CEDAR seminar with Samuel Sundvall.
The characteristics and consequences of migration in northern Sweden during industrialization, 1900-1950.
Abstract:
Urbanization can have a significant impact on the demographic profile of rural regions apart from leading to a decline in the rural population. For example, rural-urban migration has previously been shown to affect population structures such as the composition of age and gender, in both place of origin and destination. Rural areas in northern Sweden have been particularly affected by this development with contemporary trends including population decline, rapidly ageing population and skewed sex ratios with substantial male surplus. While the general development of rural-urban migration in Sweden are well known, especially after the 1960s, we know little about how rural-urban migration gradually developed from the industrial breakthrough up until 1960s, especially for the parts of Sweden that has been most adversely affected by urban-rural migration and population decline.
This study aims to describe the characteristics of the migration flows, and thereby also the short-term impact of migration on population development, in rural and urban regions in the northern Swedish county of Västerbotten pertaining to age, gender and the destination of out-migrants during the shift from an agrarian to an industrial society, 1900-1950. This is done using digitalized parish register data from the POPLINK-database.
The findings suggest that the contemporary pattern of rural-urban migration in northern Sweden developed already during the early 1900s. Rural areas experienced an ever increasing net migration loss during the period, most notably of young working-age women. However, net population loss was for the majority of the period counteracted by high fertility rates. In contrast, the rapid population growth in the urban region were almost primarily driven by high in-migration until the late 1940s. Furthermore, the rural population were shown to have migrated to a lesser extent, and also shorter distances, than the urban population all throughout the investigated period.
Welcome to participate in this seminar
Employees at CEDAR will get the link by e-mail. If you want to participate and are not employed - contact Mojgan Padyab.
