Key messages
- Immigration into Spain from Africa accounts for 17% of the total and for 20% of the immigration from outside the EU. Moroccan immigration accounts for almost three quarters of all immigration from Africa.
- The average level of educational attainment is the lowest of all immigrant groups: a fifth did not complete primary schooling and only a tenth hold a university qualification.
- This type of immigration is the least likely to enter the employment market, especially in the case of female Moroccan immigrants: only 42% of the latter seek or are in work.
- Their unemployment rate is the highest, especially in the case of Moroccan immigrants (27%), which is three times that of their Spanish-born counterparts (8%) and much higher than that of sub-Saharan Africans (16%).
- They account for 3% of workers in Spain, but 15% of workers in the agricultural sector. The role they play in agriculture is essential to sectors in various intensive-farming areas in the south of the country. In Murcia 36% of agricultural workers are immigrants of African origin, with 34% in Almería and 24% in Huelva.
- The teenage school drop-out rate in this group is the highest: 55% of sub-Saharan immigrants aged 16-20 are not in education and the same is true of 26% of Moroccans. Among the latter, the problem affects males (37%) much more than females (16%).
- The birth rate among Moroccan immigrants is the highest of all immigrant groups, hence the fact that the second generation of Moroccan origin outnumbers the first. Up to 31% of all those born in Spain to an immigrant mother and father are children of Moroccan parents.
Analysis
This paper is the third in a series the Elcano Royal Institute is conducting into how immigrants are integrating into Spain’s employment market. The first, titled ‘Immigration and the employment market in Spain’, analysed the entire immigrant population and its most salient characteristics in terms of its relationship with the employment market, while its successors delve deeper into each of the largest groups classified by geographical origin. The study in this case focuses on immigrants of African origin, whose arrival dates back to the last century, first on a small scale from former Spanish colonies such as Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and, starting in the 1980s, with greater numbers originating mainly in Morocco, which at that time became the greatest source of African immigrants in Spain.
As with the other papers in this series, the main sources that have been used are the Continuous Municipal Register (Padrón Continuo de Población), the Continuous Population Statistics (Estadística Continua de Población) and the Active Population Survey (Encuesta de Población Activa, EPA, with microdata for the fourth quarter of 2024), all compiled by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Based on such data, the analysis focuses on the fundamental features of African immigration in Spain and subsequently sets out information regarding its integration into the employment market, for both the whole group and the two subgroups whose sample size in the EPA enables statistically significant results to be obtained: Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans.
The context: size, evolution, composition and characteristics of African immigration in Spain
As mentioned in the other documents in this series, it is worth recalling the definition of international migrants used by the United Nations (UN) and its Population Division, which is the one used here: international immigrants are people who live in a country other than the one in which they were born, regardless of their legal status in the country where they live. Thus, defined as ‘born abroad’, according to the most recent aggregate data from the INE’s Continuous Population Statistics, African immigrants in Spain as at 1 January 2024 numbered 1,524,788 (Figure 1), accounting for 3% of all those resident in the country and 17% of the immigrant population, the latter percentage having undergone little variation since the start of the century. The presence of African immigration in Spain –fundamentally of Moroccan origin– started to become locally notable in the 1980s, with particular concentrations in rural areas near the Mediterranean coast. Numbers multiplied threefold between 1992 (71,292 people) and 1999 (213,012), although such data should be treated with considerable scepticism, given the poor immigration records that were compiled in Spain prior to the year 2000.
Unlike immigrants from other continents, who exhibit considerable variety in terms of their composition, just one country in the case of African immigrants –Morocco– has always constituted the largest source. Thus, on 1 January 2024, 1,092,892 people born in Morocco were living in Spain, accounting for 72% of all those born in Africa (Figure 2). 26% of immigrants of Moroccan origin had Spanish nationality, a significant percentage but considerably less than the 45% of Latin American immigrants and the 52% of those from Equatorial Guinea, the only Africans with access to the fast track to Spanish nationality.[1] Aside from immigrants originating from Morocco, the only African groups with more than 40,000 people resident in Spain are Senegalese and Algerian (95,812 and 87,854 respectively).
