The false stereotype of immigrants as potential criminals, fuelled by Vox and to which the PP has begun to adapt, does not correspond to social science studies. However, it takes hold and periodically revives despite the arguments. “Science does not fit with populism. There is no doubt. There is no direct relationship between migration and crime,” says Elisa García España, professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Malaga. “The perception is so strong, the stereotype and prejudice is so powerful that it is, as the American sociologist Rubén G. Rumbaut says, a zombie idea. No matter how much you kill it, how much you counter-argue it and how much they show that it is not like that, it remains alive,” she adds.
Fear of immigration has returned to the political agenda – and social media – coinciding with the Catalan elections or in the face of the crisis in the Canary Islands. It has weighed so much that Vox broke up the five regional governments it formed with the PP because the Popular Party agreed to the distribution of 400 migrant minors on the Peninsula. The PP has begun to immerse itself in an argumentative framework that until now was dominated by the extreme right, which usually speaks of “imported crimes”, in reference to gang rape, or which defends manipulated postulates such as that “illegal immigration by its very name is a crime”, as stated by Vox spokesperson Jorge Buxadé in April 2023.
During the Catalan election campaign, at the beginning of May, Alberto Núñez Feijóo called for a vote in Catalonia so that immigrants “do not occupy our homes”. “Spaniards have the right to go out into the street in peace”, added the leader of the PP on 22 July before his supporters, one day before voting against, together with Junts and Vox, the reform of the immigration law agreed with the Canary Islands Government (of which the PP are part) with the central Executive, to alleviate the critical situation on the islands due to the arrival of unaccompanied migrant minors.
In contrast to political action, events such as the murder of an 11-year-old boy in Mocejón (Toledo) have been agitated on social media by extremists, such as MEP Alvise Pérez, linking the murder of the minor to migrants. The Prosecutor’s Office even announced that it was studying the legal-criminal significance of these “false messages” for criminalising “in a generalised way” foreign people, after which many of those who spread them deleted them and even closed their accounts on social networks.
All this in a country considered safe. The Spanish crime rate, 48 criminal offences per 1,000 inhabitants (including cybercrime) in 2022, remains low compared to neighbouring countries such as the United Kingdom (79.5 per thousand inhabitants), Belgium (74.8), Germany (60.7) or Denmark (53.9). The conventional crime rate in Spain, which does not include cybercrime because it is mostly committed from outside the country, has even shown a downward or stable trend over the last 13 years and stands at 41 crimes per 1,000 inhabitants, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.
The Ministry’s coordination and studies team, which carries out the crime reports, has compared this latest rate with the figures for foreigners in Spain (which do not distinguish between EU and non-EU citizens) and has concluded that “the phenomenon of immigration is not having a negative or significant impact on crime,” according to sources from Fernando Grande-Marlaska’s department. The foreign population is currently at 13.4%, according to these figures.
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Antonia Linde, director of the Criminology degree at the Open University of Catalonia and specialised in crime statistics, sees the stability in the rates as a “good sign”. “It could be an indicator that the immigrant population is improving its living conditions in Spain and there are fewer unemployed and, therefore, they live in less precarious and poor conditions. It would be necessary to analyse whether the rates remain stable to the same extent for nationals and foreigners”, she adds.
Data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) indicate that Spaniards commit more crimes than foreigners in absolute terms. In 2022, 74.19% of those convicted had Spanish nationality, compared to 25.81% of foreigners. But if the rates per 1,000 inhabitants are analysed, it is true that the number of foreign convicted persons is double that of Spaniards, 18.1 compared to 7.5. However, criminologists warn that there is an overrepresentation of foreigners due to various factors, none of which is their nationality or origin.
García España, who has been researching the relationship between immigration and crime for more than 20 years, stresses that it is methodologically very difficult to establish a certain relationship between the two phenomena, primarily because of the definition of immigrant. “Statistics do not record who is a migrant, but rather their origin. The closest approximation is the people who fall under the immigration law, who are all non-EU citizens,” he explains. “The term immigration is sociological and is not included anywhere,” he adds.
