Abstract
The paper wants to shed light on the phenomenon of internal migration in Germany after the fall of the iron curtain. Since German reunification, the eastern part of Germany lost a large share of its population due to internal migration. Whereas in the beginning, departures were spread evenly over all age and educational groups and were accompanied by a significant counter-stream, in the course of time the negative migration balance was mainly produced by younger people at the beginning of their professional career. The paper describes the development of internal east-west migration in detail and presents primary data on the profiles of young migrants drawn from a research project during the years 2004-2007 (in this research project, financed by the German Research Foundation DFG, data were gathered from 1,200 migrants aged between 18-35 who moved from the federal state Sachsen-Anhalt to the western part of Germany). Hereby, special emphasis will be given to the methodological implications of studying selective migration processes. Final conclusions are drawn regarding the regional assessment and theoretical classification of this migration process, but also on the theoretical and methodological constraints of mobility research.
Highlights
Young adults from the East German federal state Sachsen-Anhalt to West Germany, which was carried out at the Geographical Department of the Martin-Luther-University HalleWittenberg during the years 2003-20071
26 Following neoclassical theory, a negative selection with regards to labour market success must be hypothesised for remigrants, while social network theory suggests that intensive social contacts to the source region might fuel remigration decisions
For the social network factor we found high correlations between intensity of contacts to the source region and return intention
Summary
10 Micro-theories, on the other hand, are focusing on the individual migration decisions, stressing behavioural aspects of individual actors, and their embeddedness in social systems, which both might shape migratory decisions. Modern transport and communication systems considerably facilitated possibilities for migrants to keep dense and emotionally deep contacts, creating new social spheres of reference which are located beyond national boundaries and are addressed as transnational social spaces (Pries, 1996) This new perspective has significant consequences for geographical migration research, as it seems to imply the crucial need for micro-level approaches, integrating behavioural factors, network activities and the question of migrant identity and belonging 15 While brain mobility appears to be well researched on an international scale, human capital flows within nation states seem to lag behind This is quite surprising, as the problematic of selective rural-urban-migration was discovered very early in history From a regionally differentiating perspective, migration as well as remigration seems to deepen the divide between urban agglomerations and rural peripheries within a country
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