“Transformations for family life and the lifecourse among African
immigrants and EU Communitarians living in Spain: evidence from the
Padrón Municipal"
Caroline H. Bledsoe
Conference on “African Transnational and Return Migration”
Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations
Radcliffe House
University of Warwick 2009
Project collaborators:
Papa Sow, Gunnar Andersson, Andreu Domingo, Annett Fleischer, Núria Empez, Réne Houle
Additional thanks to:
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Alaina Dyne, Rafaél Bellon Gómez
“Variations in reproduction and the lifecourse among African immigrants
and EU Communitarians in Spain: evidence from the Padrón Municipal"
•
Main sources:
– ethnographic studies (Africa and Spain)
– the Spanish Padrón Municipal ((www.ine.es). I dwell briefly on this latter source because becaue I make
an unusual claim about the value of numbers in vast quantitative masses: contrary to conventional wisdom,
they are a potential of tremendous qualitative inspiration.
•
There are surprisingly rich potentials for sociocultural and historical exploration on reproduction and family life that
Spain’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística makes available to the world in the demographic data encoded in the
Padrón Municipal, the municipal register
•
Extraordinary variations in fertility and child raising among immigrants in Spain from Africa, patterns
that are especially sharp when compared with patterns seen among European nationalities in Spain.
Examples: Britons and Germans.
•
The Padrón’s data must be read with caution – indeed, they are full of deceptive traps.
•
But the INE data are enormously “available”, user-friendly, “visual.” Moreover, INE officials and their statisticians
who generate the numbers are surprisingly accessible as well; they are highly responsive to emailed queries from
literally anyone in the world – this hands an unprecedented quantitave power to those who may produce the
greatest insight: those with deep understandings of the “existential” realities of Spain.
•
Why focus on Spain?:
•
It’s now the leading European host country, proportionate to its national population,
for immigrant arrivals.
•
geography and economy: Located at the edge of the EU, with vast tracts of
borderland exposed to the external world and an economy heavily reliant on
agriculture and construction.
This “interface” country is a crucial case study also because it is caught between
pressure from its European neighbors and its citizens to tighten its borders versus
the risk of excluding much-needed labor.
• Main question for the presentation:
• What is the impact of changing EU policies on family life
among Africans in Spain, and also EU
"Communitarians“?
Debunking stereotypes
• First, some comparisons to show the striking variations
within Spain itself:
– people who report that are of Spanish vs. foreign nationality
– Selected nationalities within Spain – some surprising similarities,
differences, trends
Spain: nationals and foreigners by age.
2001 and 2007 Municipal Register
Millions
4
Total: 45,200,737
Nationals: 40,681,183
Foreigners: 4,519,554
4
3
3
2
2007 nationals
2001 nationals
2
2007 foreigners
2001 foreigners
1
1
75
+
-7
4
70
-6
9
65
-6
4
60
-5
9
55
-5
4
50
-4
9
45
-4
4
40
-3
9
35
-3
4
30
-2
9
25
-2
4
20
-1
9
15
-1
4
10
-0
9
05
0-
4
0
Moroccans and Colombians in Spain, 2007
Moroccans in Spain, 2007
Colombians in Spain, 2007
85+
85+
80-84
80-84
75-79
75-79
70-74
70-74
65-69
65-69
60-64
60-64
55-59
55-59
50-54
50-54
45-49
45-49
40-44
40-44
35-39
35-39
30-34
30-34
25-29
25-29
20-24
20-24
15-19
15-19
10-14
10-14
05-09
05-09
0-4
0-4
-80000
-60000
-40000
-20000
0
20000
40000
-20000 -15000 -10000
-5000
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
Equatorial Guinea, 2007
85+
80-84
Female
75-79
Male
70-74
65-69
60-64
55-59
50-54
45-49
40-44
35-39
30-34
25-29
20-24
15-19
10-14
05-09
0-4
-1000
-500
0
500
1000
1500
Malians and Senegalese in Spain, 2007 ... And Pakistanis
Mali, 2007
Senegal, 2007
80-84
70-74
60-64
80-84
Females
70-74
Females
Males
60-64
50-54
50-54
40-44
40-44
30-34
30-34
20-24
20-24
10-14
10-14
Males
Pakistan, 2007
0-4
0-4
80-84
-6000
-5000
-4000
-3000
-2000
-1000
0
1000
70-74
-8000
-6000
-4000
-2000
Females
60-64
Males
50-54
40-44
30-34
20-24
10-14
0-4
-10000
-8000
-6000
-4000
-2000
0
2000
0
2000
• European communitarians are now the
largest and most rapidly increasing groups
in Spain –
• (not Moroccans or Latin Americans)
Foreign populations in Spain, by continents, 2001-2007
2,000,000
Europeans
1,800,000
South Am ericans
Africans
1,600,000
Asians
Central Am ericans
1,400,000
North Am ericans
1,200,000
Oceanians
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
0
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
Britons, German and Italians in Spain, 1998-2008 in Spain,
Municipal Register
400,000
350,000
300,000
UK
Germany
250,000
Italy
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
• For European communitarians:
What has the expansion of internal
boundaries and categories of “belonging”
meant for EU communitarians vis a vis
Spain?
