Does Immigration Contribute to Convergence Among Regional Labour Markets?

Foreign immigration is still a recent phenomenon in Spain, but its magnitude and growth has been extraordinarily important during the last years. According to the available data (Foreigners Official Register), foreign residents have increased by 382 percent between 1996 and 2005, that is from around 538.000 to more than 2.5 million people. It is generally accepted that immigrants may have, according to their magnitude, important effects on labour markets of the destination countries. First, because immigrants are a rather different population group due to their personal and labour characteristics compared to domestic population. So, immigrants may constitute a potential factor of changing the dynamics or the domestic labour markets. On the other hand, in the Spanish case immigrants population is characterized by displaying an unequal territorial distribution, with remarkable regional differences in terms of immigration rates and aggregate figures. On the basis of these ideas, the aim of the paper is to analyse to what extent the massive immigration flows to Spain along the last years has modified the parameters of regional labour markets, contributing or not to change regional differences of the main characteristics of the domestic markets.