Lecture 1: Introduction
Migration is about peoples personal stories. People search for a better place and they can be forced
to go from or to a place. The social environment, integration, and self-realization is also very
important. It has implications at many different levels, like regional. It can have economical
implications, social implications, and political implications. These can be both positive and negative.
Over time, and when organized well, it often becomes positive instead of negative. Evidence has
shown that migration positively stimulates the economy. Although it is important to be managed. It
can be difficult to identify when it is migration. Is within the same country migration? The internal
migration is within countries and international migration is between countries.
Theoretical definition
Migration is a move that involves a major change in Daily Activity Space (DAS). The DAS is in area in
which someone performs daily activities. Most important is work and education for most people.
However, this does differ a lot per individuals and households. As long as the DAS doesn’t change, it is
not seen as migration. There has to be a significant change in
someone’s life. It is very grey, but this can be seen as a baseline.
Development
One of the major concepts within migration is development. This
can be on an individual level, on a local and regional economic development, and on national and
global development (HDI). To migrate is a rational choice. Migration can affect these levels in many
different ways.
Economic perspective
The economic perspectives can be characterized by;
 Human capital and labor market related factors affecting individual migration decision.
 Utility and happiness.
 Individual consequences of migration.
 The regional and local economic impacts of migration.
 The national and macro-level impacts of migration.
Population studies perspectives:
 View of migration: event in the life course.
 Ways of studying migration:
- Macro level: how flows affect size and composition of population.
- Micro level: explaining occurrence of migration events in individual life courses (who,
which circumstances); identifying consequences.
- Meso level: explaining migration in context of households/families.
Lecture 2: Economic geography perspectives
Models
There are 2 types of equilibrium models:
 Disequilibrium models (Neoclassical, but also Krugman, NEG): People move in reaction to the
availability of jobs.
 Spatial Equilibrium Models (Glaeser and others): People move in reaction to the availability of
amenities and they go to nice places!
The 2 papers offer both of these approaches, but they are also very critical. The economic factors are
almost always an important factor in migration.
Human capital
The enigma of urban growth (after Storper and Scott, 2009: 148) are places that can attract workers
with high levels of human capital, it is said, will grow with special rapidity because of the
entrepreneurial, creative and innovative energies that these workers carry with them. People with
knowledge are not evenly spread across the geographic space. In a multi-region with an open
economy, there are high levels of population mobility and this means that the map of human capital
is constantly being reshaped by labor migration. Human capital is created in situ by education,
training, on-the-job learning and broad processes of socialization.
The Human Atlas shows different
kinds of maps about people and
migration. It can project the world in
ways of how many people live
somewhere, graduates, doctors, etc.
There is a connection between the
human capital and the success rate of
a region.
The human capital can also be created via interactions between appropriately matched or
complementary individuals. The results of this stock of human capital of a city, then affects its
economic performance in multiple ways. Three key theories suggest that the migration decisions of
individuals with high levels of human capital are made principally in response to ‘amenities’.
People clustering
There are 2 different theories about creativity and urban composition:
 The ‘creative class’ hypothesis (Florida, 2002, 2005): there is artistic creativity, commercial
dynamism, new technologies, and new investment ideas. This is the creative capital. The inmigration of ‘creative’ people drives further innovation in the tolerant and creative region 
Intolerant places will lose creative people (e.g. The Dutch Republic 17th century Golden Age,
US coast cities in the 19th century).
 The consumer city hypothesis (Glaeser et al., 2001; Glaeser and Gottlierb, 2006): high skilled
and income people move to cities and offer high quality amenities. They see the city as a
place of both leisure and work. This is the amenity-migration and quality of life, like humanproduced (and consumed) goods by high-income workers in urban areas: artistic and culinary
outputs.
The Bohemian Index keeps track of the concentration of artists, musicians, writers, designers, and
entertainers in cities. This can quantify it.
Consumer city (Glaeser)
Skills and climatic amenities, are of paramount importance in urban growth. There is a big difference
in migration between the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt. “The growth of ‘skilled cities’ is therefore a
delicate, knife-edged phenomenon: the skilled will only continue to congregate together in particular
places if they can gain access to specifiable consumer benefits, which entails maintaining an
adequate supply of relevant amenities and keeping crime rates low, but this process of congregation
will be undercut if workers’ wage gains are taxed away through higher housing costs.
With a consumer city it is meant that cities are places for consumption primarily.
Entertainment cities (Clark et al. 2002, cf Storper and Scott, 2009)
This means that it is amenity driven social growth. Urban ‘attractions’ such as parks, museums, art
galleries, orchestras, signature buildings are very important.
Leisure facilities and other attractions are seen as the principal way that cities nowadays become
viable participants in the globally competitive race for resources and inward investment. The relative
decline in the explanatory power of classical variables affects the economic base, like distance,
transportation costs, local labor costs and proximity to natural resources and markets.
Main messages
 Human Capital is increasingly important for the economic development of people, cities,
regions and countries. Attracting (or having) the right people is thus increasingly important.
 This development leads to polarization on the labor market and geographic clustering of
economic activities.
 Divergence and convergence.
Critique
Storper and Scot give critique on the amenities-based theories of human capital accumulation. They
say that there is a need for a consistent analytical description of the factors underlying the origins of
urban centers and they ask at what point do individuals recognize a place as offering this or that
amenity, and at what point does such recognition begin to spark off growth.
They plead for a need for an economic geography approach to understanding urban growth and takes
seriously the spatial logic of production. Simultaneously it is important to account for how, from small
initial events, clusters of economic activity grow and evolve on the basis of various kinds of external
economies and how they then are reinforced through circular and cumulative growth.
How can we be sure that the purported preferences are real (and not just self-affirming inductions
from correlation coefficients) and that they really underlie the alleged resulting action? › For example,
if we observe a significant tendency for individuals of type x to live in proximity to attributes of type y
it follows that the same individuals must have a ‘revealed preference’ for y; how do we know this?
