| I | D | E | E | S |
Follow us 
|
CAT ESP |
The gains in longevity registered worldwide over the last century are cause for celebration. Human populations have been able to sustain and extend the lives of most of their members to levels that would have been considered unattainable just a few decades ago. In turn, this unprecedented success in increasing survival has profoundly transformed the societies in which it has occurred, forcing us to address a number of unprecedented challenges. Firstly, population age structures have changed dramatically, with a considerable increase in the population above retirement age. This phenomenon is known as ageing and has major implications for the sustainability…
From a political science perspective, demography is not only fundamental for defining the polity – the community itself, with its culture and forms of organisation – but, increasingly, it also shapes policy – the public policies that need to be adapted to demographic changes― and above all politics: political positions and party political debate, where issues such as immigration, integration and identity are today used to polarise opinion and divide societies. For this reason, and given that the aim of the Centre for Contemporary Studies is to promote informed, evidence-based public debate, dedicating this issue of IDEES magazine to a…
According to the population estimates by the Statistical Institute of Catalonia (Idescat), in November 2023 the population of Catalonia reached 8 million inhabitants. This growth, raising the population of Catalonia from 7 to 8 million in just 17 years, occurred despite two major crises: the 2008 economic crisis, which reversed migration flows, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which paralysed migration dynamics. This demographic trend reflects the resilience of the Catalan population, which has doubled in size over the last six decades, from 4 million in 1961 to 8 million in 2023. Of this increase, 2 million were added between 1961 and…
Ageing as a burden on the pension system One of the pillars of the welfare state in our country is the Social Security system, which during the 21st century in Spain has separated the health sphere (financed entirely by taxes) from the labour sphere, which is self-financed through compulsory contributions and provides both unemployment benefits and contributory pensions. It is therefore a closed system, which receives and distributes contributions, with any surplus going to what is commonly known as the “pension fund”. Only in the event of a deficit can this piggy bank be used, or if no savings are…
Spain has one of the lowest fertility levels in Europe and one of the highest average ages of motherhood. Despite the observed low fertility, individuals’ preferences regarding family size have remained fairly constant over time, at an average of around two children, with no significant differences between social and geographic contexts. This means that many people do not achieve their desired number. Concerns over the decline in birth rates have been at the centre of the Spanish public debate, with expressions such as “demographic winter” used to describe the alarming situation in terms of fertility. This chapter aims to provide…
On the road to 10 billion About two centuries ago, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the world’s population reached one billion inhabitants. This rose to two billion after the First World War, to four billion in the years of the moon landings, reaching eight billion in 2022. Fortunately, the race has been slowing down, a new doubling is not in sight and, according to the latest projections by the United Nations, the population of the planet could stabilise in the last three decades of this century, at around ten billion. That is two billion more people than today…
In the current demographic context, characterised by very low fertility rates and a progressively ageing population due to high life expectancy, migration has become the main component of demographic trends in the countries around us. Catalonia is no exception; the last two decades have seen intense international migratory flows, associated with globalisation. These have been the main component of population growth, leading Catalonia’s population to exceed 8 million inhabitants by the end of 2023. Indeed, we are currently in the midst of a second migratory boom, which, like the first one at the beginning of the century, involves accelerating international…
Migration is as old as humanity itself. People have been on the move since the earliest times, either voluntarily or forced into it through famine, climate change or war and conflict. Our ancestors travelled from Africa to all other parts of the world. Hunter-gatherers in prehistoric times travelled long distances in search for food. The early Middle Ages witnessed large population movements in Europe. Slavery forcibly brought millions of people from Africa to the Americas and the Middle East, and in the 19th and 20th centuries, millions of migrants from Europe sought their luck in the New World of North…
Over the past few decades, fertility rates have declined dramatically across most regions of the world. In many high-income societies, and even some middle-income countries, the number of children per woman now hovers well below the replacement threshold of 2.1, a level at which population would decrease in the absence of migration. Rates in Southern Europe and East Asia, for instance, lie below 1.5 (with Spain’s lingering between 1.2 and 1.1 in recent years); in South Korea, fertility has plunged to around 0.7, the lowest in the world. Even the United States, once considered an outlier because its fertility remained…
Introduction: international migration and political polarisation With the economic globalisation that coincided with the new millennium, migration flows accelerated, rose in volume and diversified. In Catalonia, as in the rest of Spain, this growth represented the first boom in international migration, from 2000 to 2007. Labour market demand during economic expansion, combined with the demand produced by outsourcing part of reproductive labour (domestic work and care of children and the elderly), largely explains this extraordinary increase in volume and acceleration. The explosive rise in demand was driven both by a production model based on low value-added, employment-intensive economic sectors (from…
