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In this article, we focus on ways in which ‘internal migration industries’ shape the housing location of refugees in cities. Based on empirical studies in Halle, Schwerin, Berlin, Stuttgart and Dresden, we bring two issues together. First, we show how a specific financialised accumulation model of renting out privatised public housing stock to disadvantaged parts of the population has emerged that increasingly targets migrant tenants. With the growing immigration of refugees to Germany since 2015, this model has intensified. Second, we discuss how access to housing is formed by informal agents. While housing is almost inaccessible for households on social welfare, the situation is even worse for refugees. This situation has given rise to a new ‘shadow economy’ for housing that offers services with dubious quality for excessive fees. Bringing these two issues together, we argue that housing provision to refugees has become a new business opportunity. This has given rise to a broad variety of ‘internal migration industries’ that provide the housing infrastructure, but also control access to housing. This not only results in new opportunities for profit extraction, but actively shapes new patterns of segregation and the concentration of refugees in particular types of disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002347 bundesministerium für bildung und forschung https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002347

Executive SummaryThis paper examines the experiences of Central American youth who have attempted internal relocation before migrating internationally. Based on interviews and participant observation with Guatemalan, Honduran, and Salvadoran youth migrating through Mexico, this paper shows how youth from the Northern Countries of Central America turn to their domestic networks to escape labor exploitation and gang violence before undertaking international journeys. The paper further demonstrates how those domestic networks lead youth into contexts of poverty and violence similar to those they seek to escape, making their internal relocation a disappointment. The failure of their internal relocation attempts makes them turn to international migrant networks as their next option. This paper sheds light on the underexplored issue of internal migration among Central American youth and that migration's synergy with Central American youths’ migration to the United States. The paper finds that internal relocation is unsuccessful when the internal destination fails to resolve the issues from which youth are attempting to escape. This failure ultimately triggers their departure from their home country.

The urban–rural divide in India has been the cause of labour flow to Indian cities, which have historically witnessed an insufficiency in planning. Moreover, widening social inequalities exacerbate the living conditions in Indian cities, pushing the migrant labourers from rural areas to the margins of urban spaces. Public policymakers have long turned a blind-eye to migrants, denying them essential social security. This study attempts to review how these factors have made urban space unwelcome to migrants from rural areas, edging them to a state of inability to sustain themselves, especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also an attempt to re-evaluate the status of urbanization. The government imposed a sudden lockdown in 2020 to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, leading to a massive exodus of migrants from cities back to their homes. The study also seeks to account for the significance of economic planning and social security with regard to migrant labour.

Internal migration constitutes a major source of steady flow of population in India, and reports published by the World Economic Forum (WEF),1 2017 state that interstate migration in the country has doubled during 2001–2011, compared to the previous decade.2 In developing countries, such migration is often considered to be an effective way for income diversification for the economically marginalised sections of the society, even though its effect on ‘human development’ is oft debated. This article would engage with this debate and bring out how migration from the Indian part of the Sundarbans to other parts of the country is not only changing the demography of the region but is also having a strong impact on the local perception and attachment towards the deltaic landscape. By bringing in ethnographic details from a village in the Indian Sundarbans, which was predominately inhabited by the fishing community earlier, this article would bring out how traditional occupations like fishing are slowly losing their popularity in the face of the lure of out-migration, as the very identity of the ‘indigenous’ Sundarban fisher folks—who were once rightfully considered to be the true conservator of the forests—is changing. From there, this article would engage with the broader debate of rethinking whether migration can be considered as a positive indicator of development in such ecologically fragile areas like the Sundarban deltas, which used to indeed have a distinct economic, social and cultural life of its own.

Internal migration is critically important in China, where the fertility rate is declining and international immigration is under strict control. This study explores the massive population movement in China, examines the migration pattern of non- hukou migrants, 2010–2015 and 2014–2015 migration patterns through the urban hierarchy of the urban system using migration trajectories derived from the 2015 One Percent Population Sample Survey. Results reveal an emerging reversal from a predominantly upward pattern (e.g. most of the net flows move to high-level cities) to a downward one (e.g. from super-large/extra-large cities to large cities) in the recent migration trend. Regional disparities are significant. An upward and eastward tendency still dominates in the western, central and northeastern regions, whereas a downward and decentralised tendency has been initiated in the eastern region. The causes for the structural change include common factors found in developed countries, such as the influence of age and life courses. The age structure of China’s population caused by the ‘one-child’ policy weakened the upward momentum and led to a strengthening downward trend in the current migration pattern. The contextual and institutional factor hukou also has a significant effect on people’s migration directions. Hukou attracts people to move up or down the hierarchy to their registered place or where they can acquire registration. The characteristics of registered migrants reflect the different criteria of cities in granting hukou.

