Lorenzo Cachón

Introduction: Vulnerability and Resilience of Latin American Immigrants During the Great Recession

This volume focuses on the effects of the Great Recession on Latin American immigrants using a comparative perspective and examines the experiences of Latino immigrants in the United States and Spain. It analyzes the effects of the Great Recession on immigrants’ employment and explores patterns of adaptation and social mechanisms in times of high unemployment, increasing discrimination, and changing host society’s perceptions of immigrants. Because the Great Recession is global in scale, this volume also reports on how immigrants have changed their transnational practices and how border enforcement policies have contributed to worsening the already vulnerable condition of immigrants. This introductory chapter has four main purposes. First, we describe the flow and composition of Latino immigrants in the United States and Spain, the two main destination countries for Latin American migrants. Second, we provide a general account of the different phases of the Great Recession and explain how these phases of the global economic crisis have affected immigrants and Latino immigrants in particular. Third, we provide an analytic framework based on the concepts of vulnerability and resilience to study the increasing risks faced by the Latino immigrant population given the deterioration of labor markets and increasing anti-immigrant sentiment. Latino immigrant reactions in these difficult times are also reported. Finally, we present a road map that describes the structure of the chapters contained in this volume.

Native and Latino Employment During the Great Recession in the US and Spain

In this chapter we analyze employment patterns in the US and Spain of naturalized citizens born in Latin America, immigrants born in Latin America, and native populations during the Great Recession (2007–2013). The immigrant labor market is a social space that is particularly sensitive to economic crises, and where increased vulnerability results in the emergence of resilience practices. We use comparable annual data from the Current Population Survey for the US and from the Economically Active Population Survey in the case of Spain. The patterns identified in the data indicate large negative impacts of the Great Recession on Latinos and the higher sensitivity of their employments to the economic cycle in both countries relative to the employment trends of native populations and naturalized Latino immigrants. We observe that the effects vary by education level, gender, and sector, and that Latino immigrant employment recovered in the US. In the case of Spain this crisis has been so deep and long that a significant Latino immigrant return migration is under way.

Unemployment and Nonstandard Employment Among Natives and Latinos in the US and Spain

This chapter analyzes the effects of the Great Recession on unemployment trends and working conditions of Latino immigrants, Latino naturalized citizens, and natives in the US and Spain. As in the previous chapter, we use comparable annual data from the Current Population Survey for the US and from the Economically Active Population Survey in the case of Spain. The observed trends indicate a relative increasing gap in job quality between Latino immigrants vs. natives. We also estimate and compare adjusted probabilities of unemployment as well as long term unemployment trends among the groups. The data shows strong Latino resilience against unemployment, as well as considerable job quality deterioration among workers in this group in the US. In Spain, the deep and long employment crisis has profoundly affected Latinos and their increased vulnerability is reflected in very high unemployment and long term unemployment rates.