Interregional Mobility Of The Productive Factors And The Structural Deficiencies In The Economy: The Expulsion Of Manpower From Galicia

Mobility as a factor of labour is– especially in this stage of economic globalization – a positive aspect that permits the suitability of human capital with regard to the remaining productive factors and the promotion of competitiveness. However, it is also an element that can determine the existence of structural deficiencies in the regions or countries of origin of the emigrants, a true reflection of the inadequacy of matching the demand for labour to an offer that is increasingly qualified. Galicia is a community with extensive experience in the expulsion of manpower to other regions and countries. During the XX century, all the specialists in this area pointed out two waves that were perfectly differentiated in time. The first Galician emigration (fundamentally transoceanic) occurred in the first half of the century and was the result of the deagrarianization of the Galician economy and the incapacity of the industrial and the services sectors to absorb the surplus manpower. The second one was fundamentally directed towards European countries as a consequence, once again, of the inadequate regional capacity of creating extra-agrarian employment and the increasing demand for industrial and services manpower in the economies of the nearby countries. In the last few years of the past century, and especially in the first decade of the XXI century, signs and empirical evidence have started to be detected that in Galicia a wave of what can be de qualified as new emigration is being produced. Indeed, the figures of interregional mobility in Spain indicate the fact that in the last few years, tens of thousands of Galicians have been contracted to work in other Spanish regions. The object of this research, as a result of available date, is to quantify those movements of manpower and, by establishing some starting hypotheses, to verify the causes of the modern third emigration from Galicia.