Foreign population in the metropolitan area of Barcelona: residential patterns and demographic dynamics

Jordi Bayona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The main goal of this paper is the description of the residential patterns of foreign population in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB), and in a second place identify the causes of this distribution of the total of foreigners and the main nationalities. These facts will be studied using three different statistical sources. Firstly, the 2001 Population Census, that gives us the sociodemographic characteristics of the population and the housing characteristics, at level of census tracks. Secondly, the Continuous Register of Population, with the last available official data from 2006, with information about sex, age and nationality, also at level of census track, and thirdly, the Residential Variation Statistics (RVS), with information between 1988 and 2006 about the residential mobility. The Metropolitan Area of Barcelona includes the seven counties (comarques) surrounding the city of Barcelona, with 164 municipalities. They have more than 4.84 million residents and 601 thousand foreigners, approximately the 15 per cent of foreigners who resides in Spain. We will focus our attention in the ten most numerous nationalities in the MAB. It will be identified the residential dynamics of foreign population, and then the territorial characteristics related to their presence. The economic activity and the housing market are configured as the two main elements to understand the distribution of foreign population in the territory. In the first place, it will be identified the socioeconomic hierarchy of the towns and neighbourhoods of the MAB, for in a second stage relate this classification with the presence in the territory. In essence, we want to identify the residential patterns of foreigners and their relation with the territorial characteristics.