Emigration and brain drain in Galicia, 2001-2019

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Published: 24-06-2022

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Jose Blanco-Álvarez
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Spain
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2902-022X
Manuel González-López
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Spain
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2645-011X
Vol 31 No 1 (2022), Articles, pages 1-24
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15304/rge.31.1.7961
Submitted: 30-09-2021 Accepted: 28-04-2022 Published: 24-06-2022
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Abstract

In recent years, the idea that Galician youth is emigrating again has been established in the social imaginary, highlighting a problem of brain drain. However, there are few systematic studies on this issue. In this work, we merge the Spanish emigration data with the census data of the destination countries collected by the OECD in its DIOC-E database to estimate the stocks of emigrants by educational level and Autonomous Community (CCAA) of origin. Similarly, we used a unique set of SEPE job mobility data to study internal migrations. Our results show that Galicia is one of the communities most affected by the brain drain in the Spanish context. External emigration has increased significantly with the economic crisis and has remained at high levels since then while internal emigration shows a low level in comparison with other CCAA but a persistent negative balance and a growing trend.

Keywords:

External emigration, Internal emigration, Immigration, Brain drain, Statistics
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References

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