Barcelona’s sociodemographic filter: an analysis of individuals participating in the residential and migratory flows of the central city

Antonio Lopez Gay, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Joaquin Recano-Valverde, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Since Barcelona’s central municipality reached its urban and demographic maturity, more than one third century ago, migration and residential mobility have been the determinant factors of its sociodemographic renewal. It has been proved in many other inner cities that participants in residential flows (moving into, moving out of and moving within the urban core) are not randomly selected from the whole population. In Barcelona, young people, singles, professionals and the highly educated are more willing to move into and within the central city. Meanwhile, family dimension is behind most of the leaving the inner city movements. Manual workers and medium educated are also more likely to leave central areas. As a consequence, Barcelona’s urban core has experienced an intense process of population renewal during the last decade. This research is based on the analysis of the Census 2001 100% microdata, which enables us to explore the sociodemographic profile of each person who has arrived, left and moved within Barcelona’s central city.