What new directions are your research taking, and in what ways do they reshape your understanding of international migration?

In the 1990s, international migration surged in Spain and in the following decade the number of registered foreigners was multiplied by six until reaching 5,747,734 in 2010. The economic crisis that began in 2008 reduced this number but since 2017 Spain is, once again, attracting foreigners, with 7,178,927 residence permits issued in 2024. This number represents 14.7% of the population in 2024, a large share of economic growth and all the country’s population growth: the population gained almost one and a half million people between 2021 and 2023 with an increasingly negative natural balance since 2015.

Since completing my postgraduate studies at Migrinter (Université de Poitiers, France, 1998) and defending a thesis on Moroccan immigration in intensive agriculture (2002), I have incorporated concepts such as migratory circulation or the new mobility paradigm. Furthermore, I must mention that the migration changes caused by the economic crisis made me realize the limits, in the case of Spain, of the classical model of “rich country receiving poor immigrants”. The support of PhD students helped me to broaden the perspective when studying the international mobility of Spanish workers (sometimes poor) and of the Algerian consumers (usually rich).

How has the field of migration studies evolved within the political and disciplinary context of your country in recent years, particularly with regard to methodologies, research objects, and theoretical frameworks? What is the place of scientific knowledge in public debates on migration?

Spain is a decentralised country, but migration policy is, in the European Union framework, an exclusive competency of the State. The autonomous communities (regions) have competencies in health, education, employment, welfare and social integration.

Migration is part of the political debate, although less because of the contribution of scientific research than for the fact that it is the external EU border with Africa. The most visible topics are asylum, migration routes, difficulties faced by the Canary Islands in managing arrivals or the distribution of non-accompanied minors between the autonomous communities. However, despite being one of the main countries hosting asylum seekers, the number of foreigners and detected irregular entries increases every year, reaching 63,877 in 2024 according to FRONTEX. Nevertheless, the public debate on migration continues. Spain has not yet experienced a populist right-wing shift. Even so, we can perceive a tightening of the discourse and the manipulation of migration from the far-right party, VOX, which uses migration as its principal instrument of mobilization and speaks of the “remigration” of millions of people who arrived in the 1990s and their descendants. In the current legislature that started in August 2023, the government composed of the social-democratic party (PSOE) and the left coalition (SUMAR), negotiates case by case the regionalist, nationalist and independentist parties’ support with the opposition of VOX and, above all, of the right-wing (PP). These two parties, which govern several autonomous communities and are gaining ground in voting intention polls, present themselves as the only alternative to the government’s weakening.

How would you characterize the current publishing landscape in your country in the field of migration studies? What types of journals, formats, or readerships presently structure the circulation of knowledge in this domain?

Beyond the academic world, there are associations, some of them publish reports such as Caminando Fronteras, APHDA, CEAR, CEPAIM or ACOGE, think-tanks like the Elcano Institute, the CIDOB or the IEMED, and publishers like Icaria, Catarata, Anthropos, Bellaterra and the university publishers. To finish, I have to mention a podcast such as “Espacio Sin Fronteras” based in the University of Almería.

How do you engage, in your research, with emerging modes of publishing and “journal-making” (open access, artificial intelligence, etc.)?

Discussing the research landscape in Spain means discussing an obsession with metrics that are sometimes hard to understand in France. Despite the recent changes, the research is still getting evaluated almost exclusively according to the number or the place of publication. The publish or perish, very striking in the precarious researchers who graduated and got their PhD during the crisis, has increased the publications, but has also permitted that the younger generations could be more trained and more competitive at the international level.

The debate and the study of international migration in Spain have a four-decade history during which it has accompanied the evolution of the phenomenon and gone through political alternations and crises that helped its consolidation. However, even though conceptual publications exist, scientific research is still structured more around empirical analyses than around methodological and epistemological reflections.