Migrations and the Emergence of a New Ibero-American Transnational Space

Enrique Ortega, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Andreu Domingo, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Albert Sabater, University of St Andrews

A new Ibero-American transnational space is emerging in the Twenty-First Century as a result of the twin effects of the immigration boom at the beginning of the new millennium, composed largely of Latin American flows to Europe, and the impact of the Great Recession on international migration. Processes of return migration, re-migration and an emerging Spanish and Portuguese migration to developing economies and the USA have followed since, and have reinvigorated a migration system that already began in the Nineteenth Century. This study analyzes three concurrent migration processes that contribute to the formation of this new transnational space, focusing on those with origins and destinations in Spain. Based on microdata from the Residential Variation Statistics and Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad of the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE), immigration from the Americas, return migration and re-migration of Latin Americans as well as new Spanish migration are examined.