However much individuals prioritize say, sunshine, in their ordered preference functions, they cannot
make it a permanent part of their lives if they do not simultaneously have opportunities for earning a
living. Net to this, social diversity at the regional scale, but local racial / socio-spatial segregation and
increased political polarization within cities (Bishop, 2008).
They came up with a new theory
Reconstructing theory (Storper and Scott, 2009: 154- 155)
This is about the geographical dynamics of production, work, and residence. All economically
advanced societies are marked by high levels of urbanization underpinned by the enhanced
productivity of capital and labor due to agglomeration economies. The human capital and skills
cannot be taken as basic independent variables that precede economic development.
This leads to new economic geography (NEG). This is an extension of (Neo-)Classical models
(Christaller, Von Thünen, Öberg etc), Paul Krugman (Nobel prize in 2008), and Trade-model. The
appeal in this model is that the agglomeration is a part of it.
Agglomeration economies (McCann)
Agglomeration economies are positive externalities which accrue to a localised group. They are
location-specific economies of scale. They can more than compensate for increases in local factor
prices. Alfred Marshall gave 3 sources of agglomeration economies:
 Local Tacit Knowledge Spillovers:
 Non-Traded Local Specialist Inputs:
 Local Skilled Labor Pool:
“Together, these three sources of agglomeration economies can allow firms within a cluster to
experience economies of scale which are external to any single firm, but which are internal to the
group. The key feature of each of these sources of agglomeration economies is that spatial clustering
reduces knowledge and transaction costs”.
The key conducting point from Storper and Scott is: should we actually observe a genuine causal
relationship (as opposed to a statistical artifact) linking amenities and in-migration to cities, then we
would also expect the relationship to be of marginal importance when compared to the dynamics of
job creation.
The American space-economy: rustbelt vs sunbelt (Scott and Storper, 2009)
There is a decline of the mass production system in the 1970s. This leads to the emergence of a new
economy of post-Fordism, flexible production, the knowledge economy. Fresh rounds of
agglomeration and growth (not only in high-technology industry) started to occur in selected parts of
the Sunbelt.
Any positive correlations that might be observed between the migratory movements of workers and
winter temperatures must be for the most part epiphenomenal, except perhaps for the case of
retirees and the independently wealthy, most of whom are free from the necessity of holding down a
regular job. It stretches the imagination to attribute either of these mechanisms of growth to
independent migratory movements of individuals prompted by the search for amenity values, though
it was most assuredly accompanied by in-migration of workers with forms of human capital wellmatched to local economic needs (as well as a huge inflow of unskilled migrants into the low-wage
sweatshops and service jobs that were also being created at this time in large Sunbelt cities).
The emerging new economy in major cities has been associated with a deepening divide between a
privileged upper stratum of professional, managerial, scientific, technical and other highly qualified
workers on the one side, and a mass of low-wage workers— often immigrant and undocumented—on
the other side. The latter workers are not simply a minor side-effect of the new economy or an
accidental adjunct to the creative class. Rather, high-wage and low-wage workers are strongly
complementary to one another in this new economy.
The dueling models
People maximize their utility via wages, rents, amenities, social
contacts, and families.
Migration happens according to:
The equilibrium model (Graves, 1980, 1993; after McCann, 2013)
There are differences in amenities (what makes a happy city) and there are utility and consumption
models. An US example is Mean January temperature (Partridge, 2010). There is the question if there
are European equivalents. Amenity effects come from long and short distance migration.
The final appeal is that it includes both economic motives and amenities. Amenities lead to higher
house prices.
Concluding remarks
Two Important Approaches:
 Disequilibrium (Migration towards Jobs): Fits in NEG-framework.
 Equilibrium (Migration towards Amenities): Fits in increasing ‘Human Capital’ Approach
After this lecture session, you should be able to:
 Summarize how migration is typically approached from economic geography perspectives.
 Define, discuss and critically appraise the disequilibrium and equilibrium models of migration
(also using the course literature).
 Critically address the question: do jobs follow people or do people follow jobs?
Exam question:
What do people chose?
Minnesota: jobs, high economy
Arizona: nice place  will jobs follow?
In the exam with case studies.
Lecture 3: A geography of happiness
approach
The disequilibrium models show what happens with migration. The
demand for labor is going up, which means that more people go
there. When it is stable again, there is equilibrium on the wages,
but not on the amount of people.
According to the dueling models, people try to maximize their
utility with wages, rents, amenities, social contacts and family. This
can be identified by people that move. They basically vote with
their feet (Thibaut).
Migration consists of multiple factors and it happens when the happiness/utility in the new place is
higher than what you lose by moving: Ud – C0d > Uo.
However, this is not a complete model and it should include more things.
The equilibrium model (Graves, 1980, 1993; after McCann, 2013)
There is always an equilibrium in the wellbeing. It is the question if happiness can be better, because
there are amenity differences. There are multiple utility and consumption models. The mean January
temperatures in the US are an example. There are amenity effects on the short and long distance
migration. For people it matters a lot where they live and how they feel.
Perceptions and Theories of Happiness through Time and Space
When we look at the world’s great thinkers… [we] find them different in time, different in place,
different in language and culture. Yet inevitable though these differences are, they cannot obscure
the deep similarities in how we search for happiness.
 Buddhism and emphasis on the individual: “a state of saintliness, that is characterized by
perfect inner peace, enlightenment and the abolition of all wants” (Zhang and Veenhoven,
2007: 8)
 What is the good life for man? The question of what is a full and rich life cannot be answered
for an individual in abstraction from the society in which s/he lives (Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics).
 All human actions should aim at producing the greatest happiness for the greatest number of
people Jeremy Bentham (1789/1983).
