Immigration and codevelopment. Approaches for the calculation of imputable wealth

Mónica Montaño-Garcés

monica.montano@dedu.uhu.es 0000-0002-7109-5401

Departamento de Psicología Social, Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación.
Universidad de Huelva. Campus de «El Carmen».
Avenida Fuerzas Armadas, s/n. 21071 Huelva, España.

Antonio José Carrero-Carrero

carrero@uhu.es 0000-0001-5716-8515

Juan Antonio Márquez-Domínguez

antonio@uhu.es 0000-0002-0533-9260

Departamento de Historia, Geografía y Antropología, Facultad de Humanidades.
Universidad de Huelva. Campus de «El Carmen».
Avenida 3 de Marzo, s/n. Pabellón 12. 21071 Huelva, España.

KEYWORDS

Immigration

Co-development

Imputable wealth

Huelva

Moguer

Lepe

Some towns in the developed world, in contexts of economic and social growth in their territories, enjoy an economic and demographic revitalization that encourages immigration. However, there is resistance to the integration with equal rights, of those who have become the basis of local development, which is not shared under equal conditions. This disagreement between the migrant population and development is sustained by misinformation and the normalization of a growing xenophobic discourse that warns about the costs of immigration, despite the existence of studies that support the economic benefits of immigration at a regional and global, but lack data to corroborate this reality at the local level.

The contribution of immigrants to economic growth is essential for Spain and the province of Huelva. Their participation in the labor market affects not only the sectors in which they are employed, but also the global economy. “In the economies of southern Europe, GDP growth between 1990 and 2014 would have been between 20 and 30 points lower if the immigrant population had not been included” (Defensor del Pueblo, 2019, p. 90).

In 1995 Borjas, in his analysis of the economic benefits of immigration in the United States, more than three decades ago, formulated the question of how do natives benefit economically from immigration? In this endocentric question, he underlies the growing currents of anti-immigration movements.

The beginning of this study responds to this question, providing quantitative analysis data on the demographic and economic impact of immigration in Tierra Llana in the province of Huelva (Andalusia, Spain) and especially in the towns of Lepe and Moguer, whose Intensive agriculture defines a model of economic development that demands, in specific periods of the campaigns, an important workforce, generally being covered by three ways; hiring at source, free circular migration of national and foreign workers, concatenating one campaign with another, in various territories, and irregular immigration that survives in shanty towns, a reality that also affects regularized immigrants.

Contributing the understanding of a positive approach to immigration for development from the closest sphere that is the local, has led the interdisciplinary research team (economics, geography, sociology and education) to redirect the gaze on the integrality of economic relations and social factors that underlie the territories, bringing to the surface new variables to be taken into account when measuring the indicators of the economic impact of migrations, from the direct and indirect contribution to the Gross Domestic Product, to Social Security, to the municipal budget, to production in the sectors where they are more representative (in this case, the strawberry has been taken because of its greater impact), rental of homes, rental of premises, or income not received due to housing or residential segregation.

In this research, new data is constructed, through the elaboration of three simple formulas that define factors of direct impact of the immigrant population on the economy of the native population: indicators such as the municipal budget, real estate income and the contribution to Social Security. In addition, the real foreign population is identified and quantified, contemplating registered people, those hired in origin and those residing in settlements (those invisible in official data), which help to define more precisely the contribution of immigrants to the municipal economy.

In short, immigrants are co-development actors in a process of mutual benefit between the territories of origin and destination. It is an indisputable reality, given the results obtained in this investigation where, for only providing one piece of information, the wealth attributable to immigration in the municipality of Lepe corresponds to 4´5 times its annual budget. While for Moguer it reaches 14 times the value of its annual budget.

All in all, public recognition of the benefits of immigration for the territories of arrival in co-development contexts is required, at an institutional and social level to help quell xenophobic and racist currents that threaten the good governance of migrations and, the global objective of achieving sustainable social and human development “leaving no one behind”.