Although traumatic, the ongoing Brexit process does not fundamentally alter either the legal status of European citizenship or the debates about it within the European Union (EU). Citizenship and free movement are so fundamental to the European project that even the new status of an important state like the UK does not change the political dynamics surrounding them.

In India a nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of COVID has stranded 600 million internal migrants, laborers who move within the country from its underdeveloped regions to cities and production hubs. My own experience of the pandemic in Michigan has prompted reflections on links between past experiences with an educational project for children in a slum in Mumbai and the situation of stranded migrants in India today. Although the pandemic knows no boundaries, some groups are disproportionately impacted and experience greater vulnerabilities. But while some stories are foregrounded, the struggles of female migrants are nearly invisible. Although “displaced” from India presently, I juxtapose earlier tacit assumptions related to Dharavi’s children with the present reality of the lockdown where gender is invisible.

Does internal migration following natural hazards increase the likelihood of protests in migrant-receiving areas? To address the question, this study first looks at the extent to which experiencing different forms of natural hazards contributes to a household’s decision to leave their district of residence. In a second step, the article explores whether that internal migration flow increases the number of protest events in migrant-hosting districts. In doing so, it contributes to the existing debate on the extent to which natural hazards impact the likelihood of social contention, and the role of migration as a linking pathway in that relationship. The impact of climate-related shocks may erode household assets and therefore adaptive capacity in ways that can eventually influence decisions to migrate to larger urban centres. Although migrants are agents of economical and technological change, urban environments may impose challenges to recently arrived migrants and their host communities, affecting the motivations and mobilization resources of urban social groups to protest. As a consequence, the probability of urban unrest in these locations is expected to increase. To test this, I use geo-referenced household-level data from Bangladesh for the period 2010–15, which records households’ experiences of different forms of natural hazard and internal migration flows, available from the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. It combines this with data on protests, derived from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. Findings suggest that flood hazards in combination with loss of assets increase the likelihood of internal migration, but unlike other types of domestic mobility, hazard-related migration does not increase the frequency of protests in migrants’ districts of destination.

This article highlights emerging patterns of domestic remittance arrangements among migrant construction workers from West Bengal in Kerala that have now become defunct because of COVID-19. Earlier field surveys and in-depth interviews showed how Bengali migrant construction workers, relying on networks of friendship and trust, were learning to remit through formal channels, in contrast with many micro-studies showing the dominant role of informal channels in domestic remittances. High wage rates in Kerala enabled such migrant construction workers to send significant amounts, used for productive activities besides household expenses. However, there were significant changes in arrangements, before COVID-19 enforced a dramatic suspension of remittances, raising important questions about future possibilities.

During the nationwide lockdown as part of the state response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the predicament of interstate migrant laborers in India, caught in crowded cities without means of livelihood and basic resources needed to sustain life, gained national and international attention. This article explores the context of the current migrant crisis through the historical trajectories and political roots of internal migration in India and its relationship with the urban informal labor market and the structural determinants of precarious employment. We argue that the both the response to the pandemic and the disproportionate impact on migrant laborers are reflections and consequences of an established pattern of neglect and poor accountability of the state toward the employment and living conditions of migrant workers who toil precariously in the informal labor market.

This study investigates associations between internal migration and health among middle-aged and older adults in China, including variations associated with type of migration (rural-to-urban, urban-to-rural, rural-to-rural, urban-to-urban). Data were drawn from China’s Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2011, 2013, 2015). Lagged panel and fixed-effect regression models address associations between migration and health outcomes (self-rated health, depression) while controlling for pre-migration and post-migration selection effects. The results reveal the positive implications of rural-to-urban migration for the self-rated health of middle-aged but not older adults. They also point to the positive effects of migration within and to rural areas for the self-rated and mental health of older adults. Overall, although migration may be beneficial to the health of internal migrants in China, complexities associated with age, type of migration, and the health outcome involved need to be taken into account.

