Euromarriages in Spain: Recent Trends and Patterns in the Context of European Integration

Abstract

This article examines recent trends and patterns in binational marriages between European citizens in Spain over a 20‐year period and the sociodemographic profile and nationality composition of these binational marriages. The analysis relies on aggregate marriage statistics and on marriage register microdata for 2008–2009. We use odds ratios to monitor trends and characteristics of binational marriages and multinomial regression to further examine the sociodemographic profile of these couples. The analysis of marriage records reveals only a modest rise in Euromarriages over the 1990–2009 period. This moderate increase in Euromarriages points towards a weak social impact of the European single market. Moreover, the analysis also suggests that binational marriages more often involve lesser‐educated than more‐educated individuals. Finally, findings on the social and nationality compositions of binational marriages conform to theoretical predictions drawn from the literatures of marriage markets, endogamy, and social hypergamy. They show that the affinity between Spaniards and European Union (EU‐15) citizens is lesser than that between Spaniards and non‐Europeans (i.e. Latin Americans). They also show that patterns of binational marriages are highly gender specific. Whereas the affinity between Spanish women and EU‐15 men is higher than the affinity between Spanish women and ‘new’ European men, the affinity between Spanish men and ‘new’ European women is higher than the affinity between Spanish men and EU‐15 women. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mixed marriages between immigrants and natives in Spain: The gendered effect of marriage market constraints

“…By contrast, for both men and women higher education is mostly positively associated with the likelihood of marrying a partner from Western Europe or North America. Medrano et al (2014) find something similar when examining marriages between Spaniards and other Europeans, making a rough distinction between the natives of EU-15 countries and other EU countries (here labelled "new Europeans"): while a higher education level implies a higher likelihood of marriage with an EU-15 spouse, it is lower-educated Spaniards who have a tendency to marry immigrants from new EU member countries.…”

A different perspective on exogamy: Are non-migrant partners in mixed unions more liberal in their attitudes toward gender, family, and religion than other natives?

“…Some quantitative studies (e.g. Glowsky 2011;González-Ferrer et al 2018;Medrano et al 2014;Schroedter/Rössel 2014;van Wissen/Heering 2014) have shown that exogamy is often accompanied by heterogamy in other traits, such as age, education, and cultural characteristics, and have traced this pattern back to status exchange mechanisms. Others see exogamy as having little connection to heterogamy in other characteristics, and explain intermarriage with a migrant using homogamy/preference theories (Çelikaksoy/Nielsen/Verner 2006).…”

“…While immigration is a relatively new issue in Eastern European countries (Salt 2011), in Western Europe different migrant generations and contexts coexist. In former colonial powers, natives may have more similarities to migrants from former colonies, due to a shared religion, and might have more differences to Eastern European migrants (Medrano et al 2014). In the older member states of the European Union, growing diversity stems largely from the immigration of Muslims (Modood 2003;van der Noll 2014).…”

Relationship satisfaction of European binational couples in the Netherlands

“…Particularly studies into intra-European love migration and its effects on the individual level only recently emerged (Braun & Recchi, 2008;Díez Medrano, Cortina, Safranoff, & Castro-Martín, 2014;Gaspar 2008Gaspar , 2012Koelet, de Valk, & Willaert, 2011).…”