Migration dynamics in the European islands of the Mediterranean: impact, differentiation & challenges to governance

From a biophysical point of view, islands are isolated ecosystems with limited resources, which have conditioned the lives, culture, and relationship with nature of their populations over millennia. However, in recent decades, globalization has turned most Euro-Mediterranean islands into enclaves connected to the global economic market, especially thanks to tourism and real estate investment linked to it. Beyond the positive economic impact that the development of tourism in these contexts has produced, this activity has also generated social, demographic, environmental and cultural impacts. Coppieters Foundation and Fundacions Darder Mascaró have collaborated to study these effects, including the significant population growth under the intensive use of labour in the tourism and construction sectors, and a more discrete weight from a demographic point of view but an important socioeconomic impact, the acquisition of second homes by central and northern European citizens on these islands.

On the 13th of March, we will present the conclusions of the study “Migration dynamics in the European islands of the Mediterranean: impact, differentiation, & challenges to governance” drafted by David Abril Hervás, Marta Barros González, and Josep Valero González (Fundació Intercoopera). The event will be at Estudi General Lul·lià, in Palma de Mallorca.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how these changes have affected the Euro-Mediterranean islands, especially regarding the impacts associated with population growth and its effects at a social, environmental, and cultural level. The islands represent a space of interest for the study given the conditions of the territory that its insular condition entails and, in turn, its geopolitical location halfway between the northern shore and the southern shore of the Mediterranean, which implies a transfer of inequalities also in the interior of the island societies. One of the inequalities that we want to address and denounce with this study is the process of differentiation and social stratification that affects the new citizens of these Euro-Mediterranean islands based on their origin, and which represents a threat to social cohesion and coexistence in these territories.

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This event is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the content of the event nor the opinions of the speakers.

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This is a joint event of Coppieters Foundation and Fundacions Darder Mascaró.

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