“You have to know what you are talking about,” criminologist Linde agrees. “An emigrant is someone who moves to another country with the intention of settling there, and not all of them are foreigners. There are foreigners in prison for committing crimes related to organised crime. These are not emigrants, but people of another nationality who come to commit a crime in Spanish territory, are arrested and sentenced and become part of the prison population,” she explains.
Linde cites circumstances that may explain why statistics show an overrepresentation of foreigners in prison and which must be taken into account, such as the fact that they are assisted by public defenders because they do not have the financial resources to provide a better defence; that they benefit less from third-degree prison sentences or semi-freedom because they do not have roots, a family home, or employment; or that, as many studies indicate, the immigrant population is questioned by the police to a greater extent than nationals, so that “there is a greater probability that a crime committed by a foreigner will be detected by the police”.
The link between this overrepresentation and living in impoverished areas with high unemployment rates has also been shown. “If we look at the crime rate in the general population, unemployment is also one of the characteristics present,” he adds. “Empirical evidence has refuted the theories that supported the existence of more criminogenic cultures. We cannot associate being a migrant with being a criminal,” concludes Linde.
As it is a complex topic, the studies analyze data by region or province over periods of 10 or more years. César Alonso-Borrego, professor of economics at the Carlos III University of Madrid, is co-author of a study published in 2012 by the journal American Law and Economics Review, which concludes that there is no relationship between migration and crime. The work, widely cited in the scientific field, analyzed the provincial police database from 1999 to 2009 and took into account variables such as the difference between native Spaniards and immigrants by educational level, socioeconomic characteristics, age, gender, mother tongue or origin.
“We saw from other data sources who the people who commit crimes are: young men with low or below average educational levels, whose importance is relatively greater in the migrant population,” explains the professor. This explains, these experts agree, the overrepresentation of migrants in the rates, because in the total number of adults residing in Spain there is a higher proportion of young foreigners, whose age coincides with the migrants.
Alonso-Borrego’s research did not find that migration significantly affected the total number of crimes, nor serious crimes or crimes against property. Only a positive effect of around 1% was found in administrative offences. “It is not the immigrant status that explains a greater propensity to commit crimes,” stresses the professor from Carlos III, who emphasises the context surrounding people. “I still do not see any justification for alarmism,” adds the professor.
The migratory wave in Professor Alonso-Borrego’s study had a substantial part of Latin American citizens. The authors, who also include Nuno Garoupa and Pablo Vázquez, concluded that the fact of sharing a language had facilitated their integration. The effect is similar to that produced in the United States, with the so-called Latin paradox, on the arrival of Mexican immigrants and the reduction of crime in some areas, and which was considered a “virtuous selection” of individuals whose propensity to commit crimes was lower than that of the native population. Another nationality, the Romanian, one of the oldest to arrive in Spain, took longer to integrate. “When more time passed, the number of immigrants decreased.” [su tasa de delincuencia] assimilating to that of the natives. One recipe is undoubtedly integration,” concludes Alonso-Borrego.
Over the past nine years, the percentage of Spanish and foreign people (including EU citizens) arrested or investigated for criminal offences has remained stable, according to Interior data. The fact that foreign citizens are involved in an average of 33% of police cases is an example of this overrepresentation, according to experts, who point to other elements already mentioned, such as the special focus of the police on certain groups or the fact that not all procedures ultimately go ahead.
“The problem is how we welcome these people, how we integrate them into society,” says Professor García España. “We focus on those who come from outside as if they came with the criminal gene. (…) Simplifying everything in the concept of immigration, in my opinion, is racism, because underneath there are a lot of arguments, indicators and variables that have nothing to do with the fact of being a foreigner, or with the migratory process,” she adds.
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