Brain Drain – Brain Gain: European Labour Markets in Times of Crisis 85 9 CONCLUSION Céline Teney, University of Bremen 9.1 SUMMARY OF THE COUNTRY STUDIES This Chapter reviews some empirical findings on the presence of an intra-EU brain drain and gain from the country studies. I will focus on a few exemplary cases to shed light on the complexity of assessing the existence of a brain drain or gain within a country. Indeed, based on cross-national compar­ative data such as the one presented in the Introduction, it could be concluded that some countries – for example, southern European countries or CEE countries – suffer from an intra-EU brain drain, while others(for example, western European countries) have benefited from brain gain. How­ever, a closer inspection of the national contexts provided in the country studies highlights the extent to which such a diagnosis is complicated and should take country specificities into account, instead of focussing on macro-level data. This Chapter does not attempt to provide an exhaustive overview on the situation presented in each country study. Rather, I will focus on the situation of a few countries that illustrate the extent to which the categorisation of a member state as a brain drain or a brain gain country becomes blurred once the country specificities are taken into account. As discussed in the Introduction, southern European countries have been hit particularly hard by the recent economic crisis, which has led to a rising emigration wave. Within the southern European context, Spain represents a very interesting case for the study of intra-EU immigration, for two reasons. First, Spain has witnessed a rapid shift in its migration status: as a result of the economic crisis, it abruptly changed from net immigration to net emigration country. Second, while the overall high emigration rates in Spain cur­rently could be interpreted as an indication of a current brain drain of Spaniards, looking at the citizenship of the emigrants mitigates such a conclusion: these large emigration rates are due mainly to the departure of non-national EU and non-EU citizens from Spain, as shown by Moreno-Torres Sánchez (2015) in her country study. In what follows, these two singu­larities of the Spanish case will be discussed in more detail. Between the mid-1990s and 2010, thanks to high eco­nomic prosperity and employment growth, Spain was attract­ing large EU and non-EU immigration flows. Moreover, during this period after EU enlargement, Spain witnessed significant immigration flows from several CEE countries(particularly Romania and Bulgaria). According to the statistics provided by Moreno-Torres Sánchez(2015: 7), the stock of immigrants in Spain multiplied by 10 between 1996(stock of 542,314 im­migrants, which represents 1.4 per cent of total population) and 2010(stock of 5.7 million immigrants or 12.2 per cent of total population). This increase concerns the stock of both EU non-national citizens and of non-EU citizens. 38 Regarding the composition of the non-national EU population residing in Spain, the main countries of origin are Romania(Romanian citizens represented 36.7 per cent of the total non-national EU immigrant population by 2012) and Bulgaria(Bulgarian citizens composed 7.2 per cent of the total non-national EU immigrant population by 2012)(Moreno-Torres Sánchez 2015: 8). Furthermore, there is also a large stock of western Europeans, particularly from the United Kingdom and Ger­many(respectively, 16.3 per cent and 8.1 per cent of the total EU immigrant population in 2012). One of the explana­tions for this large non-national western European population residing in Spain is the popularity of Spain as a retirement destination. Moreover, the EU immigrant stock in Spain is also partly composed of citizens from other southern European countries, such as Portugal and Italy(respectively, 5.7 per cent and 7.8 per cent of the total EU immigrant population in 2012). With respect to qualifications, Moreno-Torres Sánchez (2015) reports that 20.8 per cent of the non-national EU citizens who immigrated to Spain between 2008 and 2012 have a tertiary degree, a lower percentage than that of highly qualified non-EU citizens who immigrated to Spain during the same period(23.7 per cent). According to Moreno-Torres Sánchez(2015), this relatively low proportion of highly qualified citizens among non-national EU immigrants is due to the high number of EU immigrants originating from CEE countries. 38 The stock of EU non-national immigrants in Spain increased from 289,335 in 1998(which represents 0.7 per cent of total population) to 2,351,939 in 2010(which represents 5.0 per cent of total population). The stock of non-EU citizens in Spain increased from 347,750(0.9 per cent of total population) in 1998 to 3,395,795 in 2010(7.2 per cent of total population)(Moreno–Torres Sánchez 2015: 8).