Building ‘objective’ indicators for cities and regions
 Natural amenities (e.g. climate, physical beauty, proximity to mountains or coasts).
 Urban amenities (e.g. theatres, music halls, restaurants, public parks, health and education
services, shopping choice).
 Human-created amenities (e.g. fiscal prudence, cultural and lifestyle tolerance, management
of land use, crime levels, education, social capital).
 Compensating differentials frameworks.
The plane of living and the precrisis evolution of housing values in the USA
The original plane of living map displays a composite index of three variables that reflects, as a
percentage of the national average: (i) household income; (ii) the proportion of homes having radios;
and (iii) the proportion of homes having telephones. This map is one of the earliest examples of
spatial demography— the demographic analysis of spatial aggregates (Voss, 2007)—and, also, of
research that explicitly connects place-to place variation in quality-of-life to the greater economic
landscape (Greenwood and Hunt, 2003). The work was exceptionally innovative for its time and it
helped establish an enduring framework wherein living conditions are viewed as fundamental to a
wide array of socio-economic processes and outcomes
“An interregional equilibrium implies that firms cannot reduce their costs and individuals cannot
improve their well-being by relocation’’.
Can happiness be measured?
A person who has had a life of misfortune, with very little opportunities, and rather little hope, may
be more easily reconciled to deprivations than others reared in more fortunate and affluent
circumstances. The metric of happiness may, therefore, distort the extent of deprivation in a specific
and biased way. Andrew Oswald and colleagues: statistical regression models of happiness measuring
the impact of different factors and life events upon human well being.
In the general health questionnaire there are some questions:
 Been able to concentrate on whatever you are doing?
 Lost much sleep over worry?
 Felt that you are playing a useful part in things?
 Felt capable of making decisions about things?
 Felt constantly under strain?
 Felt you could not overcome your difficulties?
 Been able to enjoy your normal day-to-day activities?
 Been able to face up to your problems?
 Been feeling unhappy or depressed?
 Been losing confidence in yourself?
 Been thinking of yourself as a worthless person?
 Been feeling reasonably happy all things considered?
It’s about thinking about your own life and personal circumstances, how satisfied are you with your
life as a whole?
Can happiness be measured?
The positive and the negative feelings are inversely correlated. Happiness is a single factor and
unhappiness is at the low of this. There are also a lot of differences throughout the day. Happiness
can also be found in different activities in different matters.
There are many factors and variables linked to subjective happiness, like age, Education, Social Class,
Income, Marital status/relationships, Employment, Leisure, Religion, Health, Life events and activities,
Environmental factors / amenities and Urban versus rural areas / green spaces. Employment and
health are extremely important.
Cultural and Linguistic issues
“By necessities, I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the
support of life, but whatever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people,
even of the lower order, to be without. A creditable day labourer would be ashamed to appear in
public without a linen shirt.”
“A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all
social demands for a dwelling. But if a palace arises beside the little house, the little house shrinks to
a hovel… [and]… the dweller will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within
its four walls.”
Positional and non-positional goods (Hirsch, 1976; after Frank, 2005)
 Positional good: goods for which the link between context and evaluation is strongest (e.g.
housing).

Non-positional good: goods for which the link between social (and spatial) context is weakest
(e.g. holiday).
The distinction is based on observations.
People care about relative consumption, more in some domains than in others. Concerns about
relative consumption lead to “positional arms races,” or expenditure arms races focused on positional
goods. Positional arms races divert resources from non positional goods, causing large welfare losses.
You can led people choose between different forms of consumptions to indicate the happiness and
choices people make.
“The list of consumption items that get short shrift could be extended considerably. Thus we could
ask whether living in slightly smaller houses would be a reasonable price to pay for higher air quality,
for more urban parkland, for cleaner drinking water, for a reduction in violent crime, or for medical
research that would reduce premature death. And in each case the answer would be the same as in
the cases we have considered thus far.”
The spirit level
“Politics was once seen as a way of improving people’s social and emotional well-being by changing
their economic circumstances. But over the last few decades the bigger picture has been lost. People
are now more likely to see psychosocial well-being as dependent on what can be done at the
individual level, using cognitive behavioral therapy – one person at a time – or on providing support
in early childhood, or on the reassertion of religious or family values. However, it is now clear that
income distribution provides policy makers with a way of improving the psychosocial wellbeing of
whole populations. Politicians have an opportunity to do genuine good.”
Can composition of individual socio-economic status explain the geographic inequalities of wellbeing and happiness?
There are differences between
composition and context. Context is
about the area, while compositional is
how happiness forms a result of
demographical population. This is both
at a different level, which affects the
happiness.
Multilevel Analysis – from macro to local and microlevel
There are different levels: World  Nation  Region  District  Electoral
Wards  Neighborhood  Household  Individual.
There is an anomie/loneliness index at the local level. This is a weighted
sums of non-married adults, one person households, people who have
moved to the area within the last year, and people renting private. It is a
proxy of the risk for social problems and loneliness.
There are multiple factors that affect the happiness.
Concluding comments
 There is a renewed interest in Quality of Life (QoL) and happiness in cities and regions.
 Social justice issues have a huge impact on overall levels of QoL of a city.
 There is a great potential for urban researchers to contribute to happiness research.
 Happy People, Happy Households or Happy Places?
 Implications for / links to migration.
After this lecture session, you should be able to
 Describe ways in which happiness can be measured and analyzed at different levels (including
individual, local, regional and national), considering the relevance to migration and
development.
 Identify key factors that affect happiness and well-being at different levels.
 Understand the difference between compositional and contextual determinants of
happiness.
 Critically address the question: happy people or happy places?
