The Second Spanish Immigration Boom

Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga

No 18185, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: International migrants choose their country of residence to maximize their utility. As a result, their choices are informative about the relative attractiveness of countries. This paper explains why Spain became the fourth most attractive country in the world for international migrants in the period 2015-2024, what I define as the Second Spanish Immigration Boom of the century. First, an accounting decomposition shows how, contrary to other destinations, Spanish-specific factors, correlated with economic conditions and general migration policies, have a larger weight in explaining immigration to Spain than origin-specific factors. Second, the causal relevance of bilateral visa policies is also shown, particularly in the context of Latin American immigrants, by using origins that are required a visa to enter Spain as a control for visa-free access countries in a generalized differences-in-differences setting. Finally, the effects of the Boom on immigrant selection are also analyzed, finding that the Second Boom was different from the first because educational selection improved.

Keywords: gravity model; international migration; selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J11 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-upt and nep-ure
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