Key messages
- Latin American migration to Spain accounts for almost half (48%) of all immigration and 66% of immigration from outside Europe.
- Its share as a percentage of total immigration has grown continuously since the start of the century. It has been accelerated by visa exemptions and the relative lack of barriers to Spanish citizenship: 45% of such immigrants have already been granted Spanish nationality.
- It is characterised by a relatively low average level of education, compared with the Spanish-born population, but is higher than that of Asian and especially African immigration.
- There is considerable heterogeneity within the Latin American immigrant population, in educational and employment terms, depending on national origins and on the largest groups.
- Immigrants with the highest levels of training have the lowest rates of employment, owing to the delay in recognising their qualifications and because Spain’s private-sector labour market creates chiefly low-skilled jobs. Despite their ability to obtain Spanish nationality, very few Latin American immigrants –just 4%– are employed in the public sector.
- There is a high educational dropout rate among Latin American immigrant teenagers: 34% leave school at the age of 16 (compared with 14% of native-born Spaniards), which may foreshadow problems for their subsequent employment and social integration.
Analysis
This paper is the second in the series the Elcano Royal Institute is conducting on the subject of immigrant assimilation into employment in Spain. The first, titled ‘Inmigración y mercado de trabajo en España’, looks at the entire immigrant population and its most salient characteristics from a labour-market perspective. The reason for taking the labour-market perspective is that the experience acquired by societies in receipt of migrants shows that their assimilation into employment is an indispensable precondition if they are to be accepted by the bulk of society; moreover, an analysis of such integration is fundamental to understanding their effect on the recipient country’s economy and society.
In this case, the analysis is focused specifically on immigrants originating from Latin America, who account for an increasing share of migratory inflows and comprise almost half (48%) of all immigrants living in Spain. Spain is home to more Latin American immigrants (4.2 million) than all the other EU countries put together (around 3 million).
The preponderance of Latin American immigration in total inward migration ensures a unique status for Spain on the European stage, where migration from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe predominate. Cultural affinities (linguistic and religious, although not necessarily ethnic) between the mostly Spanish population and arrivals from Latin America have undoubtedly played a role in their social integration and probably help to explain the fact that, for a considerable part of the present century, Spain has avoided the political tensions surrounding immigration that other European democracies have endured.
This analysis first sets out the basic characteristics of Latin American immigration in Spain, both in terms of overall numbers and the most significant source countries, before turning to data concerning assimilation into the employment market. As with the other documents in this series, the main sources of information used are the Padrón Continuo de Población (Ongoing Population Census), the Estadística Continua de Población (Ongoing Population Statistics) and the Encuesta de Población Activa (Active Population Survey), or EPA (EPA microdata for the fourth quarter of 2024), all compiled by the National Statistics Institute (INE).
1. Context: the size, evolution, composition and characteristics of Latin American immigration in Spain
It is worth starting this analysis with a reminder of the definition of international migrants used by the United Nations and its Population Division. International migrants are people living in a country other than the one in which they were born. By this definition, people are thus immigrants regardless of their legal status in the country where they live, whether their papers are in order or not, whether or not they have been granted nationality and whether they are wealthy or poor, job-seeking migrants or political refugees.
Using the definition of ‘born abroad’, according to the most recent data available from the Ongoing Population Statistics (INE) the total number of Latin American immigrants in Spain as at 1 January 2024 stood at 4,252,074, accounting for 9% of the country’s resident population, 48% of the immigrant population and 66% of non-European immigration. The preponderance of Latin American immigration in the total immigrant population has grown incessantly in the 21st century and is now 10 percentage points higher than in 2015.
The way in which Latin American migration to Spain has evolved is attributable to numerous factors, notable among which are the visa exemptions that enable unrestricted entry from the majority of Latin American countries; the ‘network’ effect, which attracts immigrants to places where former acquaintances, family and friends have already settled; the reuniting of families; and the opportunities for citizenship that Spain offers Latin American immigrants, who can apply for this after two years of legal residence, compared with the 10 years that are required of all other immigrants.[1] As a consequence, as at 1 January 2024, 45% of Latin American-born residents of Spain had already obtained Spanish nationality. This exception to the rules for obtaining citizenship, which is applicable to Latin Americans, enables nationality to be acquired in their case before their permanent, or ‘long-term’, residence is approved (which requires five years of prior legal residence). Data from the sources used here do not enable a distinction to be drawn between this type of immigrant and those who have come to Spain already bearing Spanish nationality by virtue of regulations introduced to offer Spanish citizenship to the descendants of Spaniards (children and grandchildren),[2] rules that have had the greatest impact on Cuba, Argentina and Mexico. According to the INE, 330,000 people obtained citizenship by this route between 2013 and 2024.
