These jobs are going, and they ain't coming back: internal mobility in response to manufacturing decline

This paper investigates the impact of severe manufacturing crises on internal migration patterns across Italian local labour markets (LLMs) between 2000 and 2019. Leveraging a staggered difference-in-differences design, we estimate the causal effect of these shocks on the mobility of the working-age resident population. The results indicate a significant decline in net migration, primarily driven by an immediate reduction in inflows, which is nearly twice the size of the concurrent rise in outflows to other LLMs. We uncover substantial heterogeneity by citizenship, as foreign nationals are significantly less likely to migrate into affected areas following a crisis, while no systematic differences emerge by gender. The effects are more evident in district-based LLMs, moderately urbanized areas, and those located in Central and Northern Italy. The results are robust across alternative model specifications and difference-in-differences estimators. These findings highlight the uneven impact of manufacturing decline on internal migration patterns across both population groups and LLM characteristics.