Lecture 4: Migration, Identity, Space and Place
Bauman is a sociologist who, between 1971-2017, had resided in England after being driven out of
Poland by an anti-Semitic purge organized by the Communist Party. Professor of sociology at the
University of Leeds (and since 1990 emeritus professor), Bauman became best known for his analyses
of the links between modernity and the Holocaust, and of postmodern consumerism. He said
something about the connection between migration and identities in the globalized world:
‘’ ever since the concept of ‘social insects’ (embracing bees, termites, ants and wasps) was
coined and popularized, a firm and hardly ever questioned belief was shared by the learned
zoologists and the lay public: that the ‘sociability’ of insects is confined to the nest to which
they belong - – the place in which they have been hatched and to which they return every
day of their life, bringing the spoils of their foraging ventures to be shared with the rest of the
hive’s natives. The possibility that some working bees or wasps would ‘migrate’, cross the
boundaries between nests, abandon the hive of birth and join another one, a hive of choice,
was seen (if it was ever contemplated) as an incongruous idea. It was axiomatically assumed
instead that the ‘natives’, the born and therefore ‘legitimate’ members of the nest, would
promptly chase the maverick newcomers away and destroy them if they refused to go.’’
It states that what passes for reason changes over time. It takes shape after the pattern of realities
‘out there’, perceived through the lenses of what humans currently know how to do, are trained,
groomed and inclined to be doing – and do. It challenges the ‘naturalness’ and universality of the
lifelong determination of ‘belonging’ by birth.
Modern-era migration phases (according to Bauman, 2011)
 1st phase: territoriality of sovereignty, ‘rooted’ identity, gardening posture (TRG): this is
partly exportation and partly eviction of up to 60 million people. This was a huge amount by
the standards of the 19th century and it was done to empty the lands. Some of the natives are
still alive after massive slaughters and epidemics. They have been proclaimed, by the settlers,
as the white man’s civilization mission.
 2nd phase: ‘Empire emigrates back’: after the dismantling of the colonial empires, a number
of indigenous people in various stages of their ‘cultural advancement’ followed their ‘colonial
superiors’ to the metropolis. After arrival, they were cast in the worldwide-strategic mold
available. This was one constructed and practiced earlier in the nation building era to deal
with the categories for assimilation.
 3rd phase: ‘the age of diasporas’: no hierarchy: this is a worldwide archipelago of ethnic/
religious/ linguistic settlements. This is oblivious to the trails blazed and paved by the
imperialist-colonial episode and follows instead the globalization induced logic of the
planetary redistribution of life-resources. Diasporas (volksverspreiding) are scattered,
diffused, extended over many nominally sovereign territories, ignoring territorial claims to
the supremacy of local demands and obligations. The present-day migration differs from the
two previous phases by moving both ways (virtually all countries, including Britain, are
nowadays both ‘immigrant’ and ‘emigrant’), and privileging no routes (routes are no longer
determined by the imperial/colonial links of the past). It replaces TRG with EAH (an
extraterritoriality– ‘anchors’ displacing the ‘roots’ as primary tools of identification– hunting
strategy).
Identity, citizenship, individual and place, neighborhood and belonging
Population of almost every country is nowadays a collection of diasporas. Population of almost every
sizeable city is nowadays an aggregate of ethnic, religious, lifestyle enclaves in which the line dividing
‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ is a hotly contested issue; while the right to draw that line, to keep it intact
and make it unassailable, is the prime stake in the skirmishes for influence and battles for recognition
that follow.
Migration is needed to keep diversity in the population. Jonathan Rutherford, acute and insightful
observer of the fast-changing frames of human togetherness, notes that the residents of the London
street on which he lives form a neighborhood of different communities, some with networks
extending only to the next street, others that stretch across the world. It is a neighborhood of porous
boundaries in which it is difficult to identify who belongs and who is an outsider.
What is home like?
The logic of planetary responsibility is aimed, at least in principle, at confronting the globally
generated problems point-blank – at their own level.
It stems from the assumption that lasting and truly
effective solutions to the planet-wide problems can
only be found and work through the renegotiation
and reform of the web of global interdependencies
and interactions. This means that we have shared
responsibilities like climate change.
The EU is about sharing the same ideas and values,
because feel the same. This forms identities.
The European Identity
This is about cognition, meaning (evaluation) and emotional value (affect). The cognitive is the selfidentification as European and the affective is the extent to which respondents identify with Europe
(that is, feel an affective bond with the idea of ‘Europe’ and the community of Europeans it
represents). This has to be quantified and there are standard questions with which this is done.
The Moreno question states: Do respondents see themselves as their nationality only, their
nationality and European, European and their nationality, or European only?
For this question the cognitive mobilization is important. This is an individual’s ability to relate, in the
abstract, to a supranational European community, one that – compared with one’s nation or state –
operates at a further remove from ordinary citizens. For Inglehart, cognitive mobilization is closely
linked to higher levels of education, which provides individuals with the ‘political skills necessary to
cope with a remote political community’.
Students
For this students are very interesting to look at. Their cognitive mobilization is a greater awareness of
Europe during the course of the academic exchange will enhance European identity. The
transactionalist theory states that: personal contact among group members is the key to collective
identity formation - ‘the most “European” people [are] those who have the most opportunities to
interact with people from other European countries’.
There are 3 hypothesis about the Erasmus effect:
 Hypothesis 1: one or both dimensions of European identity will be enhanced in the Erasmus
group, but not in the sedentary control group (H1).
 Hypothesis 2: there is a positive relationship between increased knowledge of, and attention
to, Europe and enhancements to one or both dimensions of European identity.
 Hypothesis 3: transnational contact during the Erasmus exchange fosters European identity.
How European?
You can ask people if and how often, next to their nationality, how European they feel. The Erasmus
group experienced a significant enhancement in identification as European over the course of the
study, while the non-mobile group did not. This can be related to the ceiling effect: students are
already likely to identify as European, an Erasmus exchange ‘can hardly make a difference’. But even
among a group already prone to selfidentify as European, Erasmus participation makes a real
difference for the minority that does not think of themselves as European.