life style, lifecourse, family
• increasing fluidity through space –
•
north for work, south for play
Ibiza, Spain
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-191501799-ibiza_vacations-i
“opportunity for
unbridled
hedonism”
among EU youth
Opportunity to experiment with new identities, escape a sterile a life rut,
find a temporary/permanent partner for those whose “local” markets
have not produced the right person
Random Youtube example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gErJGN7Axk&feature=related
• And opportunity to retire – whether
temporarily (until debilitative senescence)
or permanently
Britons and Germans in Spain. 2007
Britons in Spain, 2007
Germans in Spain, 2007
N=314,951
80-84
80-84
70-74
70-74
60-64
60-64
50-54
50-54
40-44
40-44
30-34
30-34
20-24
20-24
10-14
10-14
0-4
0-4
-30000
-20000
-10000
0
10000
20000
30000
-15000
-10000
-5000
0
5000
N=164,405
10000
15000
Britons in Spain by age group, 1996, 2002, 2008. Municipal Register
50000
45000
40000
2008
35000
2002
1996
30000
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
0-4
0509
1014
1519
2024
2529
3034
3539
4044
4549
5054
5559
6064
6569
7074
75+
Example: Brits
• Assumptions/hopes for British pensioners in
Spain:
–
–
–
–
money goes farther (pound has been strong against the euro)
body is healthier (hence medical costs fewer)
family in gloomy UK can be lured down to visit on cheap flights
Rules surrounding taxes, property, and pension payments can
be exploited
– EU communitarians can vote in local elections to help preserve
rights
“Want to invite friends or family from home
to spend a weekend in Spain? Or maybe
surprise them and take a spontaneous trip
home? Most places in Spain are close to
international airports and flights to UK just
take less than three hours.”
“If you receive a pension in England, you
can continue to receive it in Spain and
arrange for it to be paid into a Spanish
bank account. A UK pension in Spain is
taxable only in the UK…
…
and …
you won't have
to pay anything
to the Spanish
tax authorities.”
Possible evidence in the Padron of breaking Spanish laws regarding declarations of residence
- sudden opportunities that the periodic adjustments of local registers provide
The case of the missing Germans
German-born foreigners in Spain, 1998-07
190,000
170,000
150,000
130,000
110,000
90,000
70,000
50,000
1998 1999
2000
2001 2002
2003
2004 2005
2006
2007 2008
• Enhancement of lifecourse options through expanded EU space as
Europeans episodically ”select” themselves into the population of
Spanish residents
What about the effects of EU expansions and intensified exclusions
on life course and life chances for Africans?
Much rests on changes the laws on how they are allowed to come.
Family reunification has become one of the major ways for non-OECD
people to gain access to Europe
“Attracting the best and the brightest: the promise and pitfalls of a skill-based immigration policy.” Kara Murphy
Immigration Policy in Focus, Vol. 5, No. 10, Dec 2006
Family reunification – usually seen as an
“inclusion” device.
When family reunification becomes one of a rapidly shrinking number of ways to get to
the EU, its definitions become the bases of exclusion. Most notably:
Reduce allowable relationships -(to genes, state-recognized legal contracts)
Shrink definitions of children -(to ever-younger individuals)
Shrink definitions of marriage
(to heterosexual, older ages, archaic/impossible norm of emotional closeness)
“Effects” of family reunification policies on Gambian families in Spain:
Two ways to look at this.
1. “Perverse consequences” view
•
As people try to shape their lives to accommodate a narrowing set of
entry demands, social relationships and even age itself become
commoditized objects of commerce
•
Outcomes: substantially altered versions of family life, whether by
comparison to the home country or to earlier periods of immigration in the
host country.
•
Families themselves intensify the potentials for distortion structured by
state policies by selecting individuals for migration whose attributes will
most likely pass family reunification muster.
