ENHR CONFERENCE OVERCOMING THE CRISIS, INTEGRATING THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT Tarragona, Spain June 2013

Transcription

1 ENHR CONFERENCE OVERCOMING THE CRISIS, INTEGRATING THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT Tarragona, Spain June 2013 HOUSING IMMIGRANTS IN A SOCIETY OF HOMEOWNERS: THE SPANISH CASE. Jesus Leal Universidad Complutense de Madrid Over the last fifteen years, there has been an immigration process of considerable dimensions in Spain, involving the entry of more than 12% of the population. This immigrant population has spread unevenly across the country, with some regions proving more attractive than others as a result of available types of occupation in addition to other factors. A part of this immigrant population has settled in rural areas in order to perform agricultural work, in housing of various types, whether built-up or dispersed through the area. Immigrants living conditions vary considerably, but it may be said that in general terms they are worse than those of the native resident population, frequently involving the lack of basic elements. It is not unusual to find dwellings in industrial buildings, in buildings originally intended for other uses such as machinery or work tool storage, suffering from damp, lack of sanitary services and other problems (Ubaldo Martínez Veiga 1999). But it may be said that the majority of immigrants have settled in urban environments, the large metropolitan areas and their main cities being where the greatest proportion of immigrants are concentrated. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante and Murcia account for a significant part of this concentration, which in some neighbourhoods reaches proportions greater than 40%. The aim of this text is to establish the differences in residential patterns for immigrant households from developing countries that settle in large Spanish metropolitan areas, taking as a case in point the Metropolitan Area of Madrid (figure 1). The principal hypothesis is that this population experiences a high degree of segregation, though the measurement differs according to country and culture of origin. But as the immigrant population has increased, there has been a slight fall in indices of dissimilarity in comparison with the location of the Spanish population, so it can be said that this change does not strongly correlate with the inequalities recorded in terms of income or class, not to mention property. This lack of correspondence may owe to the existence of other less easily measured manifestations of spatial inequality, such as degree of habitability, forms of access and especially levels of occupation of housing that frequently amount to overcrowding. 1

2 It may thus be said that the spatial differences reflect the social inequalities among the different groups of origin, though the spatial expression of these differences may have various characteristics, some of which are not easily measured due to insufficient information. Therefore, having exhaustively analysed the quantitative information available, this work seeks to use qualitative methods that may bring us closer to an understanding of the phenomenon examined, completing the knowledge arising out of the analysis of various types of census and survey. FIGURE 1 Source: Padron Continuo de Habitantes The immigrants In the mid-1990s foreign immigration into Spain began to increase notably, coming from three main points of origin (figure 2). The first of these was Morocco, the country separated from Spain by the 14.4 kilometres of the Strait of Gibraltar. Spain became a stepping-stone country for Moroccans and Algerians in their journey toward France and other European countries. In this regard it is no surprise that when settlement conditions were favourable, a part of this passing migration remained in Spain. The second large point of origin was South America, particularly those countries in which greater differences existed with regard to salaries and public services. Many of these immigrants were able to enjoy acceptable living conditions in their countries but sought to improve their conditions through immigration, while others emerged from conditions of poverty from which their country offered no clear escape route. Finally, the third great wave of immigration came from the countries of Eastern Europe. Once borders were closed with visa requirements for immigrants from African and certain South American countries, the free movement of manual workers within the 2

