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You are here: Home Moving to Relocation The new face of migrants in Spain

10/06/2009The new face of migrants in Spain

They’re skilled and here to stay in Spain. A new study debunks stereotypes regarding foreign workers living in Spain.

For 35-year-old Nasar El Amuom, returning to his homeland, Morocco, is never a consideration.

At the greengrocery in Madrid that he tends as if it were his, he selects oranges, slaps melons and recommends juicy peaches to his clients. Their average age is 70, but he calls them "señoritas." A total success as a marketing campaign: the place is packed.

Nasar is one of 540,000 Moroccans who migrated to Spain in search of a better life.

"Our family came here because my father went to Barcelona to work on a flower farm. He brought our family members here one by one. I was the last to arrive in 1991. I had no schooling and couldn't read or write in Spanish. But I learned, I studied, I worked as a waiter in different places and now I am a greengrocer," he said with a smile and an eye on his growing line of customers.

His family is an example of the "pull effect" - something unmentioned by politicians and in law.

This is what happens when one has relatives or friends who have settled in the receiving country, explained David Reher, a professor of political sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, and the director of a major survey conducted from late 2006 to early 2007 in a joint effort between the Complutense and the National Statistics Institute (INE).

 



"This is how it's always been; it's like taking a blind leap, but with a net," he explained.

Spain, where one out of every 10 residents is a foreigner, is no exception.

More than any regulation or law, these contacts are the main factor that convinces people to emigrate. In the most recent group to arrive (between 2002 and 2007), 83 percent knew someone here before they came.

This "limits their vulnerability," according to the authors of the National Immigration Survey (2007). Of all those interviewed – a broad spectrum of 15,000 people – 81 percent plans to bring their family to Spain. For women or couples forced to leave their children in their countries of origin – 25 percent of descendants – this is a priority.

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