The Erasmus effect
The foregoing analysis strongly supports H1: the data indicate that studying abroad is associated with
enhancements in both dimensions of European identity. While the mobile and non-mobile groups
began with nearly identical measures of identification as European and identification with Europe,
over the course of their time abroad, the Erasmus group experienced a significant positive change in
both dimensions of identity, while the non-mobile group experienced no significant change in
identification as European and a significant decrease in identification with Europe.
 Erasmus students’ identities actually do change over the course of their sojourn, and that this
is at least partly explained by increased knowledge of Europe and transnational interaction.
 Although adolescence is often highlighted in the literature as the most crucial period of
identity formation, the data indicate that, even among young adults, identities remain
malleable enough that, over the course of a half-year, there is a marked change in European
identity after studying abroad.
 Civic effect: fostering European identity in addition to promoting employability and
developing human capital.
A country called Europe
Churchill said after WW2; we must re-create the European family in a regional structure, called, it
may be, the United States of Europe. A new cartography can further develop ideas of Europe as a
single mass of people and help our thinking to move further towards a “Europe of people” instead of
“nation-states”. Through such action we may see a bolstering of European identity to help us think of
Europe and its economy, culture, history and both human and physical geography in terms of a single
large land and population mass.
We should be thinking about Europe as a continent of regions and cities rather than nation-states and
to realize the huge number of ways in which people living in different parts of Europe have so much
in common. By transforming the human and physical space of Europe simultaneously, it may be more
likely for Europeans to make more sense of both their home area’s physical and human geography
and to think of Europe as one place.
The Human Atlas shows many maps that indicate different ideas and feelings across Europe.
Concluding remarks
 Considering the impact of migration upon individual, and place identities.
 Have today’s modern states passed from the nation-building stage into that of multicultural
belonging?
 Identity formation, migration and sense of place.
 The European Union as an example of individual and place identity formation shaped by
migration and mobility.
 The Erasmus effect: fostering European identity (civic effect) in addition to promoting
employability and developing human capital.
After this lecture session, you should be able to:
 Explain the interdependencies between place and individual identities.
 Explain the impact of migration upon individual and place identities.
 Explain how identities may be formed in the context of a globalized world.
 Understand the implications of migration for the bond between identity and citizenship,
individual and place, neighborhood and belonging.
Lecture 5 and 6: The Mobility Transition Myth or reality?
Social representations of mobility
There is a need in the modern world to be mobile. This is conveyed through the neoliberal thought.
Big questions in this are:
 Is this real? Are people nowadays more mobile?
 Which theories promote this representation?
 What do we really mean by mobility?
Demographic transition
This was described by Thompson, Landry, and
Notestein. Countries follow a certain trajectory
through which they all go, but this can happen
at different speeds. Sometimes the birth rate
stays high for a long time, because of political
instability to spread the risks.
Developmental paradigms
Reading history sideways was a form of historical geography that substituted variations across space
for variations across time, thereby converting spatial heterogeneity into homogeneous development.
That also requires a system for ordering contemporary societies along the trajectory of development.
We should not be surprised that ethnocentrism led the people of northwest Europe to believe that
they were at the pinnacle of development.
Migration
There is the classical demographic transitional theory. There are only marginal references and
migration to cities is seen as an agent of social change. There is little political interest for migration.
In 1885 Ravenstein’s laws of migration were described. These consist of 11 general rules drawn from
census data in U.K. This is not mentioned in the Demographic Transition and nothing new arrived
until the 1970s.
In 1971 Wilmur Zelinsky wrote the Hypothesis of the Mobility transition, Geographical Review, vol.
61, no. 2. In 1983: The impasse in migration theory: A sketch map for potential escapees, he wrote.
This is important for the mobility transition.
The mobility transition
The main claim is the modernization of
societies affects patterns of mobility. The
mobility is that there are definite, patterned
regularities in the growth of personal
mobility through space-time during recent
history, and these regularities comprise an
essential component of the modernization
process. Over time there have been
multiple types of mobility.
Definitions
 Mobility: “there is no realistic alternative to treating all territorial mobility as a single
continuum, extending from the shortest, most routine of iterated motions to the most
adventurous intercontinental journey”.
 Migration: any permanent or semipermanent change of residence (…) a spatial transfer from
one social unit or neighborhood to another, which strains or rupture previous social bounds.
There are some very important statements in the hypothesis of the mobility transition:
1. “A transition from a relatively sessile condition of severely limited physical and social mobility
toward much higher rates of such movement always occurs as a community experiences the
process of modernization”
2. “For any specific community the course of the mobility transition closely parallels that of the
demographic transition and that of other transitional sequences not yet adequately
described.”
1. “Such evidence as we have indicates an irreversible progression of stages.”
Migration and development
Development is a normative, ordered, unavoidable, irreversible process. The critical question is
whether, why, and how a community can generate that mysterious impetus needed to spring upward
along the developmental ladder. Given the sturdiness of social ties, low levels of transport and
communication technology, the sharply circumscribed mental horizons, and the minimal disposable
incomes of most persons, it is scarcely surprising to find little beyond the most localized territorial
mobility.
Legacy
There is a legacy with a classic in human geography. It is a ‘child of its time’, quickly obsolete because
of shifts from macro to micro analyses (and data), from quantitative to qualitative methods, and from
positivist determinism to post-modernist relativism. It is also a visionary with a role of technology and
commuting and the mass migration to the Global North and its reception. This is unavoidable, even
for critics.
Paleo migrations
There are multiple paleo migrations. All humans originate from Africa, but later on there was a lot of
migration. The origins of modern Europeans come from Anatolian and the most Northern countries
from Yamna. This shows that ancient humans were thus far from being immobile, but were they
migrants in the modern sense? According to the UN a migrant is “a person who is moving or has
moved across an international border or within a State away from his/her habitual place of
residence”.
