MIGRANT ASSOCIATION AND ACCESS TO PUBLIC RESOURCES: the case of the municipality of Madrid

This paper explores the organizational conditionals that explain why immigrant associations in Spain have access to two basic resources required to develop transnational interventions, generally referred to as codevelopment strategies, namely access to public funding in the country of residence and contacts with authorities in countries of origin. Using a small dataset obtained from a pilot study conducted in the municipality of Madrid, we are able to provide a preliminary account for differences across migrant organizations in these two indicators. Spain represents an interesting case study for this analysis because all levels of public administration in this country have systematically used migrant associations as the key actor in defining or implementing integration policies and have cited co-development as an important objective of their policies, linked to immigration control and regulation. Even though our empirical analysis is limited by the small n used (29 cases), our preliminary suggestion is that certain features of an association increase both the percentage of its budget derived from government funding, as well as the likelihood that it has contacts with local, regional or national authorities in the country of origin. The first section of this paper describes the role that immigrant associations have played in developing immigration policies in Spain and Madrid; after this we briefly review the academic literature on associations developed in Spain; finally we present our data set and empirical analysis.