3 European Union permitted the arrival of a notable contingent from European Union countries with a lower income per capita, particularly from Romania, a country with a national language that made it easy to learn Spanish. Other citizens from Asian countries have also contributed to an increased volume of immigrants, though in more limited numbers. Finally, we exclude from consideration within our analysis of immigrants those citizens from developed countries, particularly Europeans from the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the Netherlands, who have settled in Spain and whose contingents may become considerable, particularly owing to the attractive residential areas on the Spanish Mediterranean coast and especially in the case of retirees. Given its distinct characteristics in comparison with the other immigrants, this group should be considered separately. FIGURE 2 Source: Padrón Continuo de Habitantes de Madrid These groups are considered as separate because the residential patterns for each group present distinct characteristics, with each group s duration of residence, cultural conditions and migratory plan affecting the nature of the distinctions. Renting in a society of homeowners Almost three in every four immigrant households live under the rental regime in Spain according to data from In a country in which only 13% of nationals live under this regime 1, immigrants occupy a good proportion of the rental households available nationwide. The first reason for this is the initial lack of means to buy property, the second concerns high residential mobility, particularly in the first years of living in the country, and the third relates to it being easier to rent in order to reside in the more desirable urban areas (Leal and Alguacil, 2012). 1 Living Conditions Survey. 3

4 But this situation has changed over recent years, and as residential plans have been consolidated and working conditions have allowed for greater stability, the proportion of foreign homeowners in the Community of Madrid has increased from 16.4% in 2004 to 29.5% in 2009 (figures 3 and 4). This access to homeownership has led to many problems for a large number of immigrant households. First, mortgage access conditions were not always the best, credit entities initial scepticism resulting in credit not being rejected but being granted under worse conditions. Second, a good proportion of mortgagees found it difficult to understand certain aspects of their mortgages, such as the existence of a lower limit on falls in the interest rate or the failure to make mortgage repayments in extreme cases resulting in a debt that could not be fully satisfied with delivery of the property. This has meant that a significant proportion of evicted households are foreign workers who have become unemployed. The euphoria of the mid-2000s obscured the risks attendant upon access to homeownership in the case of job loss and the successive failures to pay that would significantly increase the interest owed on the accumulated debt. FIGURE 3: Evolution ( ) of tenency in Spain by household s nationality* * Between the foreigners there are not included European Fuente: la Encuesta de Condiciones de Vida (ECV), Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). Since 2009, awareness of these problems and the difficulty of obtaining a mortgage have led to a freeze in homeownership. Recently formed immigrant households are systematically resorting to renting property, abandoning the desire to integrate within the host society by becoming homeowners. It must also be borne in mind that access to home ownership was frequently accompanied by the letting of some rooms in the acquired property, this representing another form of renting. The issue is that the loss of the income from this secondary renting has also contributed to placing buyers in situations of default and has led potential buyers to abandon their plans, faced with the risk of being unable to pay the mortgage. 4

5 The high rental levels for immigrant workers are in contrast to those for the Spanish, whose reasons for renting a property, an act for many years considered unprofitable, include undefined homemaking plans, the precarious economic situation, and high mobility due to the location of work. These reasons are confirmed by the fact that the proportion of rented properties in suburban high-income neighbourhoods may be equal to or higher than other neighbourhoods, due to the greater labour mobility of the uppermiddle class. The difference is that, in the case of Spanish households, family solidarity can be relied upon to address critical situations of temporary default. The distribution of tenure regimes varies according to immigrant origin. Moroccans are those with a higher proportion of homeowners, mainly due to increased duration of residency and greater presence in agricultural areas in which access to homeownership may be easier. Meanwhile, the latest wave, to a large extent Romanian, has a lower proportion of homeowners, considerably below the average. This is perhaps because, more clearly than other groups, they plan to stay in Spain only on a transitory basis. The first consequence of this behaviour is that the initial concentration of immigrants in large cities occurred where there were a greater proportion of rental properties. This was in the centre of the conurbation and at its far outskirts, where there is a conversion of second homes into permanent housing and where housing is acquired at a belowaverage price and rented at a profit. Segregation As stated, the settlement of immigrants in the first years of great expansion, between 1998 and 2002, corresponds directly to the areas in which there was a supply of rental properties at affordable prices. In this regard, the settlement and segregation pattern is determined by the intensity of the rental market. This in turn has a certain relationship, in the case of the cheapest rents, with the location of the housing which is old, small, and in a moderate state of repair, as it is precisely this type of housing that is most profitable in a scarce rental market predominantly populated by low-income households. Additionally, the market may consider other types of location, such as housing of social origin in working-class neighbourhoods subject to high mobility, and housing in middle-class or upper-middle-class areas but of lower quality due to its size, lack of light, or other aspects. With respect to this latter case there are a number of old apartments where they live doormen before, in the bourgeois centre of Madrid and, in general, basement floors of buildings. In contrast, the neighbourhoods with a lesser degree of rental housing are precisely those with a lower proportion of foreign workers, including the working-class neighbourhoods remodelled in the 1970s and 1980s that contain strict conditions with respect to property sales due to having received public aid. In this regard, it is somewhat paradoxical that it is precisely the poorest neighbourhoods that have the fewest immigrants: San Blas, Meseta de Orcasitas, and so on. Figure 5 shows the recent evolution of the index of dissimilarity of immigrants in comparison to the Spanish population. It may be seen that the index has fallen between 2001 and 2011, the drop being greater for residents originating from Asia and South America and very slight for those of African origin. The high index for immigrants from Oceania is due solely to their scarce presence in Madrid. One of the problems with this index as a measure of segregation is its sensitivity to the size of the population. The 5