In terms of country of origin, Colombians and Venezuelans feature predominantly in the notable rise in the Latin American population residing in Spain over the last 10 years. Their number has swollen by almost a million (950,362) in the last decade, demoting Ecuador, the main source of Latin American immigration at the start of the 21st century, to third place (Figure 2). In addition to these three, there are another eight countries in the region with more than 100,000 people living in Spain: Argentina, Peru, Cuba, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay.
Latin American immigration exhibits an age structure that is highly similar to other immigration originating from countries with a lower per capita income than Spain’s (Low-Income Countries, LICs), with the population clustering around the years of greatest employment activity, between the ages of 25 and 49.
In terms of their geographical distribution, Latin American immigrants cluster especially around Madrid, in the north-eastern part of the peninsula and in the islands. They account for more than 10% of the population in five provinces (Figure 4): Guadalajara, Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, Tenerife and, above all, Madrid, where they exceed a million people (1,069,543) and account for 15% of the population. By contrast, in the majority of south-western provinces they constitute less than 4% of the total population and less than 1% in the case of Ceuta and Melilla.
Latin American immigration is more female than male, with women making up 57% of the total in 2024. There are, however, significant differences depending on the country of origin: women greatly outnumber men among Central American migrants to Spain (68% of Honduran and 69% of Nicaraguan immigrants are women), whereas in many other cases the proportions are evenly balanced or, as in the case of Argentina, there is a slight male preponderance.
2. The integration of Latin American immigrants into the Spanish labour market
Analysis of the EPA microdata (fourth quarter of 2024) has enabled the authors to pinpoint the main features characterising the extent and profile of Latin American immigrants’ integration into the Spanish employment market. The data relate to people aged 25-59, to exclude youngsters still undergoing training and adults who have retired from the labour market, who thus constitute a comparable group to their home-grown counterparts (defined as born in Spain to parents also born in Spain), among whom employment is very low outside this age range. The data are also compared to those of immigrants originating from other countries with a per capita income lower than Spain’s[3] and between the largest Latin American source countries, specifically the 10 countries with over 100,000 immigrants in Spain in this age range: Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Honduras and Brazil.
The first variable that affects assimilation into the employment market is the level of education. Latin American immigrants exhibit an average level of education that is substantially lower than the native population: 32% have a university degree, compared with 49% of their native counterparts. By contrast, their education exceeds that of immigrants from Africa and Asia, with 10% and 26% of people with university qualifications, respectively. Meanwhile, Latin American immigration exhibits significant internal differences in terms of education: around half of Venezuelans and Cubans have a university or higher Professional Training (PT) qualification, whereas less than a fifth of Hondurans and Dominicans are in this situation. Almost half of Ecuadoreans and Dominicans and 40% of Bolivians and Hondurans have only compulsory education.
In educational terms there are therefore three well-differentiated groups: a first group comprising Cubans, Venezuelans and Argentines, with levels similar to or even higher than their native counterparts. There is also a second intermediate group, made up of Brazilians and Peruvians, and a third comprising Bolivians, Colombians, Dominicans, Ecuadoreans and Hondurans, with a lower average level of education.
Latin American immigrants’ average activity rate[4] in Spain is identical to that of their native counterparts in this age range, 87%, with differences depending on the Latin American source country. Overall, this rate of activity is substantially higher than that of immigrants from Asia and Africa.
The higher rate of activity among Latin American immigrants compared to their African and Asian counterparts is wholly attributable to the employment rate among the female population, which is much higher than that among women from various Asian countries and especially among African immigrants. In all groups, whether Spanish-born or immigrant, the activity rates are higher among men. In the specific case of the Latin Americans, there are groups such as the Brazilians, Colombians and Hondurans with a gender gap in the activity rate exceeding 10 percentage points (men always outweighing women) and other groups with similar or slightly smaller differences than among their Spanish-born counterparts (5-6 percentage points).
In terms of the employment rate,[5] the average among Latin American immigrants is 77%, slightly below (by 3 percentage points) that of their Spanish-born counterparts (80%) and exceeding that of Asians and Africans, which is again attributable to the low female employment rates among the latter two groups.
Among some groups of immigrants, such as those from Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, the employment rate exceeds the 80% level (and is therefore higher than among their Spanish-born counterparts), while in others it is substantially lower. Brazil occupies last place, with an employment rate of 68%.
The overall unemployment rate among Latin American immigrants is higher than among their Spanish-born counterparts, but lower than among Africans. As the earlier ARI points out, the unemployment rate is very low among Asian immigrants, owing to their concentration as self-employed workers in the retail sector and the low rates of female activity among some groups. What emerges from an internal comparison among various Latin American groups is a strikingly high unemployment rate among Colombians, Cubans and Brazilians, all exceeding 14%. At the other extreme, Hondurans, Ecuadoreans and Bolivians exhibit lower unemployment rates than their Spanish-born counterparts.
