Emigración exterior y retorno de latinoamericanos desde España: una visión desde las dos orillas (2002-2012)

This article examines the demographic dimension of foreign emigration, return to country of birth and reemigration of Latin Americans from Spain during 2002-2012. The research is based on registry sources in Spain and on data from the 2010 census round in the destination countries. It describes official immigrant return aid programmes implemented in Spain and some countries of Latin America. The complementarity of the information from these three sources enabled us to directly assess the flow of returnees to their countries of birth. This trend has gathered momentum as the economic crisis in Spain deepened, but it varies in intensity from one group of Latin American immigrants to another. The article also provides an indirect estimate of emigration to third countries. This kind of international mobility is a response on the part of Latin American immigrants who, having achieved legal status in Spain, can move virtually without restrictions in the labour markets of other European countries where the financial crisis has not been as severe. The goals of the study described in this paper were to reflect on the incidence of Spanish sources in the measurement of foreign emigration, estimate the intensity and demographic structure of the various forms of departure from Spain and map the geographical distribution of these movements according to country of birth.