6 smaller the size, the larger the index, while it will fall as the number of individuals evaluated increases. FIGURE 5 Source Evaluation from the register of each year in Madrid. In this regard we may say that the most important point is that the dissimilarity in settlement does not increase for these years and this may be explained in part by the increased volume of immigration. In fact, a comparison of the settlement maps for this period in the case of the municipality of Madrid (figures 6 and 7) shows a high degree of continuity in distribution, with changes not being particularly notable despite the considerable increase in volume. This implies a continuation of what has happened for the population as a whole (Dominguez, Martínez and Leal). FIGURE 6 Distribution of foreigners in Madrid City (2001 and 2011). 6

7 Source of data: Census In any event, there would be a certain fall in the Location Ratio in the central areas with a greater proportion of upper-class residents. This may also be due to a fall in the number of Spanish households in which a foreign person lives and works as a maid or servant. It is also worth highlighting a very low index in some working-class areas on the outskirts of the Municipality of Madrid, characterised by rehabilitated settlement. The areas in question are aged and residential mobility is limited due to inhabitants lack of means. At the same time, inhabitants have a high level of housing quality in socially stigmatised neighbourhoods, accompanied by high levels of acceptance of their place of residence due to the existence of close relationship networks and good quality of services, obtained through the pressure of social movements. At the other extreme, the most rundown areas in the centre have a high location ratio, with the old centre of Madrid standing out (Lavapiés and Malasaña, the area of Tetuán, el puente de Vallecas, Carabanchel and la Elipa) as well as some areas on the near outskirts of the City of Madrid with a high proportion of old housing. But the neighbourhood with the greatest proportion of immigrants, San Cristobal, is one of social housing in which structural problems led to its gradual abandonment by the original inhabitants, who have been replaced by immigrants, a combination of the poor 7

