—The article examines the intensity of intraregional and interregional net-migration of the populations of centers and secondary (in terms of population) cities of 74 Russian regions for 2012–2016. ...The informational basis of the study is a database of municipality indicators for the corresponding years. The low city saturation of the Russian space should logically lead to the fact that in intraregional migration, secondary cities, as important centers of social and economic life, should be attractive for migration, i.e., have a positive net migration rate. In fact, this is observed in 42 regions. In the remainder, the final balance of intraregional migration in secondary cities is negative. Migration can also be considered an indicator of the well-being of secondary cities both in terms of availability of their own sustainable hinterland and socioeconomically. Regional centers are attractive for intraregional migrants almost everywhere. This uniformity results from the concentration of financial and other flows and authority in the capital cities of regions and, regardless of the socioeconomic situation, better quality of life in regional centers compared to other municipalities in their regions. The interregional migration indicators are a more ambiguous characteristics: from the viewpoint of the balance considered in the article, not only regional secondary cities, but also many regional centers, are unattractive for interregional migrants. Limited demographic resources and the presence of two powerful centers of migration attraction at the country level (Moscow and St. Petersburg) leave no opportunities for migration increase owing to interregional migrants to most regional centers.
The paper studies population dynamics of 75 regional centers and secondary cities in the Russia’s regions. The information base for the analysis was population census data from 1959 to 2010 and the ...current population accounting for 2011–2017. In the vast majority of regions, the center dominates over the secondary city significantly. This manifests itself both in the absolute parameters of the population and in the share of centers and secondary cities in the populations of their regions. In 31 Russian regions, the share of the center by 2002 had already reached 35% and continued to grow. After 15 years, it exceeded 45% in 13 regions. The upper limit of the possible population concentration in the regional center has not yet been revealed. Over time, the prevalence of centers over secondary cities has been increasing. The analysis showed that the possibilities of population increase in secondary cities depend on the size of said population: among secondary cities with a population greater than 250 000, they continue to increase; among secondary small cities, the share between depopulating and growing cities hardly changes at all. Thus, trends towards centrism in the regions prevail over polycentricity. The population is increasingly concentrated at separate points, vested with power. These processes are based on historical and evolutionary (history of settlement, development, and urbanization), functional–economic, administrative-territorial, and demographic determinants. Recently, an increasingly important factor contributing to population concentration is the institutional factor (associated with the execution of capital functions by regional centers and reducing the costs of business and consumers).
The problem of measuring distances in migration is a nontrivial, but important problem, e.g., for delimiting the concepts of population migration and residential mobility. With limited access to ...detailed spatial data, researchers address this problem in different ways. Only a few countries, e.g., Sweden, have the ability to calculate migration distances between point locations using Euclidean distance. This article examines the measure of correspondence of Euclidean distances (measured taking into account the curvature of the globe) to real distances along transport routes for the case of Russia. For this, 3407 pairs of distances were calculated for randomly selected 23 municipal districts in Russia directly and along transport routes—roads. Also, 411 pairs of distances were calculated for population centers with no road connections by using air service. These distances give an idea of migrations of different distances in Russia. As a result, for hypothetical relocations within the selected municipal districts, real distances on roads exceed Euclidean distances by 51%; for relocations between the centers of districts and urban
okrug
s within a region, by 40%; for interregional relocations, 33%. The air service used “straightens” distances, but even taking this into account, real distances (mainly long-distance, interregional) exceed Euclidean distances by 28.5%. The calculations give an idea of the deviations of real transport distances from the relatively simple Euclidean distances, which can be used in analyzing migration distances in Russia.
The migration balance of urban municipal areas (hereinafter,
okrugs–Russ
.) and municipal districts in Russia in 2012–2014 is analyzed from the standpoint of its impact on the concentration and ...deconcentration of the population. The paper reviews the distribution of urban
okrugs
and municipal districts by population density and the current ratio of sparsely and densely populated areas across the country. Calculations show that the conditions in Russia today contribute to concentration of the population and, hence, the polarization of space between densely populated major cities and deserted poorly developed areas. Unlike in many European countries and the United States, where concentration and deconcentration processes have been alternating for decades, concentration of the population is an ongoing process in Russia. Two directions of migration are analyzed: (1) from the intraregional periphery to regional centers: the farther from the center, the more intense the outflow; (2) from low-populated municipalities to densely populated territorial units, primarily, large cities. The contributions of individual migration flows (intraregional, interregional, and international) to the concentration and deconcentration of the population are evaluated.