There is hardly any difference between the age pyramid of the population of African origin and other immigrants originating from countries with lower per capita income than Spain’s, with a high concentration between the ages of 25 and 49, the range with the greatest employment activity. There is, however, a notable difference with regard to gender. African immigration is the only one to show a clear male preponderance: 61% of African immigrants residing in Spain are men, a percentage that rises above 80% among Malians and Gambians (87% and 82%, respectively). The only African country with data broken down by gender whose population in Spain is predominantly female (63%) is Equatorial Guinea.
In terms of their geographical distribution, African immigrants are less concentrated than other immigrants in the main urban areas or in the archipelagos. They are distributed more evenly throughout the country, with a greater presence in provinces where farming plays a major role, whether in the form of intensive crop cultivation and/or the livestock and cannery industries (Catalonia, Almería and Murcia). Ceuta and Melilla are special cases. In both cities the Moroccan-born population has a much greater preponderance than in the rest of Spain: 21% of Melilla’s residents and 11% of Ceuta’s residents were born in Morocco, although the total population of Moroccan origin (including the children and grandchildren of Moroccans) is estimated at 40%-55%.[2]
African immigrants’ integration into the Spanish employment market
Based on the microdata contained in the Active Population Survey(EPA, 4Q24), it is possible to set out the main features characterising the manner and intensity of African immigrants’ integration into the Spanish employment market. The data refer to individuals aged 25-59, to exclude youngsters still in education and adults who have retired from the labour market, thereby providing a group comparable to their native counterparts (defined as born in Spain to two parents also born in Spain), among whom active employment is very low outside this age range. The data are also compared to that of immigrants from other countries with lower per capita income than Spain’s[3] and broken down in order to compare the two African subgroups whose EPA samples are large enough to ensure that such a comparison is significant and that together account for 94% of the total: Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans.[4]
An important factor that determines integration into the employment market is educational attainment, and here the level of African immigrants is particularly low: a fifth of African immigrants aged 25-59 did not complete primary education (21% of Moroccans and 19% of sub-Saharan Africans); 9% of the Moroccans and 6% of the sub-Saharan Africans are illiterate. At the other end of the scale, only 10% of African immigrants have a university qualification, a much lower percentage than Asian and Latin American immigrants. Overall, no other group of immigrants records such low scores in the educational domain. The chief difference between the educational attainment of Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans is the higher percentage of individuals with non-compulsory secondary education among the former.
The data for immigrants of African origin harbour a major gender difference which, in the case of Moroccans, is negative towards women and, in the case of sub-Saharan immigrants, negative towards men.
Analogously, the rates of activity and, in particular, those of employment[5] for all immigrants originating from Africa are notably lower than those for their Spanish-born counterparts and the other immigrants studied. In this case, however, there are marked differences between the two African subgroups, with Moroccans showing much lower rates. Specifically, the Moroccans’ activity rate is 19 percentage points lower than the rate for sub-Saharan Africans, while the employment rate is 23 percentage points lower.
The Moroccan immigrants’ especially low participation in the employment market can be attributed to the very low occupational activity of the women in this group, who are mostly inactive outside the home. Thus, whereas 73% of sub-Saharan women work or are actively seeking work, the percentage in the case of Moroccan women is just 42%.
Despite African immigrants’ low activity rate, which ought in principle to correlate with a low unemployment rate, the latter runs at an extremely high 25%, more than double the rate of Latin Americans and more than three times that of native Spaniards. Again, there is a major disparity here between Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans, with far higher unemployment among the former.
Employment among immigrants of African origin shows a high concentration in the agricultural sector, where 15% of Moroccans and 18% of sub-Saharan Africans work: no other group has such a high percentage of its workers employed in this sector. Only 3% of native Spaniards work in agriculture, fishing and livestock, and the percentages are even lower for Latin American and Asian immigrants. African employment is also higher than the other immigrant groups in the industrial sector (especially the food industry and, within this, meat processing) and in construction, but lower in the hospitality industry and domestic activities. Within the group, Moroccan immigrants have a higher presence in construction and retailing –in the case of retailing often as self-employed workers or entrepreneurs– whereas sub-Saharan Africans work more in the agrifood sector.
