Following the announcement of the mass regularisation of half a million undocumented migrants in Spain, “el efecto llamada” is being used a lot in the Spanish press.
Efecto llamada translates literally as the ‘call effect’.
There isn’t a direct translation in Spanish but it describes the idea that when a government does something favourable towards migrants, it has the knock-on effect of encouraging more to come.
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Efecto llamada is similar to the use of ‘pull factor’ in English in that it refers to something happening in the destination country that encourages migrants to move there.
The term predates the new regularisation of more than 500,000 undocumented migrants already living and working in Spain.
In fact, while I was looking for a possible translation for this term in English, the first forum thread on Wordreference in relation to efecto llamada was from 2006, a year after the last blanket regularisation of immigrants in Spain under former Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero.
It was around this time that the term was reportedly popularised by the then and current opposition party, the centre-right People’s Party, even though under the previous premiership of PP leader José María Aznar they also regularised hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants.
El efecto llamada doesn’t feature in Spain’s most official dictionary, RAE, but its meaning is well-known in Spain.
Interestingly, there is evidence that for the past 20 years left-wing media and politicians have defended that el efecto llamada play a smaller part than push factors in leading to increases in migration to a country.
The Spanish press is currently awash with the term efecto llamada.
Examples include “¿La regularización? Todo nuestro sistema migratorio está generando un efecto llamada” (“The Regularisation? Our whole migration system is generating a pull effect”).
And “Irene Montero: “El efecto llamada no existe, se va a regularizar a quienes ya viven y trabajan en España”” (“Irene Montero: “The pull factor doesn’t exist; those who already live and work in Spain will be regularised.””)
Therefore, el efecto llamada is a pretty politicised term, often used by those who are opposed to what they see as too much immigration.
Another new word that’s pretty politically loaded is mena, have you heard of that one?