Migration scholars have tended to portray internal mobility as a step toward broader cross-border movement, reinforcing the notion of ongoing progress toward international migration. This article argues for a need to recognize how internal mobility can also explain international immobility, or why people do not move across national borders. Using the case of Filipino nurses, we argue that while internal migration does allow aspiring migrants to build the potential ability to emigrate, individual trajectories are much more diverse and multi-directional, often prolonging or reinforcing their international immobility. As a result, and in our case study, the costs and burdens of constant internal movement can also alter nurses’ migration aspirations, prompting them to either alter their original goals or acquiesce to their inability to leave their origin countries. This article calls for migration scholarship to address not only a “mobility bias” within the field but also the over-focus on international migration, rather than internal mobility, as a subject of study.

Much of the contemporary scholarship on Black identities focuses on how multiraciality, immigrant status, class, and neighborhood characteristics shape how social actors negotiate identities. In contrast, little analysis exists of how internal migration and regional origin or ancestry shape such negotiations. The study addresses this gap using interview data to examine how U.S.-born Black Louisianans with Creole heritage, who moved to Los Angeles along with their children during the Great Migration, actively negotiate racial/ethnic identities. The results show that participants negotiate identities situationally, especially when ambiguous appearances or surnames trigger interactional encounters in which they are mis-placed as “foreign” to the United States. Specifically, as migrants from one internal U.S. region to another, they use geographical references to situate Black racial and Creole ethnic identities (e.g., they refer to Louisiana or New Orleans) when interacting with non-Creole African Americans and non-Black people in Los Angeles. The study extends prior research on heterogeneous Black identities by demonstrating how internal migration, mixed racial/ethnic ancestry, and region of origin influence native-born Black American identities.

Background. Though internal migration in Ghana has become increasingly common in recent years, research has not focused on the gendered experiences and perceptions of migration and the association with sexual and reproductive health risks for male and female migrants. Method. A qualitative study using semistructured interviews among migrant market workers and market leaders working in Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana, was completed in April 2018. Interview domains for the migrant interviews included the following: expectations of migration, current working and living conditions, sexual and reproductive health, access to health care, and self-reported health status. Qualitative data were analyzed using a combination of inductive and deductive coding in MAXQDA. Results. Data indicate that migrant workers have a variety of perceptions surrounding their migration experience. In the urban destination, migrants face a number of challenges that negatively affect their health, including poor accommodation, safety concerns, and low levels of social support. Reported risks to sexual and reproductive health were unsafe sexual encounters, such as low condom use and sexual assault. Discussion. The negative sexual and reproductive health outcomes among migrant populations in urban poor settings are a result of a confluence of factors, including perceptions of destination locations, working and living conditions, social support, and gender norms. A complex systems approach to understanding the sexual health of migrants is warranted. Conclusion. Findings from this research illustrate the complexity of health risks among migrants in Agbogbloshie. Further research is needed to explore the increased vulnerability of migrants compared with nonmigrants in urban poverty and the long-term implications of sexual and reproductive health risks in vulnerable migrant communities.

This work foregrounds changing state development policies in Thailand as a way to consider the complex drivers and motivations within internal migration. Using uncertain outcomes of state development and broader socio-cultural divisions as structure, ethnographic data detail the ways personal agency marks one's aspirational character and possible futures in the pursuit of well-being and economic security. Ultimately, I argue that ongoing state development efforts to reduce poverty, increase socio-economic equity, and facilitate people's capacity to cope with daily life confront enduring challenges. Reframing development must address people's existential needs and consider how structural precarity interrelates with persistent socio-cultural inequities and prejudices.

Internal U.S. migration plays an important role in increasing individuals’ access to economic and social opportunities. At the same time, race, ethnicity, and gender have frequently shaped the opportunities and obstacles individuals face. It is therefore likely that the returns to internal migration are also shaped by race, ethnicity, and gender, though we have relatively little knowledge of whether this is the case for contemporary internal U.S. migration. To explore this possibility, I use restricted, geocoded National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data from 1979 to 2012. I find that white men gain the most economically from migrating, relative to black and Latino men. For women, migration is associated with stable or narrower racial and ethnic disparities in economic outcomes, with Latina women experiencing the largest economic benefits associated with migration and with black and white women exhibiting comparable economic returns to migration. Together, these findings indicate that migration may maintain or even narrow racial/ethnic disparities in economic outcomes among women, but widen them among men.