—Intraregional migration in modern Russia plays a crucial role in the realization of people’s life plans and contributes to a change in the configuration of space. Every second registered ...resettlement within Russia occurs within federal subjects. However, apart from the general scale and role in changing the population size of individual municipalities, nothing is known about intraregional migration. The authors collected statistical information on long-term intraregional migration in 1265 municipalities of 39 federal subjects (51.4% of the country’s population) for 2017, which made it possible to form arrival, departure, and net migration matrices for each region. This made it possible to analyze population flows and redistribution in intraregional movements between regional centers, suburban municipalities, and the regional periphery. The analysis revealed that the quantitative parameters of redistribution of the population between centers, their suburbs and other municipalities in all intraregional migration approximately correspond to their share in the population, and all classes of municipalities are equally involved in migration. There is intensive migration exchange between regional centers and their suburbs. The centers are not only inferior to the suburbs in terms of the intensity of migration growth, 80% of the centers are losing population in the migration exchange with their own suburbs. In general, the redistribution of the population in intraregional migration in almost all studied federal subjects contributes to an increased concentration of population in the agglomeration zone formed by regional center and its suburbs. In some federal subjects, another zone of population congestion, as a rule, of a much smaller size, are subcenters, represented by large cities a considerable distance from the regional center. They form their own migration gravity zones from the nearest peripheral municipalities. In most cases, this migration only allows subcenters to compensate for migration outflow to other regions or to their regional center.
The development of population migration studies in Russia’s social geography in 2010–2021 is analyzed. Publications on this topic in leading geographical journals are studied. The possibilities of ...studying Russia’s internal population migration using new data are considered. Dissertations defended in Russia in the specialty “Economic, Social, Political, and Recreational Geography” are summarized. Based on the results of the analysis, it is concluded that the period under review is characterized by an increased number and broadening of population migration research topics. After 2010, Russian geographers have intensified their study of migration in foreign countries. Among the new areas compared to the early 2000s, one can cite analysis of the settlement pattern of migrants at the intracity level based on cases, studies of foreign countries. New directions in the study of Russian migration are related to specification of the migration information base at the municipal level. The appearance of fundamentally new data—mobile network operators—makes it possible to study the time cycles of the population’s spatial mobility. Social network (e.g., VKontakte) data is used to analyze educational migration. The main problems are related to the formulation of research questions, the depth and complexity of study of the migration process, and the low popularity of the methods and approaches of other social sciences among geographers. Analysis of the publication activity of authors showed a rather low level of cooperation between Russian researchers and their foreign colleagues, as well as the virtual absence of scientific cooperation between geographers from different Russian regions in migration stud-ies.
—
The key differences between Russian municipalities in terms of migration increase (decrease) are determined by their position in the center-periphery system, which is most often represented with ...their capital/noncapital status. Most regional capitals demonstrate migration increase. The larger the capital is and the higher its migration attractiveness, the wider the areas of its intensively developing suburbs are, and the more the net increase zone that is observed in them extends. This hypothesis is tested in the article on data for 63 metropolitan areas, in 52 of which data on the new housing supply is simultaneously available. The source of data is the Rosstat database of indicators characterizing municipalities for 2014–2019, as well as the database of the shortest distances along existing roads from the centers of regional capitals to the centers of each municipal unit of the suburban zone (km). Suburbs that are 30–40 km away from the cores of metropolitan areas are characterized by significant migration increase and housing supply. Starting from a distance of 60–65 km, housing supply drops to values below the national average, and there is a steady migration decrease. The larger the population in the cores of the metropolitan areas is, the farther away these borders are from them. With increasing distance from regional capitals, per capita housing construction as well as the number of municipal units with net increase and the proportion of the population living in them are declining. A high migration increase in peri-urban areas is based on a limited number of municipalities with its ultra-high values that develop standard multi-story housing. They are located in close proximity to the capitals and their initial population is usually relatively small. An analysis of housing construction and migration rates in regional capitals and suburban municipal units indicates that the near suburbs represent an extension of regional capitals beyond their administrative boundaries providing opportunities for extensive territorial and population growth.
This paper analyzes regional features of migration of the elderly population in Russia. Data compiled from the 2010 All-Russia Population Census have revealed the share of people aged 60 years and ...older in the structure of interregional and intraregional migration flows and the intensity of this type of migration. Assessment of the migration intensity of the elderly in Russia demonstrates significant regional differentiation. Compared to Russia as a whole, the Far East and northern territories are distinguished by a high level of elderly migration intensity. At the same time, the beginning of “retirement” departures from these regions usually occurs earlier than is set by the retirement age limit for men and women in Russia. And in general, migration of the elderly from northern regions involves the relocation of the “young elderly.” The overwhelming majority of republics and autonomous entities are among the regions with a low intensity of migration of the elderly. This paper also identifies the main centers of attraction and outflow of elderly migrants within the Russian Federation and general features of elderly migration in Russia.
The dynamics of the system of cities in Russia in 1989–2010 is analyzed based on the population census data in 1989, 2002, and 2010, as well as the current population register. The extent of the ...decline or less often of the increase of the population size are considered for cities of different sizes for each intercensal period (1989–2002 and 2002–2010) and factors contributing to this are noted. The change in the population size of cities is analyzed, depending on their size and geographical location, expressed in the distance to the center of the federal subject. It turned out that in the 1990s and in the 2000s, the population of cities of different sizes, but located at a distance of up to 50 km from the regional center increased, and at greater distances the dynamics were not so well-defined. The dependence of the growth/decline of the population of cities on their size is more variable: the population of cities of different sizes both grew and declined. The dynamics of the natural increase and migration increase of cities with different sizes of population show that the higher the population size the greater the importance of migration increase as a compensator of natural decrease.
PDF
