THEMIS: Crisis, stay, and return in the case of Ecuadorians in Spain

The communication is based on a mixed research focused on the study of the effects of the current economic crisis is generating on the migration processes and projects of Ecuadorians living in Spain. Communication seeks to explore, specifically, in the processes of stay, new international mobility and return that the current economic crisis is making among the ethnic Ecuadorian population in Spain. Before the crisis, Ecuadorian migrants formed one of the most significant migratory realities in the Spanish context, not only for its volume, 458,437 (INE, 1-1-2008) but, especially, for their progressive and widespread process of incorporation, settlement and rooted in Spanish society (access regulation and nationalization, family reunification, residential settlement, some upward job mobility within the secondary market, etc.) Crisis has destabilized the ongoing process which substantially change processes and migration projects Ecuadorians in a bundle of options that include not only the commitment to stay in Spain, but new international mobility processes, among which the different processes of return to the country of origin. A landscape that has substantially changed the immigration system that Ecuadorians had built with Spain in recent years and it shows, not only the impacts of structural origin on migration processes, but the dynamism of the immigrants themselves and their resources and social networks to redefine their migration projects. Communication, which is part of a research project of the National I + D + I (CSO2009-10429) presents the main features of social and migration issues listed above, from quantitative and qualitative study conducted between 2009 - 2012 with the Ecuadorian community in Spain.