This study provides new evidence on the debate of job opportunities versus urban amenities in determining the locational choice of migrants. We employ a conditional logit model to generate credible estimates, using two large representative data sets on China’s internal migrants. Our findings confirm that both job opportunities and amenities play consistent and salient roles in the geographical choice of internal migrants, while highly skilled migrants tend to attach more importance to urban amenities. Additionally, China’s household registration system seems to play an undeniable role: migrants are increasingly shunning cities providing better quality public services that are still largely inaccessible to temporary migrants in China.

Large-scale interstate labour migration within India is facilitated by the freedom of movement for citizens within this huge nation state. However, such internal labour migration within India remains largely unstudied and offers huge scope for gaining significant new knowledge. Focusing particularly on migrant construction workers from West Bengal moving to Kerala, this article specifically examines the motivations of these migrants and the role of social networks in the development of such migration streams. A field survey in Kerala indicates that Kerala’s Gulf connection and rapid demographic transition have resulted in significant reduction of local supplies of labour, thus attracting more migrants from other states in India due to better job opportunities, higher wages and good payment systems. Networks within migrant groups, especially friends’ contacts, are found to be the strongest factor in supporting this migration process.

This paper used a bootstrapped linear regression model to examine the role of amenities and economic opportunities in migration patterns in China based on the 2010 census at the city level. The results reveal that striking disparities characterize migration at the city level in China. Most migrants tend to move into several major cities in urban agglomerations in the eastern coastal region and provincial inland capitals. The cities farther away from provincial capitals have weak inflows and even suffer from serious population loss. The results suggest that job opportunities and wages contribute to the uneven pattern of migration in China even as amenities have also become important pull factors of migration. Regarding amenities, migrants prefer to move into cities with warm winters, less-humid summers, clean urban environments and friendly and open social climates. Social services, including facilities for education, recreation and commuting, also play an important role in attracting migrants. Findings from the study improve our understanding of China's internal migration and contribute to the debate on the role of economic opportunities and amenities in migration.

The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has quickly swept through China, and mass internal migration during the Chinese Spring Festival is now widely blamed for this. This statement, we argue, is misleading. Internal migrants should not be held responsible for the initial spread of COVID-19, as those cities first affected are megacities that connect with the epicentre Wuhan more with regard to business and tourism than migration. The scale of the epidemic can only be partially explained by internal migration. Severe outbreaks are not limited to cities that neighbour Hubei Province and that have large migration to Wuhan. They also occurred in provincial capitals that are neither contiguous with Hubei nor connected with Wuhan in terms of migration. Even though a few cities far away from the epicentre were hit severely by COVID-19 due to migration, the major contributor is not the migrant job seekers but business people. The responsibility of spreading COVD-19 so fast, on such a large scale and so far is by no means fully on internal migrants.

The hukou system is typically treated as an institutional base for rural-urban chasm in the literature regarding internal migration in China. However, these works rarely separate hukou’s social impacts from those caused by the changes in the economic system itself. With a review of historical policy documents, data on migration from rural to urban sectors, agricultural output and industrial output growth, I argue that hukou is in fact a rather neutral and passive legislation in the sense that it can perform opposite functions depending on the particular economic system it is operating under. This paper calls for bringing the concept of economic system back to the center of the discussion regarding development models.JEL Classification: O15, D63

Owing to the dynamics of internal migration and the hukou system, urban areas in China always consist of a four-tiered structure of urban locals, urban migrants, new urbanites and rural migrants. This paper aims to examine the differences among these four groups in terms of social capital and to explore how the association between social capital and social trust may vary across the four groups. Data are based on the 2014 China Labour-force Dynamics Survey. Our analysis of 7662 responses first indicates that patterns of social capital in the four urban groups appear to be largely distinct. Second, we find a clear rural–urban division in social trust in the Chinese city: rural migrants and new urbanites tend to be less trusting than urban locals and urban migrants. Among the aspects of social capital under consideration, social network support and neighbourhood attachment are associated with higher levels of social trust, whereas the effects of bonding and bridging civic organizations on social trust are relatively weak. However, these patterns indeed tend to vary across the four groups of urban residents in the cases of civic engagement and social network support. Consequently, these findings suggest that the interplay of individuals’ hukou identities and migration experiences in urban China has an important impact on their social connectedness, which also presents distinctive implications for social trust.

