Population Geography

Abstract

Geographic issues loom large as the American population begins the new millennium. Regional fertility differentials are growing, social networks focus new immigrants on a small number of port-of-entry metropolitan areas and states, highly channelized migration streams redistribute population in response to economic and social restructuring, and a highly variegated landscape of aging has emerged. Perhaps at no other time in its history has the field of population geography been confronted with a more intellectually important and socially relevant research agenda. Building upon its strong tradition in spatial demography and incorporating an increasingly diverse set of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, population geography today seeks a more complete understanding of human movement, regional demographic variability, and the social context within which these population processes occur. In addition, population geographers increasingly tackle issues of policy significance. After a brief review of the history of population geography and an empirical analysis of its presence in geography’s major journals, we summarize six lines of contemporary research including studies of: (1) internal migration and residential mobility; (2) international migration, transnationalism, and the nexus of internal and international migration systems; (3) immigrant assimilation, acculturation, and the emergence of ethnic enclaves; (4) regional demographic variability; (5) the social context for population processes; and (6) public policy research. We conclude by identifying major challenges facing the field today and fruitful new directions for research including the need for greater emphasis on environmental issues, integration with geography’s new technologies, and more social relevance. Although geographers long had integrated population characteristics into their broader regional studies, population geography emerged as a distinct field of study only in the early 1950s. It, like urban geography, surfaced from a discipline that was strongly rooted in the study of rural cultural landscapes and regional inventories. Its birth was marked by the 1953 AAG presidential address of Glenn Trewartha, a noted climatologist and population geographer. Trewartha lamented the neglect of population in the discipline of geography, which was at that time organized into the subdivisions of physical and cultural geography. He argued for a new threefold structure organized around population, the physical earth, and the cultural landscape.