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MARTA ROIG AND JOAQUÍN RECAÑO-VALVERDE
FIGURE 20.4 Outflows of Remittances by Country of Destination, 2004–09 1,600
Colombia
1,400
€, millions
1,200
Ecuador
1,000 800
Bolivia Morocco
Romania
600 400
Dominican Republic
200 0 2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
Source: Bank of Spain, Balance of Payments.
same period (BRC 2010). Whereas remittances from Spain increased by 17 percent between the first and third trimesters of 2010, those from the United States increased by 2 percent during the same period.
What Explains Differences in Remittance Flows from Spain by Country of Destination? Family Reunification The existing evidence shows that having a spouse and children outside the country of residence strongly influences the amount remitted (for example, Bollard and others 2009; Echazarra 2010). It is possible that, in response to the crisis, some groups of migrants opted to bring their family to Spain and reduce the amount remitted to their countries of origin. There are practically no official data on family reunification, because it is not a formal category among long-term residence permits. However, sudden changes in the composition of migration flows by age and sex, as recorded by the Continuous Population Register, may suggest a wave of family reunification (table 20.1). Overall, the proportion of women in all migrant flows varies significantly by group. Women constitute 55 percent of all Latin American migrants who arrived during the period 2004–09; on average, although a large majority of Moroccan migrants are men, only 34 percent are women. The proportion of children is larger among Colombian and Ecuadorian migrants than among the other two major migrant groups. However, the crisis has not brought about significant changes in the composition of migration flows by sex or by age among these groups so far (from 2007 to 2009), suggesting that family reunification has not been a major response by migrants to the crisis.