Discussion of China’s internal migration typically focuses on the movement of young rural workers to cities and, correspondingly, on the women, children and elderly who remain in villages and small towns, the so-called ‘left-behind’. This article fills a gap in the literature by examining the situation of grandparents who join their migrant adult children to facilitate their workforce participation by providing childcare. The article shows how grandparents and their adult children reinterpret and negotiate intergenerational family obligation in constructing their own lives. Based on extensive interview data the article provides a theoretically-informed and empirically-based understanding of intergenerational relations in China’s internal labor migration.

Mishra, Deepak K. (Ed.), Internal Migration in Contemporary India. New Delhi: SAGE, 2016, pp. 364, ₹995, ISBN: 978-93-51508-57-1.

“Gap,” “split,” and “divide” are just a few among many words used in publicizing the divergence of literature on internal and international migration. In this paper, we empirically test what has so far been just a conjecture. Using Web of Science data and bibliometric techniques, we, first, provide quantitative measures of the size of the proclaimed gap. Second, we inquire into the existing conceptual overlap between the two strands of academic literature. Third, we search for channels through which research on internal and international migration can potentially blend into becoming a single, more holistic area of study.

China has been experiencing large-scale internal migration since the 1980s. Existing research studies have paid great attention to the migrant’s adaptation process in large cities and the issue of left-behind children in rural areas, while the demographic consequences of internal migration to small- and medium-sized cities have been surprisingly omitted. Our study takes the initial step of exploring elderly representation changes in small- and medium-sized cities from 1982 to 2000. We derived elderly representation changes in cities in six provinces both in 1982–1990 and 1990–2000 from censuses, and examined how a city’s total population size, distance from large cities and gross domestic product performance relate to its elderly representation. Findings show that smaller cities with better economic performance that are closer to large national cities are more prone to age rapidly. This association only applies to the 1990–2000 period. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to analyze a specific array of publicly accessible policy papers and literature necessary to provide a contextualized interpretation of segregation policies and their implications for the educational outcomes of migrant children in China. By teasing out its ramifications for education equity, this paper reveals the unanticipated current challenges resulting from educational inclusion for migrant children in urban China. The paper argues that although China’s new migration reform policies are well-intentioned and appear rationally apposite at the macro level, migrant children are presently experiencing institutional forms of acute marginality and discrimination in inclusive schools. It is to be hoped that the information provided will serve to advance governmental and institutional understanding of the subtleties of inequity that have arisen from the current policy of Chinese urbanization. Given the insights evinced in our paper, it should be evident that achieving equity for migrant children under the present policy reforms governing their admission into integrated public schools requires more philosophical reflection than has yet been given.

The overarching message from the growth literature is that a transition from the low-productivity agricultural sector to the high-productivity manufacturing sector is necessary for structural change. Although sub-Saharan Africa has experienced substantial economic growth rates, rural–urban migration contributed very little to this progress. Migration to peri-urban areas may offer prospects for diversification out of agriculture with lower moving costs and job-search frictions than urban centers. We document migration patterns and worker selection into peri-urban and urban areas in Tanzania. Standard spatial classifications mask the prominent phenomenon of peri-urban (rather than rural) to urban migration. Lacking job experience and social networks, many youth moving to urban destinations are more likely to be unemployed. However, conditional on being employed over the two-year period of the study, migration to peri-urban as well as urban areas allows workers to transition from low- to high-valued occupations.

Research on China’s internal migration has mostly focused on moving rather than staying. Urban destinations of migrants are often seen as discrete points of economic opportunity in space, exerting a magnetic force on the rural population from the countryside. But after commencing their urban lives, rural migrants start to perceive their host cities and towns as places that entail value and meaning, which may encourage them to settle. This paper examines how the settlement intentions of rural migrants vary across urban destinations and socioeconomic backgrounds. A questionnaire survey dataset of 10,896 rural migrants in cities of different tiers in Jiangsu Province is used to unravel the factors that predict rural migrants’ settlement intentions. In addition, interviews with rural migrants and their family members are examined to explore the personal experiences and subjective perceptions that may contribute to their inclinations to settle in the city. Results indicate that the factors which encourage rural migrants to settle differ significantly from those which drive them to migrate. Economic and social resources and a resultant sense of (in)security are the prominent factors affecting rural migrants’ intentions to settle in cities.

Attitudes toward marriage equality have gradually become more accepting as more and more states have passed legislation that acknowledged full or partial recognition of marriage equality. Given the traditionally conservative behavior of the South, this article analyzes how regional migration patterns and time affect attitudes toward marriage equality from the 1988 and the 2004 to 2014 General Social Survey data sets using a generalized linear mixed model. We find that migrant southerners, migrant northerners, and native northerners are more likely to support marriage equality than native southerners are. Furthermore, time seems to also play a significant role in understanding trends in attitudes toward marriage equality. We conclude by suggesting future research.

