We are living in what some have called the age of migration. We are also, according to breathless reports by outlets from Forbes to CNBC, about to enter an era of unprecedented remote work. By many accounts, we are already there. With COVID-19 shutting down some offices for good in 2020 and closing others until well into 2021, many workers are newly location-independent and looking to capitalise on the opportunity. At the same time, recreational travel has taken a nosedive for obvious reasons, devastating economies that rely heavily on tourism. 

Migration scholarship—and political discourse even more so—tends to focus on policymakers’ efforts to restrict migration rather than attempts to liberalise it. Both exist, however, and often simultaneously compete in the same political arenas. The pressures of globalisation and its populist backlash means governments engage in a constant game of balancing the economic engine of migrant labor and foreign direct investment with domestic interests and misguided public opinion demanding isolationism. The result is schemes of differential inclusion through visa regimes; policymakers keen to survive in electoral politics attempt to reap the long-term economic benefits of immigration by enticing higher-earning foreigners while simultaneously appeasing the anti-immigrant masses through visa restrictions. COVID-19 only exacerbated these divisions.

Global migration trends in the COVID-19 era

2020 saw dual trends in human mobility along class lines, with states trying to attract the well-resourced remote worker from the Global North and deter the economic migrant from the Global South. Countries from Bermuda to Estonia rolled out new remote worker visa categories last year, promising would-be digital nomads twelve months of productive relaxation, good weather (at least in the Caribbean locales), and, in Estonia’s case, the astonishing freedom to travel throughout the Schengen Area unencumbered by borders. 

At the same time, though irregular immigration to Europe markedly decreased as a result of border closures, certain countries—namely Italy and Spain—experienced new influxes of migrants as a direct result of the economic pain wrought by COVID-19 in the Global South. The crackdown on legal migration channels in response to the pandemic pushed more people to the particularly deadly Central Mediterranean and Atlantic routes to Europe. Arrivals to Italy from Libya and Tunisia increased threefold last year. Meanwhile, 20,000 migrants entered Spain through the Canary Islands in 2020, more than ten times the number in 2019. Half of those arrivals were concentrated in November and December, overwhelming the ill-prepared canario bureaucrats who, frankly, should have seen it coming. 

The Iberian case

Spain is acutely aware of its role as a major destination country for migrants from West and North Africa and was among the first EU Member States to pioneer (exceedingly problematic) border externalisation measures that have since become common throughout Europe. These effectively create co-policing arrangements between European states and countries of origin and transit to stop migrants before they come close to the Spanish border. Indeed, billions of euros have been funnelled into border securitisation that ultimately redirects rather than deters immigration to Spain, not to mention encourages long-term settlement by making return and circular migration difficult.

Against this backdrop of increasingly militarised borders, tightened visa regimes, and rising anti-immigrant sentiment in Spain, the Canary Islands launched a campaign to “capture the remote working sector”. On 3 December 2020, the archipelago’s tourism agency proudly announced that the plan worked: the islands ascended to the Nomadlist website’s top-ten best locations for remote workers worldwide. Sea arrivals to the Canary Islands topped 8,000 in the previous month alone. Representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration visited reception centres in the islands amid growing international concern. In response, the local government frantically called upon Madrid and Brussels for an emergency transfusion of resources to deflect growing criticism from neighbors concerned about a new “refugee crisis” on the shores of Europe. Residents spilled into the streets to verbally abuse West African migrants and demand that the government stem the tide. Conditions have been abysmal for migrants awaiting processing of their status in the islands, with many sleeping rough on port docks or crowding into oversaturated hotels. Meanwhile, well-heeled EU nationals are comfortably spending the cold winter months in shared villas in Las Palmas. 

What’s in a name? 

It’s worth noting that this writer has benefited from Spain’s visa regime, in a way that is illustrative of who is welcome across its borders and who is turned away at the point of entry. I held what is clunkily named the “non-lucrative residency visa” for twelve months, which meant that I was permitted to live in Spain as long as I did not seek employment in the Spanish economy. Similar to many of the requirements in the new remote work visas, I had to show proof of either consistent income earned through freelance or remote work or evidence of sufficient savings to get me through a year of unemployment. After canceling an epic trip to which I’d planned to devote over a year’s worth of savings, I opted for the latter. Anecdotal evidence tells me I was not alone in my struggles with Spanish bureaucracy, but I was always treated like a person and ultimately granted permission to stay. A white Anglo-Saxon with money and a US passport, I was viewed as an “expat,” not an immigrant. That distinction is all too often what matters to national governments seeking to maintain protectionist immigration policies.

It’s unsurprising that the response from Spain’s central government to migrants in the Canary Islands has been tepid at best, with PM Pedro Sánchez more preoccupied with boosting tourism to the archipelago than ensuring the safety and dignity of those already there. Wobbling into 2021 with a weak central government, battered economy, and potentially ruinous third wave of coronavirus infections, Madrid has maintained its policy of devolving authority to the country’s autonomous regions, likely in part to protect its fragile ruling coalition. The Sánchez government—constituted by strange bedfellows spanning centre-left Socialists, the far-left Podemos, and a variety of regional separatist parties—barely passed a national budget in December after two years of deadlock. They’re relying heavily on funds from Next Generation EU to revive and reform an economy that has suffered from high structural unemployment and overdependence on tourism for decades. In short, Spain needs to get its house in order. The country already faces scrutiny from northern neighbors about how it plans to use its share of the biggest cash infusion in EU history.

Unfortunately, short-sighted policymakers in Spain and elsewhere don’t realise that humane and well-planned immigration policy, rooted in principles of distributive justice and respect for human rights, is central to their countries’ future wellbeing. In a way, they seem to have already made the connection; Spain is appealing to certain migrants in the hopes that their arrival will bring cosmopolitan cachet and lots of cold, hard cash to a country that has lagged behind much of Europe in these areas. The digital nomad may be a powerful engine of prosperity. But so is the economic migrant, and in resisting this fact through violent neglect and ill-conceived restrictions, Spain shows itself to be a country mostly looking back even as it tries to move forward.