Barcelona’s got talent: migration, residential change and socioeconomic polarisation

The Barcelona City Council has, for the first time, provided to researchers the educational level of the population among the results of its register for migration and residential mobility. With these data, in addition to the well-known structure by age, sex and place of origin of migrants, it is now possible to know the educational profile of people arriving in the city and those moving within it. This is a key factor for understanding the processes of polarisation and social segregation in the city of Barcelona and its neighbourhoods. The data show that Barcelona has power, considerable power of attraction for a highly-qualified youthful population, but little power when it comes to distributing this population homogeneously among its neighbourhoods. The central part of the city is more attractive for the well-qualified population which is arriving, while hardly any of the less-educated population is moving into these neighbourhoods. Moreover, the internal residential mobility of the Barcelona inhabitants tends to perpetuate pre-existing socioeconomic differences in the city. The neighbourhoods of higher household income retain and attract more educated people, while lower-income areas retain and attract less-educated people with fewer chances of moving up the housing ladder. The combination of these dynamics is, then, contributing towards the process of socioeconomic polarisation in the city of Barcelona