Type | Book Section - Comparing internal migration between countries using Courgeau’s k |
Title | Population dynamics and projection methods |
Author(s) | |
Publication (Day/Month/Year) | 2011 |
Publisher | Springer |
URL | http://www.springerlink.com/index/V64U373763393444.pdf |
Abstract | Despite the acknowledged significance of migration as the pre-eminent component of population change, understanding of the way population mobility varies between countries is, as yet, poorly developed. One symptom is that measures of migration are conspicuous by their absence from tables of international statistical demographic indicators. While fertility, mortality, and even international migration now commonly appear in such lists, internal migration is invariably absent. The reasons for this omission are well established and include the multidimensional nature of the mobility process, differences in the way migration is measured, and problems of spatial and temporal comparability, all of which prejudice rigorous comparative analysis. In responding to this deficit, analysts have focused on two main objectives: identifying the types of migration data collected in countries around the world, and establishing common metrics that can be used to compare mobility behaviour. For the former, the pioneering work is due to Rees and Kupiszewski (1996, 1999a) who took inventory of the data available in Europe. This work was later extended by Bell (2003, 2005) to cover the 191 member states of the United Nations. For the latter, the key proposals emanate from a joint Anglo-Australian project which identified 15 discrete indicators, in four main groups, that might be used to measure various facets of internal migration (Bell et al., 2002; Rees, Bell, Duke-Williams, & Blake, 2000). In parallel with these developments, attention has also been given to some of the specific problems of migration analysis, such as changes in statistical boundaries, which seriously prejudice temporal comparison of migration flows (see, for example, Blake et al., 2000; Boyle & Feng, 2002; Stillwell, Bell, Blake, Duke-Williams, & Rees, 2000). |