Despite the higher educational attainments of Latin American immigrants compared with those from Africa and Asia, the differences are small in terms of the type of occupation they pursue (Figure 9).
Workers from Latin America differ notably from their Spanish-born counterparts owing to their concentration in low and medium-skilled sectors such as hospitality, construction, retailing and domestic service, where half (49%) of Latin American immigrants are employed. There is a high degree of heterogeneity between the source countries: 34% of Brazilians in employment work in one of these four occupational sectors, compared with 63% of Hondurans.
Analysing the same data but looking at the preponderance of Latin American immigrants in the various economic sectors, one thing that stands out is their striking prominence in domestic services, where they account for more than half the people employed (53%). Women from Colombia, Peru, Honduras and Ecuador play an especially pronounced role. The second economic sector in terms of its importance in employing Latin American immigrants is hospitality (28%), followed by construction and ‘administrative activities and auxiliary services’ (19% in both cases).
Despite the fact that Latin American immigrants have much easier routes to obtaining Spanish nationality than other immigrants and almost half of them have already acquired Spanish citizenship, their presence in sectors that require European citizenship (public sector jobs in general) continues to be extremely modest: only 1% of them are employed in the Public Administration, Defence and Social Security, and 2% in Education.
This difficulty in obtaining public-sector employment is also evident in their professional situation, given that only 4% of Latin American immigrants in work are wage-earning public employees, as opposed to 20% of their Spanish-born counterparts (Figure 11). Cuban immigrants are an exception here: 11% work as public employees (probably doctors). Up to 85% of Latin American workers are private-sector wage earners, and in the case of the Hondurans this figure rises to 92%. It is also worth noting the unusual professional profiles of Brazilian and Argentine workers resident in Spain: 23% and 18%, respectively, are either self-employed or business owners with employees, percentages that are approximately double the Latin American average.
In line with their levels of education and sectors of employment, more than half of Latin American workers devote themselves to services or low-skilled occupations (53%, compared with 27% of their Spanish-born counterparts). Here, however, there is again a high degree of heterogeneity, related to educational levels: three out of four Honduran immigrants work in low-skilled occupations, compared with 10% of Argentines. Among immigrants from Brazil, Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela there are high percentages working in white-collar professions, especially those falling within the category of ‘scientific and intellectual technicians and professionals’. Up to 23% of Cubans, for instance, work in this category, the same percentage as their Spanish counterparts.
Turning next to Latin American immigrants’ employment income, the sole source available, the taxable income statistics issued by the Spain’s Social Security administration, only includes data for the six Latin American nationalities with the greatest number of contributors (Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia);[6] in other words, it excludes both immigrants belonging to smaller groups and more heavily concentrated in ‘low-skilled occupations’ (such as the Hondurans) and the two located at the opposite end of the spectrum (Cubans and Brazilians) (Figure 13). These figures show that the average taxable income of such contributors in December 2024 was €1,585 per month, and consequently 31% lower than that of Spaniards, with Argentines at the highest end of the range (€1,845) and Colombians at the lowest (€1,527). It should be borne in mind that the Social Security data record individuals in terms of their nationality rather than the country of their birth, meaning that almost half of Latin American immigrants, who already hold Spanish nationality and mostly retain double nationality, may not be included in these figures.
The EPA data make it possible to scrutinise the situation that young people aged 16-20, born in Latin American countries and resident in Spain, occupy: 66% of them continue studying in this age range, a significantly lower percentage than their native-born counterparts (86%). As pointed out in the first ARI in this series, with regard to generation 1.5 of immigrants,[7] these figures are a cause for concern insofar as they augur future employment and social integration problems for a third of such youngsters, namely those who drop out of education at the end of the compulsory phase. Without the further training that would enable them to access medium- and high-skilled jobs, their employment options are considerably restricted and inferior in terms of working conditions and pay. Owing to the small sample size in the EPA for youngsters aged 16-20 from each of the source countries, it is inappropriate to subject each country to a separate analysis of its young population.
The analysis conducted here does not reflect the new phenomenon of an influx into Spain of high-income Latin Americans, whether these be youngsters who come to study university Master’s degrees or high-income adults –Mexicans, Colombians, Venezuelans, etc– who purchase housing in the most expensive districts of large cities (such as the Madrid district of Salamanca, which has become known as ‘Little Miami’) or on the Spanish coasts. Of the total 4.2 million Latin American immigrants in Spain, such groups undoubtedly constitute a small minority. Their impact is significant in some respects however, most glaringly on the housing market. Meanwhile, it is highly likely that the closing of US borders to Latin American immigration will attract more Latin American students and investors towards Spain.
