Reducing urban–rural population inequalities: The divergent roles of internal and international migration

This article addresses recent urbanisation trends in Europe. European countries are in the post-transitional stage of the demographic transition, where natural population growth is stagnant or negative, and the growth or decline of the total population is often determined by the size of the migration flows. This applies not only to countries, but even more so to regions within countries. At the same time, the role of international migration has become more pronounced. Our Debate contribution explores the role of migration in population change at different levels of urbanisation. The results show that natural population increase is still the rule in the metropolitan areas in Europe, in contrast to the strong negative growth rates in non-metropolitan regions. A typology of demographic change in European regions at the NUTS 3 level in Europe reveals that many declining regions still experience positive net migration change. The most important result of our analysis is that whereas internal migration generally follows the established pattern of urban regions gaining population at the cost of rural regions, the pattern of international migration is much more even, highlighting the potential for international migration to reduce regional demographic inequalities.