The crucial role of migration networks in the process of migration has been well established. The main goal of our paper is to examine the role of migration networks in the case of China, a country that has had the largest migrant population in human history. Specifically, we focus on issues that have received relatively little attention in the migration literature. We first examined how the use of migration networks differs for individuals with different characteristics such as education, gender and household registration ( hukou) status. Based on the migration literature, we generated a set of hypotheses. We then examined the use of migration networks by people with different characteristics both in the context of migration departure (initiation of migration) and destination choice, using the micro-data from the 2000 China Population Census. Our results show that female migrants, migrants without local hukou, and younger migrants are more likely to rely on well-developed migration networks, whereas the most educated migrants are less likely to depend on them. We also found that migration networks are more important for floating migrants than for permanent migrants.

Using the acculturation and ethnolinguistic vitality frameworks, this study examined economic prospects and linguistic tensions as factors accounting for willingness to stay in Quebec or leave to the rest of Canada. Questionnaires were completed by Quebec Francophone (QF; n = 234) and Quebec Anglophone (QA; n = 205) undergraduates attending French- and English-medium universities in Montreal, respectively. Results showed that, compared with QFs, QA minority students were more willing to leave Quebec. For QFs, willingness to move to the rest of Canada was predicted mainly by pull factors including better economic prospects and joining a partner. Though QFs and QAs identified similar pull factors, the following push factors were more important for QAs: avoiding linguistic tensions, being victim of collective discrimination, perceiving English–French relations as zero-sum, and endorsing the separation acculturation orientation. Results show the importance of linguistic tensions as a factor predicting QAs’ willingness to leave their province of origin.

Demographic changes from decades of mass immigration and shifts in internal migration patterns are upending the traditional racial composition of many states throughout the United States, transforming the American electorate, and increasing both the political salience of immigration and the racial salience of Latinos. Politicizing these visible demographic shifts has become an increasingly common strategy by both Democrats and Republicans with potentially significant electoral effects. While many have examined the impact of these demographic changes on dominant receiving populations’ attitudes, few have examined how changing demographics are shaping immigration politics in electoral campaigns. Specifically, under what conditions do political candidates politicize demographic change? I hypothesize that both political and demographic considerations drive variation in immigration appeals. I test my hypotheses using a novel dataset of candidate campaign websites from 2010, 2012, and 2014 US Senate primary and general elections. I argue that racial party cleavages increase the electoral temptation of immigration appeals but it is the interaction between state-level Latino population growth, electoral competition, and Latino voters that determines campaign strategy more broadly and moderates the use of pro- and anti-immigrant appeals.

Objectives: This article applies a multidimensional social exclusion framework to examine Chinese rural-to-urban migrant victimization. Method: Data from the 2012 China Labor Dynamics Survey is used to examine whether Chinese migrants are more likely to be victimized compared to urban residents and to what extent the prior findings on the meditating roles of social exclusion between immigration and victimization can be applied to understand Chinese migrants’ victimization. Results: Findings reveal the elevated victimization risks among nationwide rural-to-urban migrants. Logistic regression models find that social exclusion mediates the link between migrant status and victimization and that social exclusion predicts victimization. Conclusions: The discriminative institutional arrangements in China are a major force of the universal disadvantages of Chinese migrants. That is, it is not the migrant status itself, but the social exclusion suffered by individuals that increase the likelihood of being criminally victimized.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the phenomenon of shrinking cities was widely discussed across Europe. Most European countries saw an increasingly ageing population and an internal migration from underdeveloped to more competitive locations. Since the turn of the century, and in contrast to the past, a great deal has been written about the causes and impacts of shrinkage, as well as about policies and planning strategies. However, the state of knowledge in a cross-national comparative perspective is rather poor because, to date, studies have basically analysed large cities and empirical evidence hardly shifts attention to the contextual influence on local dynamics. Against this background, this paper fills the gap between macrotheoretical conceptualisation and empirical observation by testing a heuristic model of urban shrinkage encompassing the whole range of cities in Europe. The paper questions to what extent urban shrinkage represents a broader trend in Europe in terms of both duration and distribution, and aims to investigate the influence of economic and demographic drivers on the non-linear evolution of shrinking cities in Europe. Thereby, the spatial distribution of different trajectories of shrinking cities in urban Europe in the period from 1990 to 2010 will be presented in a comprehensive survey which reveals that 20% of European cities experienced shrinkage between 1990 and 2010, whereas 883 cities face recent shrinkage.