Conclusions
Spain is an exceptional country in the European context, not only because of the numbers of immigrants it receives but also because of the preponderance of Latin American immigration as a share of the whole. Such immigration now accounts for almost half of the total (48%) and two thirds (66%) of non-European arrivals; its relative weight has also risen in recent years, in other words in the migration phase that started in 2015, with the consolidation of the economic recovery in the wake of the so-called Great Recession. Two million immigrants of Latin American origin have settled in the country since that year.
Until Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2024 Spain ranked second in Latin American migrants’ preferred destinations after the US and has now become their first choice following the crack-down on immigration that the US President has sought to impose.
Latin American immigrants currently account for 9% of the total population living in Spain, with a considerable concentration in certain regions, prominent among them being Madrid, where they represent 15% of the city’s residents.
The relatively greater rise in Latin American immigration to Spain compared to immigration from other regions stems, among other factors, from two forms of favourable treatment that such immigrants receive from Spain’s migration policy: the visa exemptions that most of the region’s countries benefit from and the possibility of obtaining Spanish nationality after two years’ legal residence in the country, compared with the 10 years that are required of most immigrants. Nearly half (45%) of Latin American immigrants in Spain have already obtained this nationality.
This large group of Latin American immigrants in Spain shares linguistic and religious roots (Roman Catholicism, although with a growing affiliation to evangelical churches), but it is important to emphasise its considerable degree of internal heterogeneity in other salient respects, such as the level of education and the form of integration into the Spanish employment market. Added to this in recent years is a greater variability in terms of the manner of entry, with many of these immigrants requesting asylum (Venezuelans, Colombians, Nicaraguans, Peruvians and so on), which alters their administrative status and the speed at which they can legally enter the jobs market.
In comparison with the Spanish-born population, Latin American immigrants have lower educational levels and hold less highly-skilled posts, with lower wages and inferior working conditions: the bulk of them are employed in personal services, hospitality, restaurants, retailing, construction, domestic services, security and other low-skilled occupations. Their activity rates are similar to those of their Spanish-born counterparts (87% for the age group concerned, aged 25-59) with a slightly lower employment rate (77% compared with 80%). Their average earnings from employment are at least 31% lower than the average earnings of native-born Spaniards, with correspondingly lower contributions to Social Security.
Latin American immigrants now account for 28% of all workers employed in hospitality and 19% of people working in construction and ‘administrative and auxiliary services’. The part they play in ‘household activities’ (domestic service) is much greater; here, Latin Americans (the vast majority women) account for more than half (53%) of workers. Despite their fast-track route to Spanish nationality, their percentage share of public sector work is still very modest.
A relationship exists between the type of employment and the employment rate: groups of Latin American immigrants that are most heavily engaged in ‘low-skilled tasks’, which do not require high levels of qualifications, are those that exhibit the highest employment rates (Hondurans, Bolivians and so on) whereas groups that have greater representation in tasks requiring a higher level of education are characterised by lower employment rates (Brazilians, Cubans, Argentines and so on). This finding may be a consequence of the widespread problems immigrants face in getting their university qualifications recognised (a third of Latin American migrants to Spain have a university qualification), as well as a greater reluctance among the higher educated, or with greater resources, to accept work in Spain below their educational level, whereas Spain’s private sector labour market predominantly generates new posts that are low-skilled. For now, Latin American immigrants’ participation in higher-skilled occupations is modest, with the exception of immigrants from a limited number of countries.
As mentioned in the earlier ARI in this series with regard to immigrants from lower-income countries, a concerning characteristic of Latin American immigrants belonging to generation 1.5 (those arriving in Spain as children or adolescents) is their high educational drop-out rate: a third leave school at the age of 16, a fact that has a negative impact on their subsequent employment and social assimilation, increasing their risk of unemployment and restricting their opportunities to occupational niches that are less well paid and have inferior working conditions.
[1] With exceptions such as natives of Andorra, Equatorial Guinea, the Philippines, Portugal and those of Sephardic origin.
[2] Historical Memory Law, 2007, and Democratic Memory Law, 2022.
[3] For the purposes of this analysis the ‘Latin American’ group includes all immigrants originating from this geographical area whose home countries are listed in the EPA (with the exception of Puerto Rico); the ‘native’ group includes all the people born in Spain to a mother and father born in Spain, and the ‘LIC immigrants’ group includes all immigrants born in countries with a per capita income lower than Spain’s in 2024 and included in the EPA. In all cases the population being scrutinised falls within the age range of 25-59.
[4] The activity rate is defined as the percentage of the population in the age group concerned (in this case 25-59) either in work or looking for work.
[5] The employment rate is defined as the percentage of the population in the age range concerned (in this case 25-59) that are in employment.
[6] The EPA does not include questions about wage earnings, making it necessary to rely on average taxable income statistics drawn from Spain’s Social Security administration, where individuals are classified by nationality rather than by country of birth. The highest taxable income in 2025 stands at €4,909 per month.
[7] Generation 1.5 refers to immigrants who came to Spain as children or adolescents.