8 initial state of the housing and the high proportion of foreigners further driving the abandonment process. It has subsequently been partly rehabilitated, giving rise to an internal division in the neighbourhood. Residential location is also related to immigrants types of occupation, given that some types require a degree of physical proximity to the workplace. The immigrants of mostly sub-saharan African origin who sell merchandise without a licence by displaying them on the floor in central areas of the city also tend to live in the central areas. This is because many of them lack work and residence permits and do not wish to venture onto public transport (particularly the Metro system) with their merchandise, fearing the police checks on this means of transport that, once established, are extremely difficult to escape. This group of immigrants hence prefer to travel on foot from their homes, which are generally in the most rundown central housing, and live in conditions of intense overcrowding that allow them to reduce individual housing costs. This is one of the groups that, in addition to labour exploitation, often suffer serious residential exploitation, tending to share their beds with a succession of other workers in the hot beds system Resorting to overcrowding Thomas Maloutas (2002 ), analysing the segregation of immigrants in Athens, proposes the existence of vertical segregation, implying that households of different origins may live in the same building but be unequally distributed through the building such that the immigrants live in the lower parts while those of Greek nationality live in the higher parts. This vertical segregation would express the existence of other spatial manifestations of social inequality of foreigners different to segregation. In reality, this form of unequal household distribution occurred frequently in our cities until the impact of the electrical motor, which meant the development of lifts and trams and thereby allowed all flats to become equally accessible and distributed households throughout cities, united by mechanical transport. It did not matter that the most disadvantaged were at the bottom, as happened in England, or at the top, as occurred in French cities. But there are other forms of spatial inequality, characterised in the case of Madrid by overcrowding. Housing occupation varies notably according to social group, and beyond the location of different groups, unequal occupation and the housing space available to each individual also demonstrate the inequalities. The problem is that it is difficult to measure the quality of housing, above all when evaluations of households are so different. Immigrants tend to value the residential environment more highly than nationals, and this leads to a different evaluation of the housing itself, which severely impedes any quantifiable analysis of average residential inequalities with respect to the quality of the housing inhabited. But one may begin from the point that in terms of equality of conditions, the size of housing space available, along with other attributes such as the age of the building, physical access problems, and the characteristics of the surrounding environment, may help to show spatial differences among social groups. In this regard, we can talk of overcrowding as another form of inequality, which may even be considered in its extreme manifestations to exemplify residential exclusion as expressed by Luis Cortés (2008). Some examples of overcrowded households demonstrate the difficult daily life of their inhabitants, particularly when there are no family ties to sustain solidarity among those sharing the same dwelling. Instead, a set of rules is spontaneously established, repeated among residents, which defines the 8

9 temporal and spatial aspects of the communal life and expresses when each part of the property is used and how each member of the dwelling may use the different home s spaces. The rules of shared housing inhabited by people without family or friendship ties are continually repeated, giving rise to the establishment of a hierarchy in which the landlord or owner define the obligations of each person and the times and forms of use of communal spaces such as bathroom, kitchen, and lounge. There is a temporary parcelling of these uses through the assignment of a timetable for access to communal spaces, as well as separate storage space for food in the kitchen or toiletries in the bathroom. These rules frequently reveal the existence of residential exclusion, particularly when the prohibitions make it impossible to use certain communal spaces such as the main living room, or when there is a prohibition on visitors. Despite this, foreign workers have frequently resorted to overcrowding faced with difficulties accessing housing, renting rooms in shared houses due to the difficulty of meeting the payments required to rent individually, though this practice varies in accordance with the origin of immigrants. Moroccans share housing less frequently, except with relatives, due to the difficulties involved for women in extending the rules imposed with relation to non-relatives within their own house. South Americans in general are more used to sharing housing with the rest of their extended family, such that in their countries of origin it is not unusual for a new family to live together with the parents of one or other of the spouses. Romanians have a proportion of segregated households similar to that of Moroccans. This may be influenced by the fact that, belonging to the last wave of immigration, Romanians are more commonly located on the outskirts of the metropolitan area where the housing market is not under such intense pressure, with lower prices and larger properties. In every case it is seen that the degree of overcrowding varies with the duration of residence in the country. The more extreme conditions arise at the beginning, as lack of means, lack of knowledge of the host country, and precarious first jobs lead to sharing of housing, though the so-called call effect may also be a significant element. Many recently arrived immigrants have someone as a point of reference with whom they tend to share housing at the beginning of their migratory journey. Alternatively, this point of reference may simply direct recent arrivals to different housing in which they can live together with others. 9