Internal migration tendencies among Palestinian in Israel are limited by both internal and external barriers. Recently, however, it appears that many Palestinian families have migrated from the north of Israel southward to Beersheba in search of work. This article is based on qualitative research I conducted among Palestinian women in Israel who moved south because of economic and occupational hardship. These women find themselves tending to their households while living far from their families of origin and those of their husbands, confronting and adjusting to their new environment and coping with life in a “city of difference” in Jewish space and among the Arab-Bedouin population at work. Internal migration affects many areas of life, extending beyond the personal and family sphere to challenge the politics of expanse in Israel, which is grounded in segregative and exclusionary principles and blurs accepted lines in the Israeli educational system. This situation generates space for new dialogue, or alternatively delineates lines of separation and structures new urban and cultural segmentation processes. The article sheds light on the complexity of the nationalist-ethnic triangle that takes shape in cities and clarifies the women’s experiences as they cross spatial and national borders—an unusual experience in Israeli life.

Internal migration is a major driving force for urbanization all over the world and is of concern in Asia due to its rising magnitude. Most studies on internal migration focus on the migrant in the process of migration and a large majority of studies are interested in understanding the conditions of the migrant at the destination for policy concerns. This article makes a case for studying the source of migration and the role that circular migration plays in processes of urbanization at the source of migration. This is particularly important in the context of the growing urbanization away from cities in India. Using the case of a dryland village in northeastern Karnataka, this article attempts to understand the role that circular migration for construction work to cities has in the process of localized urbanization in the village.

Emerging economies are witnessing the large-scale movement of internal migrants. While the popular discourse on internal migration imagines migrants from villages flooding into the large metropolis, scholarship is increasingly emphasizing the existence of multiple migration pathways, as well as the emergence of more dispersed patterns of urbanization. To root these discussions in particular geographies, this paper introduces the concept of ‘migrant-intensity’ as an empirical way of understanding the places that experience migration in the most profound and transformative ways—where the challenges and opportunities inherent in transience and mobility are most apparent. Analyzing census data from India and Indonesia, we show that ‘migrant-intensity’—a measure of in- and out-migrant concentration—is highest in a diverse set of non-metropolitan spaces, including secondary and tertiary cities and ‘rurban’ geographies. We argue that migrant-intensity as an empirical tool can advance scholarship on complex migration patterns by identifying the places at the crossroads of migrant pathways. Moreover, it can help planners and policymakers to address unique challenges, opportunities and constraints of migrant-intensive places.

This study examines the extent to which the internal migration-development nexus is operational in four panchayats or village councils in northwest Tamil Nadu. We investigate who participates in labor migration in this context and explore the experiences of and outcomes from labor migration for migrant workers and their households. In addition, we examine the motivations for migration among migrant households and the barriers to migration among non-migrant households. We argue that internal labor migration can contribute to development in this setting. However, recognition of the barriers to and within migration is needed to frame subsequent policy discussions and rural development planning.

Deepak K. Mishra, Internal Migration in Contemporary India. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2016, ₹995 (Hardback), xiv + 343 pp. ISBN: 978-93-515-0857-1.

This paper assesses the relative effects of acculturation preferences (assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization) on migrants’ perception of acceptability in James Town, a traditional urban neighborhood in Accra, Ghana. There is a paucity of academic work on the relationship between migrants’ acculturation inclinations and their assessment of the hosts’ attitude towards them in Ghana. Cognizant of the fluidity of acculturation strategies, the study focuses on individual inclinations towards acculturation. To examine migrants’ perception of acceptability by the host, we use perceived personal discrimination. We utilize results from a semi-structured questionnaire administered to 301 migrant individuals from different migrant households in James Town. Our findings suggest that migrants with assimilation preferences are less likely to have a higher rating on the extent to which they are discriminated against by the host population. Such an exploratory study is pertinent to understanding relationships (conflicts or “togetherness in difference”) in poor multi-ethnic settings.

