Foreign migration and new couples in Spain: nuptiality and gender imbalance in the XXI century

Graciela Sarrible, Universitat de Barcelona

People are going all around to live in knew countries. Sometimes, the reason is marriage. They do a migration because they will get married with someone living in another country. This feature facilites residence as integration, specially when the couple living in that country has the nationality of the country. There was an enormous gender imbalance in nuptiality when one of the persons of the couple are from outside the European Union, in recent years. But in the last years,homosexual marriages has narrowed the gap. In any case, an exogamic pattern is not frecuent. This possibility is practically nearly absent. It is nice to say that people choise each other in a freedom situation. But, really sociologist have proved that there are social factor that conditioned unions. New data about homosexual marriage is available now. There is a new technical problem because both persons are of the same sex but nevertheless, some indicators can be caltulated. Tendencies are inverse that heterosexual marriages. More men than woman are marring with a foreign person. Homosexual and heterosexual marriages do not arrived to a compensation. But opposite tendencies narrowed the gap between both groups There is no matter of love in this paper. Oficial data form INE shows distribution of marriage when at least one member of the couple is a foreign people. Rate by sex and origin (continents) are calculated and indicates a great gender imbalance, reduced because homosexual marriage between men are more frequent than between woman. Nevertheless, preference are not free and not equal for men and women. Women have more possibilities than men in heterosexual marriages, but men in homosexual. In consequence, the gender imbalance is narrowed now.