How have families changed over the last few decades in Spain? Recently, the data from the 2021 census was made fully available to researchers, allowing them to provide an updated picture of what families are like in today’s Spain. In this article, we aim to give an overview of the latest trends in partnering and parenthood, and reflect on the extent to which these match people’s preferences. Finding a partner and having children are important objectives for much of the population and the extent to which people are able to achieve those goals should therefore be a concern for any…
Writing the prologue to a volume on demography, on population evolution in Catalonia, Spain and the world, which analyses the main demographic phenomena that explain this evolution (fertility, mortality and migration) from different angles, is necessarily an exercise in meta-demography. It is a reflection on demography in three aspects: first, as a system for the reproduction of populations, major life events and the decisions surrounding them, which give rise to demographic behaviours alongside structural transformations; second, as a scientific discipline, given its role and the paradigm shift brought about by the information revolution and, therefore, by statistical data (so-called big…
Demographic ageing is a complex process that goes far beyond simple changes in percentages; it transforms populations and makes them more sophisticated. However, in the hegemonic public narrative, we still do not recognise ourselves as the population we have already become. The discourse regarding demographic ageing often gets lost in issues of how to reverse the irreversible or rejuvenate the population. Although demographic ageing is the result of multiple achievements, it is often seen as a threat. And despite there being no cyclical element involved, it is presented as a passing crisis, the solutions to which are always simple and…
Recent decades, perhaps even going farther back, have not been kind to the Balkans, a peripheral region of the European Union. The wars of the 1990s, which led to the disintegration of the Yugoslav space, and poor post-conflict management by both local and global actors, mainly the US and the EU, have left the affected countries in despair. For years they have been waiting on the fulfilment of the promises made by Brussels at the various summits held, starting with those in Santa Maria da Feira and Zagreb in 2000. At the Thessaloniki Summit in 2003, the European Council committed…
In the age of alternative facts, the shadow of war crimes still pervades all public and cultural spaces in the Balkans, defies transitional justice efforts and fuels historical revisionism, understood as an exclusionary political counter-legacy that exalts triumphalism as the culmination of genocide. To this end, it imposes a distorted narrative, driven by actors with particular interests, which seeks new elements of post-modern historical memory in which there is no unified account of the common past or of the true nature of these conflicts, which can thus be reactivated. This reality is particularly visible today in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where…
Nearly twenty years after a regional reconciliation process, formerly known as the RECOM Reconciliation Network, was launched in the Yugoslav successor states, the region needs it more than ever as global conflicts threaten peace and stability on a much broader level. Officially established at the Prishtina Regional Forum in 2008 as the Coalition for RECOM, the name was the shorthand version of the “Regional Commission Tasked with Establishing the Facts about All Victims of War Crimes and Other Serious Human Rights Violations Committed on the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia”. Although not the only initiative in the region, RECOM epitomises…
After the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the fall of communism in Albania, and three decades after the start of their respective democratisation processes, the six Western Balkan countries have advanced at different speeds in building their democratic systems. Wide-ranging civil liberties have been guaranteed through regular multi-party elections and, in general terms, the separation of powers has been enshrined. At the same time, however, many of the region’s political elites have become entrenched in informal power structures, based on clientelist practices and undemocratic capture. The media, judiciary, non-governmental organisations and political opposition have been the main targets for attacks to…
In recent years, the Western Balkans have been the scene of numerous social mobilisations: from student protests to demonstrations in defence of the environment and public space; from mobilisations for democracy and against corruption to demands for social and civil rights. In Serbia, the country’s political life over the past decade has been dominated by environmental protests, such as the Rio Tinto protests between 2021 and 2022 and the Ne Davimo Beograd (we won’t let Belgrade drown) movement launched in 2014, and the anti-government protests against the regime of Aleksandar Vučić and his Progressive Party (SNS), such as the 1…
Hundreds of eyes follow with excitement, admiration and anguish as a young child, known as that “enxaneta” of the Minyons de Terrassa human tower group climbs up to crown such a tower in the middle of Trg Barcelona square, in Mojmilo, the former Olympic village of the unforgettable Sarajevo ‘84 Games. Behind the solid human tower, a Gaudí dragon with the message “Barcelona, Sarajevo is with you” is painted along the entire side façade. This graffiti, projected the day after the terrible jihadist attack on the Ramblas in Barcelona on 17 August 2017, was how residents of Mojmilo gave back…
We are used to thinking of young people as a force for democratic change. But youth research over the last decade has pointed to a gloomier picture – fewer and fewer young people are politically engaged worldwide. This is certainly true at least when it comes to conventional tools for democratic participation, such as political party membership, voter turnout and electoral support for major parties, all of which have been marked by decline over the past decade. The costs of such a “youth democratic disconnect” are immense and could become one of the greatest dangers of our times. If youngsters…