Global migrations (16th-19th century)
The first statement is that: “A transition from a relatively sessile condition of severely limited physical
and social mobility toward much higher rates of such movement always occurs as a community
experiences the process of modernization”.
In the 1970s there was the revolt of the early modernists. There was a debunk of archaic portrait of
pre-industrial Europe. It was stopped to treat migration as exceptional (e.g. refugees) and reconsider
workers and soldiers.
The mobility transition from 1500-1900 was revisited by the brothers Lucassen. The definition of
migration is the cross-community migration (“moving over a cultural, often linguistic, border”). There
are multiple types of migration: Intercontinental, Settlement, To cities, Seasonal, Labor (e.g. sailors,
soldiers). It was measured by a probability to migrate over lifetime. The results showed that the size
of the population was increasing and there was more migration (Zelinsky). However, the relative
migration is still quite stable until the mid 19th century. The
proportion of migrants is quite stable, so Zelinsky is wrong.
There are 2 big types of migration in the Netherlands: to
cities and soldiers and sailors (linked to colonies). The big
difference between Zelinsky and Lucassen are the workers
and soldiers. Zelinsky ignored these. He also
underestimated the migration to cities. He thought that
people would migrate to cities with the industrialization.
The Lucassen brothers looked at the cities and
they saw that there are higher death rates in
cities and this is compensated by the number of
migrants. In cities there was mainly short
migration, so only 10% of the migrants stayed in
the city. The average time they spend in the city
was less than a year. This happened a lot where
people worked for a few months in the cities
when there was most work.
Summary
Only 50% increase of migration rates after 1800, much less than predicted by Zelinsky. No “one story
fits all countries”, so beware of developmental determinism and a-historical theories. Migrations to
cities before the Industrial Revolution were underestimated by Zelinsky (and even by the Lucassen
brothers because they exclude temporary migration.
Preindustrial migration systems
Migration systems don’t make sense on their own and they
have to be placed into context. In the image, each arrow
stands for a specific migration flow that was identified and
the system can identify thousands of migrants per year, whom are temporarily migrants.
Migration systems were rooted in extant demographic regimes and family formation systems.”
“Migration itself is conceived as a socially constructed, self-perpetuating system that includes home
and destination – a responsive system that expands, contracts, and changes according to
circumstance”.
There are many temporarily migrants and in the European system people can be identified with the
age of marriage, life cycle circle and the influence on marriage. The life cycle circle is: European boys
and girls entered service just as their reproductive period began, in their early to mid ‘teens, delaying
marriage for as much as a decade, or not marrying at all. The main characteristics are; unmarried,
young, similar social class as master, short-term contracts, shortrange, city and countryside.
These people are ignored as migrants by Zelinsky. They migrate over a short distance, but it was very
strong, mainly in NW Europe. It was also omitted by the Lucassen brothers.
This indicates that even before industrialization migration was everywhere, but it was mainly local.
The conclusion very much depends on what you assume as migration.
The definition trap: “the field of (historical) migration studies suffers from a lack of clear definitions
as to what constitutes “migration”. Some include people who move from one village to another,
whereas others would classify such relocations merely as mobility. The same holds true for temporary
moves (…).” (Lucassen and Lucassen 2014).
Industrialization and migration
The definitions of migration are the moving in and out of municipalities. It relies on registers and/or
‘resident permits’ delivered by the local police. There is often an underestimation of migration in the
countryside. According to the paper, industrialization leads to an increase in migration rate. This is
right in some cases. The internal migration rates in Germany increased until 1910 and afterwards it
decreased again. This mimics the graph of Zelinsky. However, the explanation is different. The in and
out migration both increase, which means that the intensity increases although the amount of people
is relatively stable.
People that work in the plants (peasant workers) are the major groups who left within a year, so the
turnover rate for this is very high. At a certain point the peasant workers disappeared. This was the
end of temporary migration, since the disappeared as the twentieth century brought rationalization
of industrial and agricultural production, and the de-seasonalization of labor. It is possible that the
mobility peak around 1900 witnessed the historical high point for worker-peasants in Germany.
This means that the pattern from Zelinsky was correct while the reasoning was not. People were
already migration beforehand, but now they used it was more. This is used to illustrate the problem
of historical things. Something can be right for the wrong reasons.
Summary
“Unlike Wilbur Zelinsky, I do not see an ideal population theory as covering mobility “from the most
local and ephemeral through the most durable and intercontinental levels”, accounting for all
extremes of behavior, linking all forms of spatial mobility, and even “anticipating future
developments”. That sort of heroic overconfidence tended to discredit social science history soon
after it burst into the academic scene in the 1970s.”
Recent trends
The percentage of migrants worldwide is pretty stable. The world population has increased and
migration has done accordingly. However, there have been changes in the regional proportions.
Migration is huge within Africa, but compared to this, it is relatively small in other regions. The
intensions of migrations are important in how much they have the wish to migrate. On average, this is
25% in Africa. However, the percentage of people planning and preparing a move is very small. This
means that in practice it happens not a lot. Migration happens the most in countries that are in the
middle of income distribution. The
internal migration rates are quite
different across countries. Most
countries have a stable or falling
migration rate.
There are a lot of potential
explanations for migration based on
either demography, family,
technology and labor market.
Summary
 No explosion of international
migration, just more migrants because more people in the World.
 Changes in composition (more from Global South).
 Internal migration is stalling and even decreasing in most countries of the Global North.
 Reasons still debated, but probable role of population ageing, employment, family ties, and
technology.
 Mobility (circulation) is increasing, but not migration.
 There is no mechanical effect of ‘modernity’.