African immigrants account, in total, for only 3% of all workers in Spain, but they have a much greater presence in the agricultural sector, where they make up 15% of the workforce. This percentage is distributed very unevenly in the country: the farming sector’s dependence on immigrants of African origin is far greater in provinces specialising mainly in intensive farming, such as Almería, Huelva and Murcia. Up to 36% of farm workers in Murcia are immigrants of African origin, 34% in Almería and 24% in Huelva.
Next in the list of sectors ranked by the percentage of African immigrants among their workers is ‘Construction’ (6%), followed by ‘Hospitality’ (5%) and ‘Domestic activities’ (4%).
In terms of their ‘occupational situation’, African immigrants’ profiles are similar to those of their Latin American counterparts, despite their dissimilar levels of educational attainment and pathways to gaining Spanish nationality: the vast majority are employed as wage-earners in the private sector, a minority are self-employed and, as a group, they have a marginal presence in the public sector (something that is common to all groups of immigrants originating from low-income countries). Although 27% of African immigrants have already been granted Spanish nationality, enabling them to overcome the legal barrier to joining the public sector, their minimal presence in this sector, far below that of Latin American immigrants, seems likely to be related to their lower educational attainment.
As far as entrepreneurship is concerned, the data again reveal a difference between Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans: 11% of Moroccans are self-employed or work as entrepreneurs, compared to 4% of sub-Saharan Africans. A quarter of Moroccans (25%) who work in retailing are self-employed and another 8% are salaried entrepreneurs. It is likely that many of the Moroccans who are salaried workers in retailing are employed by Moroccan entrepreneurs, but the data do not enable this hypothesis to be confirmed.
In line with their educational attainment and occupational sectors, more than a third of African workers (and more than half in the case of sub-Saharan Africans) are found working in ‘basic occupations’, which is much higher figure than for Latin American and Asian workers. By contrast, the number of Africans in ‘white collar’ occupations such as ‘Directors and managers’, ‘Technicians and scientific and intellectual professionals’ and ‘Accountants and administrators’ amount to only 8%, manifestly behind their counterparts. Meanwhile, the EPA does not record a single immigrant originating from Africa enrolled in the armed forces, something for which Spanish nationality is required (immigrants from Equatorial Guinea are exempted from this rule).
As far as the earnings of African immigrants are concerned, the statistics published by the Social Security Administration (TGSS)[6] for average taxable income only differentiate data for people of Moroccan nationality.
According to these figures, the average taxable income of Moroccan taxpayers in December 2024 was €1,554/month, 32% lower as a group than their Spanish counterparts, although the gap between the taxable incomes of Moroccan women compared with Spanish women widened to 38%: €1,288 as opposed to €2,082. Indeed, of all the nationalities recorded in the TGSS statistics, the lowest female average taxable income pertains to Moroccan women, at €81 below the next female group on low incomes, namely Bolivian women.
With regard to generation 1.5 of African immigrants in Spain, in other words those born in African countries and arriving in Spain as children or teenagers, the EPA data enable us to determine what percentage of those aged 16-20 continue in education, once their compulsory schooling has ended. This is an important figure because it foreshadows future situations in relation to the employment market. Up to 65% of African immigrants aged 16-20 continue in education, a percentage similar to their Latin American counterparts (66%) but far below that of native Spaniards (86%) and also below that of Asians (77%). Put the other way, the educational drop-out rate among African immigrants is 35%, the highest in Spain, which, in turn, has one of the highest figures in the EU owing to the large percentage of immigrants within the student body. This high educational drop-out rate incurs difficulties for subsequent integration into the labour market on the part of those who do not continue with their schooling: they will be restricted to basic tasks requiring little by way of training and, consequently, low wages and poor working conditions.
The problem affects youngsters of sub-Saharan origin disproportionately: 55% do not continue in education, compared with 26% people of Moroccan origin. There is a striking difference in favour of women amongst youngsters of Moroccan origin: the drop-out rate among females is 16%, compared with 37% among males. This means that, in the medium term, the educational disadvantage suffered by female Moroccan immigrants compared to their male counterparts will disappear and start to work the other way (with men at an educational disadvantage).
