsonreuters.es/es/tienda/revistas/Revista-de-Derecho-Migratorio-y-Extranjeria./p/10001539 (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[22] Cf.https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=6249 (consulted on April 27, 2023). Nevertheless, it is possible to consult the index and abstracts of all the articles.
[23] Cf.https://erevistas.publicaciones.uah.es/ojs/index.php/lenguaymigracion/index (consulted on April 27, 2023).
[24] Cf.https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=13325 (consulted on April 27, 2023).
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By: Oscar Alvarez Gila
No biography available at this time
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