Resumen de Immigrants in Spain: sociolinguistic issues
María Teresa Hernández García, Félix Villalba Martínez
A general vision of immigration in Spain will be presented in the following pages, with an emphasis on the sociolinguistic aspects of the teaching/learning of Spanish as an L2. The changes that Spain has undergone over the last quarter century have been so intense that they have had an impact on the traditional migratory tendency of the country, causing it to pass from the producer of migrants to the receiver of immigrants. Figures support this statement: the fact, for instance, that a million and a half Spanish immigrants were still living abroad in 1995, while the number of foreigners residing in Spain at present has reached more than three million. In spite of the fact that Spain is still far behind neighboring countries in terms of the numbers of immigrants living there, immigration has contributed to the demographic rise and economic development of the nation. At the same time, however, it has also caused a series of social demands that have not always been met adequately; for example, the schooling of child and teenage immigrants, access to the labor market for immigrant workers, access to the health system, housing, etc. Also, for a high percentage of the immigrant population, the learning of the Spanish language becomes one of their primary necessities upon arrival. This need, in the case of children and teenagers, is being met by the educational institutions, though with differing results. A lack of an official Spanish as an L2 curriculum that combines general communicative as well as academic competence causes the Spanish-language teaching programs to become less efficient.
