Unemployment, return migration, and immigrant mortality

The case of the Great Recession in Spain

Bibliographic Data

ID9229540
AuthorsNéstor Aldea (0000-0003-3948-2003, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, corresponding author)
Year2025
Pages1-19
Publication date2025-11-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePopulation Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-4728 • E-ISSN: 1477-4747
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00324728.2025.2573929
PMID41200834
OpenAlexW4415988161
LanguageEN
References cited58

This paper aims to assess the effect of the Great Recession on population-level immigrant mortality in Spain, highlighting the mediating effects of migration flows that shape the composition of immigrant populations. To investigate this, I use individual data from Spain's death and population registers for the period 2003-19. First, I find a significant mortality advantage at adult ages for non-Western immigrants compared with the native born. Second, I show that this mortality advantage for immigrants relative to the native born increased during the Great Recession, despite immigrants being affected more by the unemployment crisis. Unemployment-driven outmigration flows may have contributed to this change in relative mortality at ages 40-59, meaning that immigrants returning to their country were negatively selected. I argue that the crisis may have imposed a second selection on non-Western immigrants staying in Spain and that negative selection at departure-even if not due to ill health itself-affected mortality

Great recession · Immigration · Internal migration · Population · Recession · Unemployment · Employment and Welfare Studies · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Health and Trauma