The EPA sample of second-generation immigrants (born in Spain) whose mother and father are both of African origin is too small to produce significant data. It is likely that, as occurs with all second-generation immigrants originating from lower-income countries, the educational outcomes for generation 2.0, incorporated into the Spanish educational system from the outset, will in general be insufficient and concerning, but somewhat better than those of generation 1.5, whose members arrived at some point in their childhood or adolescence. It will be necessary to obtain data on this subject, information that the educational system does not currently compile, especially in the case of the offspring of Moroccan immigrants, due not only to the size of this group but also its high fertility rate: Moroccan immigration, which accounts for 11% of the total, produces 20% of the births to immigrant mothers; in other words, it doubles the average birth rate of immigrant women.[7] Indeed, the number of second-generation Moroccan immigrants (born in Spain to a mother and father born in Morocco) is already 31% of all second-generation immigrants born in Spain; in other words, it is three times the percentage of all first-generation immigrants who were born in Morocco (11%).
Conclusions
Altogether, African immigration accounts for 17% of all immigrants resident in Spain and, of this, almost three quarters (72%) is made up of Moroccan immigration, the oldest in Spain. They are the largest group in the country (around 1,100,000 people), although they about to be overtaken by Colombian immigration if present trends continue. The immigration deriving from the rest of the continent is highly heterogeneous in its origins: none of the national groups exceeds 100,000 individuals and most number less than 40,000.
As with the other immigrant groups arriving from countries with lower incomes than Spain’s, the age range for the bulk of African immigration is between 25 and 49 years old. It exhibits two characteristics that are uncommon among other immigrant groups, however: a notable masculinity (more males than females) and a greater presence in rural and semi-urban settings, in contrast with other immigrants’ tendency to gravitate to large cities.
The educational attainment level of African immigrants in Spain is particularly low in comparison with other immigrants and much lower than the native population. This fact decisively conditions their integration into the world of work, restricting it to the most basic activities requiring fewer qualifications. Their concentration in agricultural occupations is another consequence of their educational attainment level.
Low earnings –and consequently modest contributions to Social Security– are another outcome of this combination of a low level of training and employment in basic activities: the average earnings of Moroccan employees are among the lowest that are recorded by nationality by the Social Security Administration for both sexes and are the lowest in the case of women.
Their employment and activity rates are significantly lower than those of other immigrant groups, to a large extent because of female Moroccan immigrants’ low participation rate in the labour market. Unemployment is especially high among Moroccans, at 27%, more than three times that of native Spaniards (8%) and substantially higher than among sub-Saharan Africans (16%).
Their employment in agriculture is crucial to the sector, especially in provinces specialising in intensive farming (Murcia, Almería and Huelva).
The school drop-out rate among teenage African immigrants is a cause for concern, because it augurs difficulties for second generations’ successful social and occupational insertion.
The high fertility rate of female Moroccan immigrants, much greater than that of immigrants as a whole, presages a demographic outlook in which Spain’s population of Moroccan descent is set to form a growing part of the total population.
[1] Those born in the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Portugal and those of Sephardic origin can apply for Spanish nationality after two years of authorised residence in the country. The rule for other immigrants is 10 years of prior residence.
[2] No data are available regarding the size of the population of Moroccan origin in Ceuta and Melilla. An outdated estimate may be found at: https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/analisis/melilla-lecciones-inadvertidas-de-integracion-ari. More than 90% of babies born in Ceuta and Melilla are given a Muslim name (INE).
[3] In this analysis, the ‘Africans’ group includes all immigrants hailing from that continent whose home countries are identified in the EPA. Unless stated otherwise, the population being scrutinised is confined to the 25-59 age range. For more detailed information about the characteristics of these groups, see the ARI titled ‘Immigration and the employment market in Spain’.
[4] The sub-Saharan countries with samples included in the EPA are Angola, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal and South Africa. Non-Moroccan North Africans, mostly Algerians, account for 6% of the entire sample of African immigrants in the EPA survey.
[5] The activity rate is defined as the percentage of the population in the age range concerned (in this case, aged 25-59) that is in work or is seeking work, while the employment rate is defined as the percentage of the population in the age range concerned (in this case, aged 25-59) that is in work. The unemployment rate is calculated using the total active population in this age range (not the total population in the age range).
[6] The EPA does not include questions about earned income, making it necessary to resort to the Social Security Administration’s statistics on average taxable income, where individuals are classified by nationality, not by country of birth. The maximum taxable income in 2025 is €4,909 per month.
[7] INE, Movimiento Natural de la Población, births, data for 2024.