Objectives
 Define and situate the theory of ‘Mobility transition’
 Empirically test it through historical settings, e.g.
- Prehistory
- Preindustrial
- Industrial revolution
- Recent trends
 Relate it to the paradigms of ‘Modernization’ and ‘Development’
Exam question: one from survey and one from take home messages.
Lecture 6: Quiz from lecture “The Mobility Transition: myth or
reality?”
1. Would you say this article is mostly theoretical or empirical?
Theoretical, despite some empirical elements, which are highly disputable.
2. Which disciplines provided most inspirations to Zelinsky in this theory?
Demography and Geography
3. Which theories in particular inspired him most?
Demographic Transition, Ravenstein’s laws of migration, Spatial diffusion, Economic
optimization
4. According to Zelinsky’s definitions, do the following forms of mobility qualify as migration:
circulation, seasonal, commuting ?
According to Zelinsky (p. 226), none of these types of mobility fit the definition of a migration
as a “permanent or semi-permanent change of residence” (p. 225), although the term “semipermanent” is vague and could have included temporary migration.
5. Look at Figure 2 (p. 233). Are these statements true of false?
- All types of mobility are supposed almost inexistent in phase 1. – True
- Migration between rural places are omitted – True
- Migration from urban to rural are increasing over time – False (they are omitted)
- Seasonal / temporary migrations are decreasing over time – False (they are omitted by
definition)
6. Still based on Figure 2, what can you say about the relative importance (proportions) of
each of these migration types at each moment in time?
Nothing, because they are all represented on their own scale.
7. Which title would you give to subfigure 2F, using contemporary terminology?
Commuting (i.e. daily travel between places of residence and work without a change of
residence).
8. Which title would you give to subfigure 2G, using contemporary terminology?
Telecommuting/teleworking/working from home (i.e. avoiding the journey from places of
residence and work by using communication systems such as phone and Internet).
9. Which limitations do you see to the argument borrowed to Davis comparing the USA and
India? (p.235)
In this good example of what Thornton calls “reading history sideways”, Zelinsky does not
compare the same country at different times (or degree of industrialization), but two
countries (India and the USA) at roughly the same time (1931 and 1940). The fact that the
former shows a lower degree of mobility than the latter is not a proof that it was caused by
the lesser degree of industrialization (or “Modernization”) of the former compared to the
latter. There could be other reasons why Indians are apparently less mobile: different familial,
cultural or economic reasons for Indians to move less than Americans, no matter the level of
industrialization, or even the different shape and size of Indian and American states (i.e. the
so-called “modifiable areal unit problem”). More generally, this type of comparison between
supposedly more and less “developed” (or “modern”) countries relies on the assumption that
there is a common “path” to development (or modernity). 1
10. Which limitation do you see to the use of census data to measure migration? (p.235)
Censuses are “cross-sectional” pictures of the state of a population at a given time. It does
not record events over time, which means that for instance seasonal or other short migration
spells are greatly underestimated, especially if the census uses a “de jure” (i.e. usual place of
residence) instead of “de facto” (i.e. current place at the moment of the census) definition.
11. On page 240, third paragraph, Zelinsky mentions maps of migration rates by districts.
Which type of rates are these? Which limitation do you see to this data / method?
These are net migration rates, which do not take into account counter flows of people moving
back and forth across geographical boundaries. The example of the Dusseldorf district, by
Hochstadt (1999), shows that at this time, most people came and went, only a few stayed.
And this applies to most of Europe at that time.
Lecture notes on paper
Paper: very bold statements and a lot of criticism.
F and G are contention migration that is avoided, because of different factors:
 F: commuting
 G: internet, working from home.
Mostly theoretical,
Theories that try to explain everything are bound to be wrong.
Biggest inspiration: Ravenstein,
Definition is much more restricted on what qualifies on migration. None of the options are falling into
migration according to him. Permanent change of resident place for it to be migration, can also be
semi-permanent.
Figure 2: what can we say  almost no migration in phase 1
Migration between rural places: almost no migration between these areas. Although in some regions
the most migration was this. Rural to urban also leads to a counter flow.
Seasonal temp. migration does not include (false).
Dominant type of migration: impossible to say anything about the proportions because they have
their own scales.
USA and India: development and modernity increases migration. Technical: start comparing internal
mobility, encounter a problem  size and shape of internal will affect the types of conclusions that
you will draw. Size and shape are both important. When they are in different states it suddenly is
more migration compared to when the cities are in the same state.
Also lot of reasons why Indians can move less then Americans. Can be due to eg family relations.
Country that is least develop will start to look more like the developed country. 2 types of arguments:
theoretical and technical.
Censuses good: covers the whole population in theory. Can only say something about net migration
(+--). You can ignore a lot of people because they were not there at the census period, like temp.
migrants.
Problem lies with the net migration rate, because you miss a big part.
Lecture 7: Forced migration and the refugee crisis
There are many types of migration. It can be global, internal, forced and voluntary (economic).
 A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution,
war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race,
religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely,
they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence
are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.
 An internally displaced person, or IDP, is someone who has been forced to flee their home
but never cross an international border. These individuals seek safety anywhere they can find
it—in nearby towns, schools, settlements, internal camps, even forests and fields. IDPs, which
include people displaced by internal strife and natural disasters, are the largest group that
UNHCR assists. Unlike refugees, IDPs are not protected by international law or eligible to
receive many types of aid because they are legally under the protection of their own
government.
 A stateless person is someone who is not a citizen of any country. Citizenship is the legal
bond between a government and an individual, and allows for certain political, economic,
social and other rights of the individual, as well as the responsibilities of both government
and citizen. A person can become stateless due to a variety of reasons, including sovereign,
legal, technical or administrative decisions or oversights. The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights underlines that “Everyone has the right to a nationality.”
