Sixth European Urban and Regional Studies Conference Residential mobility and foreign immigration settlement in the Metropolitan area of Barcelona Authors:

Foreign immigration is a very recent phenomenon in Spain and Barcelona. Over the last few years, and especially since 2001, there has been strong growth in the number of non-EU immigrants changing the historical characterisation of Spain as a country of emigration, above all in the 1960s and 1970s. As in other countries with a high degree of foreign population, one of the principal consequences has been the transformation of the social structure, with a special focus in the larger cities. Barcelona, after Madrid, is the second principal area for settlement of this flux of immigration. In 1999, in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB) there were some 89,744 foreign inhabitants (2.09 % of population) increasing to 531,040 such inhabitants (11.13 % of population) in 2005. Clearly, this assumes a very strong change in the social composition in the metropolis generating new social dynamics unknown until today. But in view of this new reality, the first question to be asked is where has this population settled? To understand the settlement process and the dynamics of immigration in the MAB, consideration needs to be given to the suburbanization process and the residentia