Geographical and geodemographic connections between different types of small area as the origins and destinations of migrants to Mid-Wales

Abstract

Exchanges of population between supposedly ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ spaces have occurred throughout history as people migrate between areas with relatively, densely and sparsely settled populations. However, comparatively little is known about whether the same small areas persistently contribute to the flow and what types of locality are involved. Recent counterurbanising migration represents both a re-location of the centres of population growth from urban to rural areas in many developed countries, and a refashioning of the characteristics and lifestyles of residents occupying the countryside. Mid-Wales classically exemplifies the changing demographic fortune of many rural areas having experienced a long period of population decline, followed by a general but locally fluctuating upturn since the 1970s. Using empirical information from recent British censuses on numbers of 1-year migrants and from a national geodemographic classification of small areas, this paper explores the geographical and socio-economic connections between the origins and destinations of those people who moved into Mid-Wales during the closing decades of the 20th century. It concludes that certain places and types of locality have stronger migratory links enduring beyond the period covered by a single census enumeration.