 When people flee their own country and seek sanctuary in another country, they apply for
asylum – the right to be recognized as a refugee and receive legal protection and material
assistance. An asylum seeker must demonstrate that his or her fear of persecution in his or
her home country is well-founded.
 The 1951 Geneva Convention is the main international instrument of refugee law. The
Convention clearly spells out who a refugee is and the kind of legal protection, other
assistance and social rights he or she should receive from the countries who have signed the
document. The Convention also defines a refugee’s obligations to host governments and
certain categories or people, such as war criminals, who do not qualify for refugee status. The
Convention was limited to protecting mainly European refugees in the aftermath of World
War II, but another document, the 1967 Protocol, expanded the scope of the Convention as
the problem of displacement spread around the world.
Forced migration in a broader sense, includes not only refugees and asylum seekers but also people
forced to move due to external factors, such as environmental catastrophes or development projects.
This form of migration has similar characteristics to displacement.
Worldwide there are 65,6 million forcibly displaced people of which 22,5 million refugees mainly
from Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. Most people go to neighboring countries. A lot of people
trat try to go to Europe first go through Turkey to Lesbos. There are way too much people there.
Responses
 Local volunteers: ‘even if Greece is bankrupt and we have no money, we will still have our
bodies and we will help the people who need us.
 ‘Volunteers International’ ‘often taking unpaid leave from work, bringing their own
equipment and living in whatever accommodation they can find; a nurse from Palestine, a
doctor from Israel, lifeguards from Barcelona; from Bolton to Oslo, everyday people are
making a difference’.
 The European government:
- September: European Union emergency plans for all member-states to relocate 120,000
migrants and refugees across the continent over the next two years.
-
January 2016: German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans to see refugee arrivals
as an opportunity in her New Year address.
March 2016: EU-Turkey deal.
The conditions in the refugee camps are often not good and people should take more responsibility.
The human rights are not in place and this was said by the European commission for human rights:
“The landscape I describe is a bleak one, and those who cherish human rights, who value Europe,
cannot remain silent. To all human rights defenders, to all those who protect the most vulnerable, to
all those politicians who stand by principles and values even when it is not electorally convenient, I
say: do not leave the battlefield. With you, we will overcome this negative period and build a stronger
Europe based on human rights for all.’’
"We need policies to be "tailor-made" and to pay attention to local level characteristics and to the
specific needs of the migrants hosted in local communities. We also need labour market integration."
Alessandra Faggian. "It is important to take an inductive approach to understanding how refugees can
achieve a sense of community. Interdisciplinary insight can help us understand local economic change
in places receiving refugees." Nicholas Wise.
What would you advise some organization to do about a refugee crisis (exam questions?)
 How can European cities and regions successfully address the challenge of hosting and
integrating asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants?
 Hypothetical scenario: 50,000 refugees on a Greek island (mostly from Syria and Afghanistan)
 Imagine you are an advisor to the European Commission and you are asked to give your
expert scientific view on what would be the best approach to relocating these refugees across
Europe.
Other considerations (apart from the humanitarian imperatives):
 Economic case: potential contribution that they can make to the economies and pensions
systems of European countries increasingly faced with a demographic and pension crisis.
 Socio-cultural: The integration of people with diverse backgrounds can be culturally
enriching.
 Capacity: Total numbers of refugees in relation to the total population of Europe.
 Social tensions: polarization, fractionalization.
 Theoretical perspectives: disequilibrium or equilibrium frameworks; group threat or group
contact.
Next to these, there are also other factors and considerations, like historical background, social
attitudes norms and values, education, social capital, demographics, demographics, social and
economic conditions, refugees expectations, national and local politics, and the media discourse.
What makes a region of sanctuary? #refugeeswelcome
Some regions are more open to refugees than others. This can be based on the countries history.
These people need help on education and the Office of Displaced Designers helps with this. The
results of the analysis show that high levels of population fractionalization have a strong and positive
influence on economic development in the short, medium and long run. High levels of polarization,
by contrast, undermine development. Diversity becomes a double-edged sword: it works only if the
different groups can interact, that is, if the “melting pot” really happens. Where it is not possible to
build a dialogue between the different groups, where bridging does not occur, groups and
communities remain in their own physical or mental ghettoes, undermining any economic benefits
from a diverse environment.
Labor market performance of refugees in the EU
Refugees have a much lower employment rate, both relative to the native-born population in the EU,
but also relative to other migrants. 40% of refugees in the EU being low-educated – almost double
the share amongst the native-born population in EU Member States. Language training is found to be
a strong lever to better labor market integration, especially when the language skills are low on the
day of arrival in the host country.
The view of the media is also important. Viewing the refugee and migration crisis as a failure of
immigration control often adopting a toxic discourse. But isn’t this an opportunity to celebrate
humanity and uphold ideological and humanitarian responsibilities that are considered to be panEuropean and universal ideals?
Concluding comments
 How can European cities and regions successfully address the challenge of hosting and
integrating asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants?.
 Apart from the humanitarian imperative, there is a very strong economic case to be made for
a successful integration of all migrants, especially given the demographic and pension crisis in
Europe and depopulation issues in peripheral regions.
 Welcoming and integrating refugees is also consistent with key European values and ideals.
 Current policies and recent developments.
After this lecture session you should be able to:
 Define forced migration and describe it with illustrative examples.
 Describe the key issues and recent developments pertaining to the current global refugee
crisis.
 Discuss the key motivations and concerns of forced migrants.
 Identify the key concerns, challenges and opportunities for forced migrant destination
regions.
 Give evidence based examples of how cities and regions can successfully address the
challenge of hosting and integrating asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants,
highlighting both the humanitarian imperatives as well as relevant demographic and socioeconomic issues.
 Understand how population diversity relates to local and regional economic development.
 Critically address the question: What makes a #refugeeswelcome region.