In conflict-affected countries there is a trend of rapid urbanisation driven by internal migration and displacement. These countries are also increasingly young. Despite constituting a demographic majority in urban conflict and displacement-affected situations, youth are often invisible. Afghanistan fits this dynamic well with two-thirds of the population below the age of 25 and one in four living in cities in so-called ‘informal settlements’ on the fringes of cities, a vast majority with displacement backgrounds. Furthermore, Afghan youth have had very little agency in conceiving their future and that of their country. They are viewed as either vulnerable or risk factors for conflict, with action limited to ‘exit’ or ‘violence’. This article gives urban displaced Afghan youth a voice by telling their story of being caught between the desire for agency and the real and perceived obstacles that prevent this from happening.

China's dramatic economic development and urbanisation have led to an increase in its number of internal migrants. As of 2013, this group accounted for more than 20 per cent of the country's population, and approximately 70 per cent of people in this group are working in the informal economy. This paper pays special attention to migrant-traders in the informal sector and the strategies they use in Shanghai. Migrants are doubly marginalised by the hukou ([Formula: see text]) and danwei ([Formula: see text]) systems in the megacity and have only limited access to social welfare. It is argued that the informal strategies of these marginalised actors develop in related patterns of social relationships and institutional constraints. Such strategies create new forms of informal institutions that are justified and gain legitimacy when countering unequal and hierarchical formal institutions and social arrangements. This paper empirically explores how informal institutions can act in parallel with or diverge from formal institutions, and how they might influence formal institutions in the long term.

The article aims to explore internal migration flows, test for economic convergence, and assess the effects of internal migration (net and gross) on convergence and growth in terms of a neoclassical model in Croatia in the period 2000 to 2011. Croatia is a country with significant and persistent regional economic disparities, migration, and turbulent economic and political changes. The main findings of panel data analysis with fixed effects show that (i) contrary to the expectations based on neoclassical theory, the Croatian counties have been facing absolute and conditional economic divergence; (ii) in- and out-migration works symmetrically; (iii) net migration mainly appears to be a force that accelerates divergence, just opposite to gross in- and out-migration; (iv) although the estimated parameters of net and gross migration have expected signs, their effect size lies in the range from statistically significant but minor to insignificant; and (v) migrant characteristics and behavior matter when the effect size is considered.

By the mid-century, two-thirds of the world population will reside in urban areas. The bulk of this urban growth will take place in developing countries. Whereas average living standards are usually higher in urban areas, economic growth does not result in prosperity for all. Inequality is a likely source of frustration that could increase the potential for political radicalization and unrest—especially if certain groups suffer from systematic social exclusion. Drawing on household surveys, the article provides new indicators of internal migration, poverty and inequality for 34 cities in Africa and Asia for the period 1986–2006. These data are linked with data on urban social disorder events. The results suggest that it is not the actual movement of rural people into the cities that creates social upheaval. Rather, overall poor and unequal educational opportunities as well as socioeconomic marginalization of rural–urban migrants are found to spur increased levels of urban violence.

This paper examines how internal migration distance and its frictional effect vary between countries. Such comparisons are hampered by differences in the number and configuration of spatial units for which data are available − the modifiable area unit problem (MAUP). We use the flexible aggregation routines embedded in the IMAGE Studio, a bespoke software platform which incorporates a spatial interaction model, to elucidate these scale and pattern effects in a set of countries for which finely grained origin-destination matrices are available. We model the relationship between mean migration distance and mean area size and we show that the frictional effect of distance remains remarkably stable across spatial scale, except where zones have small populations and are poorly connected. This stability allows robust comparisons between countries even though zonal systems differ. We find that mean migration distances vary widely, being highest in large, low-density countries and positively associated with urbanisation, HDI and GDP per capita. This suggests a positive link between development and migration distance, paralleling that between development and migration intensity. We find less variation in the beta parameter that measures distance friction but identify clear spatial divisions between more developed countries, with lower friction in larger, less dense countries undergoing rapid population growth.

Traditional “Marshallian” theories predict a linear relationship between internal migration and regional wage differentials. Using panel data on gross place-to-place migration flows in the United States, we estimate a semiparametric version of the modified gravity model and find evidence of a nonlinear effect of wage differentials in line with alternative theories of interregional migration, including the “option value of waiting” theory, liquidity constraints, and wealth-conditioned immobility. Traditionally, the migration decision process is believed to be mainly composed of two criteria: “whether to move” and “where to move.” However, the empirical evidence of nonlinearity found in this study supports the potential presence of another important decision criterion, “when to move” on interregional migration.