10 FIGURE 8: Evolution of the overcrowding between the first and the last home of foreigners in Spain (according with the number of sleeping rooms and the size of household) Source : Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes (ENI) INE If we measure overcrowding by available useful floor space, we find values that are somewhat different. Taking into account two levels of overcrowding intensity, we arrive at a distribution that reveals high figures, above 20% for immigrants overall but even reaching 31% in the case of recently arrived Ecuadorians, though subsequently falling to values closer to the average. The surprising aspect is the distance between proportions of overcrowded households for immigrants from developing countries in comparison with foreigners from other countries. Residential mobility The fact that immigrants live more commonly in rental property, together with their greater labour mobility (being more frequently subject to temporary contracts than the rest of the population) and their search for better residential conditions following arrival in the host country, would explain the existence of a level of residential mobility far above the average. In the first year, this mobility reaches 47.8%, which is almost nine times more than the average for Spanish nationals of around 5%. There is a subsequent fall, although the number of changes of residence remains comparatively high. This mobility means frequent change which may make it difficult to put down roots and adapt. Mobility falls rapidly as the step of buying property is taken, as in the majority of cases the high financial cost means changes of residence are not worthwhile. 10

11 TABLE 1: Housing mobility of foreigners in the first year living in Spain Homes Foreigners from developing countries Rumanians Moroccans Ecuadorians Foreigners from developed countries 0 52,2 44,4 60,8 49,2 64,4 1 35,1 41,3 30,2 35,1 27,3 2 9,4 10,2 6,1 12,7 6,1 3 2,6 3,3 1,8 2,5 1,3 4 or more 0,7 0,8 1,2 0,5 0,9 Sourcee: Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes (ENI). INE TABLE 2: Housing mobility of foreigners along their total time living in Spain Homes Foreigners from developing countries Rumanians Moroccans Ecuadorians Foreigners from developed countries 1 28,1 36,6 23,1 22,8 33,6 2 26,5 28,6 23,8 31,8 23,0 3 22,3 19,4 26,5 23,7 19,5 4 11,9 8,2 12,3 11,8 10,5 5 5,7 4,0 7,5 5,9 5,2 6 or more 5,5 3,2 6,9 4,0 8,2 Source Fuente: Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes (ENI). INE Finally, it may be said that as a consequence of immigrants resorting more frequently to renting, with a higher proportion of settlement in older housing and in central areas of the city, housing conditions for immigrants are in general worse than for the population as a whole. Frequent overcrowding and poorer conditions in residential spaces lead to a more intense use of public spaces in the city, as explained by Pedro Uceda (2012 ), such that their balance of occupation is considerably in favour of immigrants rather than nationals. These spaces may often be found to have a reconditioned identity, as a response to the residential exclusion immigrants have experienced. CONCLUSIONS 11

12 Over the course of this work it has been shown that there are variations in residential patterns for different social groups. Immigrants from developing countries have distinct residential patterns from the rest of the population owing to their access to different occupations, which offer lower income and on average require fewer skills. Cultural differences play an important role in these patterns, on occasion giving rise to other cohabitation relationships. But it has been particularly demonstrated that the differences in trends go beyond traditional segregation patterns, with other spatial expressions of social inequality being revealed such as the increased frequency of renting, the occupation of housing in poorer condition, and overcrowding, these together amounting to genuine residential exclusion. References Ubaldo Martínez Veiga (1999) Pobreza, segregación y exclusión espacial, la vivienda de los inmigrantes extranjeros en España. Icaria, Barcelona 1999 Leal and Alguacil, 2012 Vivienda e inmigración las condiciones y el comportamiento residencial de los inmigrantes en España. In Anuario de la Inmigración. Barcelona Dominguez, Martínez and Leal (2012). The limits of segregation as an expression of socioeconomic inequality: the Madrid case in Maloutas, T. and Fujita, K. Residential Segregation an comparative perspective. Ashgate Marta Dominguez, Jesus Leal and Elena Martinez Goytre Maloutas, Thomas and Karadimitriou, Nikos (2002) Vertical social differentiation in Athens, alternative or differentiation to community segregation International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Volume 25, Issue 4, pages , December 2001 Cortés, Luis and others (2008) La exclusión residencial en España en Foessa VI infore sobre la exclusión y el desarrollo social en España. Fundación Foessa. Madrid Uceda, Pedro 2012 Uses and appropriation of public spaces by the foreign population the case of Madrid. Paper presented in RC 21 ISA Congress Buenos Aires, 1.4 Agust. 12