In contrast to the view of “perverse consequences”
of family reunification policy
• Boundaries as shifting zones of mutually
constructed accommodation, as people who
appear to fit the “safe” categories are delegated
to go to Europe – on behalf of the family
Strategy: Attempt to sidestep geographical boundaries
Africans arriving in the Canary Islands, 2006
Strategy: Raise the young for export to take advantage of the special
protections afforded to them in migration policies
Looking from Tanger, Morocco, to Spain. Photo: Nuria Empez, 2006
Strategy: Join a European family – marry a European citizen (suggested by the
numbers below for Cameroonians in Germany) or have a child by one
S po us e s na t io na lit ie s a m o ng c o uple s f ro m a ll 2 0 0 4 m a rria ge s in
G e rm a ny wit h o ne o r bo t h pa rt ne rs C a m e ro o nia n
B ot h spouse s
C a m e r ooni a n ( 6 )
C a m . wom a n,
Ge r m a n m a n ( 7 5 )
C a m . m a n, Ge r m a n
wom a n ( 8 8 )
All regist ered
Cameroonians: 14,100
Sour ce: Ger man Feder al St at i st i cal I nst i t ut e; compi l ed by A nnet t
Fl ei scher , M P I DR.
NB : M ar r i ages bet ween Camer ooni ans may over l ap
Strategy within immigrant families: Send a wife to a man with papers
(Result for Gambians: younger marriage for Gambian women in Spain than back home in
The Gambia itself.
(Most women can only come if they are marrying someone. Hence the young Gambian
women who come are by default married)
% married
Marital status of Gambian women in Spain and in The Gambia
compared to Spanish women, by age
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
Gam bian w om en in Spain
30
Gam bian w om en in Gam bia
20
All w om en in Spain
10
0
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
Age
35-39
40-44
45-49
2001 Spanish Census, 2003 Gambian Census
Strategy: Send males below the age of “adulthood,” or construe men as
boys
(Easier to get in if you are a child)
Gambians arriving in 2001 by age. 2001 Spanish Census
18
16
M
14
F
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
• Now let’s pull back and scrutinize the
cultural logics of European notions of
family and human rights for both
Europeans and Africans
Two main phases in European family structures of
interest
1.
•
Social reputation closely tied to property (especially land). Hence: emphasis
on trying to restrict claimants for fixed property holdings.
•
Childbearing: essential that it occur within a lawful marriage
(because of its assumed stability) as the appropriate context for childbearing
•
Marriage: one partner
•
For children: inheritance from one’s own parents; hence, importance of being raised by
them to become properly socialized into their station in life
(sociologist Talcott Parsons said,
every children should one constant mother and father figure throughout life)
•
•
Contemporary family reunification rules are based on
ever-tighter versions of this classic “European” ideal
.
•
What about classic African family patterns, by comparison?
•
Emphasis less on protecting material assets than on “wealth in people”
– ie, guaranteeing the capacity to generate wealth, in perpetuity, on behalf of the kinship
corporation, by trying continuously recruiting new members
•
Marriage as a process – to ensure a proper fit for the corporation, and keep the marriage filled
with representatives of the contract’s signatories.
•
•
Multiplicity of marriage partners OK since constant recruitment of family members is important;
(hence, a real “companion” might be seen with suspicion by the family)
•
Kids: must be “developed” on behalf of the kinship corporation – very useful to foster them out so
they will experience new ways of life.
•
Value of incorporating unrelated “strangers” or “clients” and transforming them into family
• Obvious implications for Africans of “family
reunification” categories:
• the great African “circulation” models mesh poorly with
the narrow, static definitions of spouses and biological
children, the basic categories now allowed under family
reunification schemes in Europe
New ironies
• 2.
Dramatic post-war changes in the European
family: “Second demographic transition”
• Fewer marriages, higher age at marriage, more informal unions,
more births out of wedlock, more children living in a non-marital or
single parent household
• These patterns are generally intensified by more education, less
religion, and they began in the north and spread to the south and
east
• Africa has also changed:
• more single-spouse households,
• more emphasis on “official” monogamy (many countries
make it the law of the land), although de facto polygyny
thrives
• there are growing gaps between wives, especially by
education and family status, and between their sets of
children
• But the European family reunification
categories have not changed, to reflect
either family patterns in Africa OR those in
the changing Europe.
• THE most archaic, and possibly mythical,
versions of the European past
• More exploitation? More manipulations?
Relevance for this conference:
• Implications for “remittances”
•
What kinds of family ties will be the ones through which the investments and
remittances flow?
•
My contention:
•
NOT those that family reunification assumes it’s screening for – (Why?) because (a)
they don’t really exist in these ways, and (b) obligations to those who made huge
investments in migrants follow “African” patterns
•
Hence: almost ALL remittances will be distributed through “informal,” extended
family, patron-client networks