Understanding how immigrants integrate into host societies is essential for examining contemporary social inequality. Integration entails, among other things, participation in the labour market, sufficient income, access to the educational system, and appropriate housing conditions. Immigrant communities in Europe exhibit diverse patterns across these domains, falling short of what might be considered optimal integration. 

Economic growth differentials and unequal relations between sending and receiving countries are strong drivers of international mobility and factor into within-country social inequalities. In Spain, for example, the growing purchasing power of the middle classes and the increase in income and wealth inequalities of recent decades are linked to increasing immigration and social cleavages. These dynamics influence integration patterns in workforce participation, income, education, and housing, particularly among immigrants from former colonies in Latin America and nearby African countries. While some immigrants benefit from moving to Spain, for others, the migration experience leads to increased social and economic vulnerability.

As a result, the immigrant population is far from homogeneous. The profiles of immigrants in Spain  range from highly privileged groups to largely disadvantaged ones. The privileged immigrants often hold positions as highly skilled/specialised workers and enjoy access to formal, secure, and well-paid employment, while the disadvantaged typically provide essential services such as personal care, cleaning, and domestic work, often under informal conditions which in turn limit their rights, income, access to housing, and social mobility. This diversity speaks to the various integration strategies and how they depend on and likely reinforce existing social inequalities. 

In this context, this work provides an empirical assessment of how social and economic inequalities shape the social classes in Spain, and how immigrants from different regions of the world enter this class system.

This study utilised data from the 2021 Spanish Survey of Essential Living and Housing Conditions (ECEPOV, by its Spanish acronym) collected by the Spanish National Statistical Office. The ECEPOV is nationally representative of the Spanish population.

The authors employed a multivariate statistical technique known as multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to summarise and visually represent the associations of seven socioeconomic variables among adult individuals (i.e., ages 20 to 64; n = 223,568). These variables are: educational attainment, occupation, household income, homeownership and housing access, multiple properties, population size in the place of residence, and parental educational background. The MCA shows the associations between the categories of these variables. For example, tertiary education is usually associated with high income, whereas it appears to be negatively correlated with unemployment.

These summary correlations were used to cluster individuals into social classes, i.e., into groups based on the confluence of socioeconomic factors. For example, a low-income agricultural worker living in a rural area who owns their home will be grouped with individuals living in rural or semi-urban areas that work in elementary occupations and own their home. By the same token, these hypothetical individuals will be in a different social class compared to a highly skilled individual working in the technology sector in a major city, who has a high income and pays rent for housing. 

To understand how material living conditions differ across these social classes, the study compares the socioeconomic advantages in terms of employment, access to tertiary education, income, and homeownership for a subsample of the study population, namely, adults between 34 and 54 years of age.

The upper social class (C1), predominantly consists of individuals with the highest levels of education, concentrated in skilled occupations. More than 75% of people in the upper class have access to employment, tertiary education, high income, and homeownership without financial burdens. Most respondents have parents who are also highly educated, pointing to an intergenerational transmission of social position. Thus, socioeconomic privileges converge in the upper social class.

The upper-middle and middle classes (C2 and C3) exhibit similar levels of formal employment, but lower educational attainment and income levels compared to the upper social class. Homeownership rates are also markedly lower in the case of C3. In C2, still, more than 60% of individuals have socially and economically privileged characteristics. On the contrary, the lower educational attainment in C3 goes along with lower income and homeownership levels. Less than 25% of people in the middle class (C3) hold tertiary degrees and live in high-income households. Likewise, only a half of them are homeowners without financial burdens. 

The lower-middle class (C4) displays high levels of formal employment and homeownership. In terms of income, this class is similar to the middle class, with only 25% of individuals living in high-income households. Its most salient characteristic is that virtually no one in this class holds a tertiary degree. Notably, most people from this class reside in rural areas, defined as municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants. 

The lower and lowest social classes (C5 and C6) represent the most disadvantaged populations. These social classes face the highest unemployment rates, with less than 40% of them being employed and virtually no people with tertiary degrees. There are no high-income households in this social class and 80% of their members fall into the lowest income bracket (i.e., less than €1,000 per month). These factors result in the lowest homeownership rates and the most pronounced economic struggles in securing housing for both renters and owners, with rent and mortgage payments above 35%  of household income. In short, in these two social classes, socioeconomic disadvantages coexist and mutually reinforce each other. 

Immigrants are in all social classes; however, their shares vary substantially according to their region of origin. For example, African immigrants are 2.3% of the study population, and they compose 8.7% of C6, meaning that they are overrepresented in this group. The reverse is true for C1 to C3, where Africans are underrepresented. Indeed, the share of African immigrants  in the top two social classes is virtually zero, meaning that they are excluded from these social positions. 

More generally, the results show a gradient in the composition of the social classes by region of birth. Spanish-born individuals are overrepresented in C1 to C4 and underrepresented in C5 and C6. A common feature among C2 to C4 is that the Spanish-born population represents more than 85% of the social class.  

Despite immigrants’ overrepresentation in lower social classes, Spanish-born individuals make up the majority of the socially excluded. More than 65% of individuals in C5 and C6 are Spanish-born, and at least 60% have Spanish-born parents. Second-generation individuals are present in similar shares across classes with a slight overrepresentation in the last two. 

At the other end of the spectrum, the underrepresentation of African individuals in the top three classes implies their virtual absence in this high-status social milieu. The top classes are not accessible for African immigrants. Immigrants from the European Union display a U-shaped pattern across the classes, meaning an overrepresentation in higher and lower classes potentially reflecting existing inequalities across European Union nations (e.g., West-East divergent migration flows). The shares for immigrants from Latin American and Caribbean countries look like those of the second generation. 
All in all, social classes allow us to empirically challenge simplistic narratives that view immigrants as a homogeneous group in constant need of social assistance. While immigrants are overrepresented in socially disadvantaged clusters, some regions of origin are also present in the middle and upper social strata. Additionally, we find socially excluded populations among natives as well, making the case for the persisting role of social class divisions in contemporary Spain. Although racism plays a key role in the exclusion of immigrants and non-white groups, there are other factors contributing to both natives’ and immigrants’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion; class is a fundamental one.

Analysing immigrants’ integration patterns into host countries is crucial for understanding the growing complexity and the emerging inequality trends in contemporary societies. The Spanish case is particularly relevant, as it has become Europe’s second-largest recipient of immigrants over the past two decades. 
Recent immigration flows to Spain are characterised by the highly diverse socioeconomic profiles of people, spanning from privileged groups to those facing substantial disadvantages. As a result, the generalised concept of “immigration” often masks divergent integration processes fostered by the characteristics of the hosting society and the heterogeneous demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds of the newly arrived population.
 

This article has provided a measure of the confluence and interaction between categories of social privilege and disadvantage constituting contemporary Spanish society. Both native and foreign-born populations in Spain face the impacts of social inequality, as illustrated by the convergence of disadvantaged social categories. Given that the Spanish-born population constitutes the majority, a significant proportion of individuals in both socially privileged and disadvantaged groups were born in Spain.  However, foreign-born individuals, particularly immigrants from Africa, are significantly overrepresented in disadvantaged social classes, while being virtually absent from the top social classes.

This research also confirms the results obtained by previous studies on second-generation immigrants in Spain. While second-generation immigrants occupy a relatively advantaged social position compared to first-generation immigrants, their socioeconomic outcomes remain worse than those of native Spaniards. This suggests only partial integration and raises concerns about the effectiveness of existing redistribution policies.

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