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A New Look at Immigration and Europe's Demographic Prospects [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-18

There are a pair of excellent articles about the role immigration may or may not play in Europe’s demographic future in today’s Guardian. The first is an in-depth look at how immigration has really turned Spain’s economic prospects around for the better:

How Spain’s radically different approach to migration helped its economy soar From Madrid to Barcelona, restaurants and bars are brimming with people, and reservations have become essential for everything from fine dining to high-end hotels. It’s a glimpse of how Spain has become Europe’s buzziest economy – named the world’s best by the Economist in 2024 – fuelled in part by what analysts have described as the government’s strikingly different approach to migration. This difference was laid bare late last year when Spain’s prime minister gave a stark warning on migration. But unlike his counterparts in Italy, Germany or France, Pedro Sánchez was intent on rallying the country behind a markedly different approach. “Spain needs to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country,” he told parliament in October. “It’s as simple as that.” Migration was not only a question of humanity, he said, but – in a country where the birthrate ranked among the lowest in the EU – it was the only realistic means of growing the economy and sustaining the welfare state.

The whole article is well worth reading, but for the number nerds here, their Stat of the Day in today’s email First Look sums it up nicely:

Stat of the day: Migrants made up less than 2% of Spain’s population in 1998 – now it’s 15% In Spain, where migrants have gone from making up less than 2% of the population in 1998 to more than 15% in two decades, analysts say the country’s more open approach to migration has boosted Spain’s economy, which was named the world’s best by the Economist in 2024. Spain’s economy grew by 3.2% last year, compared with Italy’s 0.5%, Britain’s 0.9% and the Netherlands’ 0.8%. Migration, along with factors including investment in green energy and tourism, played a part in this strong performance, experts said.

The second is a country-by-country breakdown of the demographic future facing the various nations of Europe (from which the headline graphic is drawn) — one in which immigration is actually encouraged, and the other where it is essentially closed off entirely (Festung Europa):

The rise of the far-right could speed up the population decline of Europe, projections show, creating economic shocks including slower growth and soaring costs from pensions and elderly care. Anti-immigration politics is on the rise across the EU, as shown by the gains made by far-right parties in the 2024 elections. Meanwhile, the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is polling second in the run-up to the German federal election this month. But those wanting to shut Europe’s borders must contend with a stark demographic reality: the continent’s native population is expected to fall sharply over the next century in an era of low birth rates. Experts warn that European societies will age more quickly without immigration, bringing forward a host of economic challenges as workforces shrink and care burdens grow. … The latest projections produced by Eurostat, the EU’s official statistics agency, suggest that the bloc’s population will be 6% smaller by 2100 based on current trends – falling to 419 million, from 447 million today. But that decline pales in comparison with Eurostat’s scenario without immigration. The agency projects a population decline of more than a third, to 295 million by 2100, when it excludes immigration from its modelling. Eurostat’s baseline projections assume countries will maintain their average net migration levels from the past 20 years, but the Guardian has examined figures also published by the agency with this assumption left out. … Only a handful of EU states would notice little difference from closed borders: Romania, Latvia and Lithuania, all countries that have experienced a net outflow of people. Instead, in most of Europe, populations would not only shrink in the absence of current immigration levels, but also become older as the number of working-age people fall relative to elderly people. Today, 21% of the EU population is aged 65 or over. In Eurostat’s baseline scenario, this proportion will rise to 32% by 2100, but in the agency’s zero-immigration scenario, it will increase further, to 36%.

Food for thought if we wish to rebut MAGA’s self-defeating anti-immigration policies with real facts — but then again, since the MAGA brain (such as it is) is so unusually resistant to both facts and logical reasoning, it probably won’t make much of a difference in our current Xtian/Techbro Idiocracy.

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/18/2304654/-A-New-Look-at-Immigration-and-Europe-s-Demographic-Prospects?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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