More data, in order to understand Latin American immigration in Spain

Obtaining more reliable, effective and comparable data and statistics is a matter of urgency. This was one of the conclusions drawn at the seminar Latin American Immigration in Spain: the state of the research, an event organised by the CIDOB Foundation's Migrations and Latin America Programmes, and which examined the research projects currently in progress dealing with the main aspects related with Latin American migration flows in Spain. 

The seminar was attended by leading figures from the Latin American and Spanish political and academic worlds, and who presented a wide-ranging view of the issue of Latin American migration, paying attention both to countries of origin and to the welcoming societies. The seminar's participants included José Antonio Alonso, Director of the Complutense Institute for International Studies in Madrid, Adrián Bonilla, Director of FLACSO (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences) in Ecuador, and Jorge Martínez Pizarro, a researcher from the Population Division of ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) in Chile. 

The participants debated different aspects of migration policies, such as the economic dimension of migration processes and insertion into the job market, as well as the effects on social cohesion and family relations. Case studies were also presented that focused in particular on migration groups, exploring their situation in Spain in greater detail. Likewise, and based on the main lines of research that have been carried out to date, the participants debated possible challenges for the future of research into Latin American migration in Spain. The objective of the seminar was that it should represent a first step toward the creation of a network of Ibero-American researchers examining migration, to help understand the phenomena of migration on a global level and to tackle it from its many local and international dimensions.