The European Union was taken by surprise by the geopolitical turning point of 24 February 2022. Yet, at a time when the geography of enlargement is changing, the Union is struggling to revive a process in the Western Balkans on which its credibility and, increasingly, its security depend. The European Union’s failure to ensure that its vulnerabilities in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia do not worsen calls for a rethink of the European policy of influence in the region. The EU’s policy of influence in the Western Balkans is based primarily on the accession process in which Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Northern…
The February 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine has woken up the institutions and Member States of the European Union (EU) from a decade-long enlargement coma. Since then, the Union’s leadership has started discussing the need to facilitate the EU enlargement process, even setting 2030 as a potential target date for welcoming new EU members. This awakening has been demonstrated by the major political decisions to grant former Eastern Partnership countries Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia candidate status and starting accession negotiations with the former two in early 2024. With these actions, the leaders of the EU have reconfigured the understanding…
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine of February 2022 has propelled EU enlargement to the top of Europe’s political agenda and linked it inextricably to the question of European security. The reshaping of the global political landscape, where strategic competition, growing global instability and attempts to undermine the rules-based international order are prominent features, has added further complexity to EU enlargement. The geopolitical imperative has seemingly expedited EU enlargement, while the merit-based transformative objectives of the process sit uncomfortably in the balance. This article provides a critical analysis of the evolution of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans, zooming in…
Even a child in Europe bends under the weight of the past.A literate European is caught in the spider-web of an in memoriam at once luminous and suffocating.George Steiner (2004) History has never gone away and never will —anywhere. There are lulls in time and space when it seems otherwise. Such was the time during and after Europe’s Annus Mirabilis in 1989, when indeed it seemed that, with the Fall of Communism, things had somehow simmered down and there would be, at least in Europe, some form of convergence toward democracy, the rule of law and a social market economy…
In the restaurant of a Hilton Hotel, a Kenyan waitress takes your order. In another Hilton, a Filipino woman mops the floor. In a very expensive restaurant, the chatter is in Russian. Utterly unremarkable? However, this is not London or Berlin. The Kenyan is dressed in Serbian ethnic costume and is in Belgrade. The rich Russians are in Belgrade, too, and the Filipino woman is in Tirana. All of them are pioneers. Until very recently, the Western Balkans were of interest only to migrants as countries to pass through on their way to the European Union. These countries were poor,…
What are the challenges linked to the economic development of the six Western Balkan countries in the last three decades? There is growing awareness today among academics and experts within international organisations that the Western Balkans have not yet developed sufficiently, since over the years they have converged only marginally towards average European Union (EU) income levels. Yet there is insufficient understanding about the causes of such trends and disagreements about the main remedies for the future. The article aims to offer insights into these questions by analysing the main obstacles to economic development in the Western Balkans from a…
The recent European elections met the predictions of tilting the ‘balance of power’ to the right and exporting to the European level the already visible national trends of populist, far-right and Eurosceptic political parties becoming more prominent in many European countries. The elections happened during times of unprecedented geopolitical volatility and global polarisation, as the war in Ukraine continues unabated, the Middle East is simmering and tensions in the South China Sea and around Taiwan are rising. In such a context, the new European leadership will continue to face difficult decisions. One of the toughest ones: how to manage the…
We had often thought that, in order to interpret Balkan complexity, we had to look primarily at the past. That the dynamics affecting the region actually respond to long-standing and unresolved conflicts; a chronicle of the end of empires, nation-building and ethnicities. And it is true that, as Ivan Vejvoda explains in the article that opens this issue of IDEES magazine, history has not gone away and probably never will. However, the future of the Balkans is neither written nor predetermined. The title chosen for this new special issue, number 63 ―coordinated by Ioannis Armakolas and Ruth Ferrero― is no…
Following European Union Commission president Jean-Claude Junker’s 2015 statement that there would be no EU enlargement on his watch, the Balkan countries were struck with the realisation that their EU prospects had come to a halt. The region holds a crucial geopolitical position, not least for its proximity to the EU but also because it bridges the gap between Western Europe and the Middle East. Encompassing the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, the area has a complex history marked by ethnic tensions and political upheaval that extends to this day. The EU has…
The liberal, secularised state is sustained by conditions it cannot itself guarantee. That is the great gamble it has made for the sake of liberty Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde In the circles of those who endeavour to interpret the present in political and social terms, one word in particular is currently being discussed: the polycrisis. Coined by Edgar Morin and circulated in particular by the economic historian Adam Tooze, this term describes a sum of heterogeneous, mutually reinforcing crises, from the pandemic to runaway inflation, from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to global food insecurity, from the first visible effects of…