Putting on the moves

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AbstractBACKGROUNDInternal residential mobility is an important contributor to economic vitality, helping to address gaps in the labour market, assisting regions to develop comparative advantages, and encouraging the circulation of skills, capital, and networks within a country. Mobility is, however, a complex sociological phenomenon influenced by individual, household, and community-level variables.OBJECTIVEThis article examines the combined impact of individual, household, and community characteristics on both short- and long-distance residential mobility in Canada. The study is motivated by a broader concern with economic development and community vitality, particularly in smaller towns and cities that have recently struggled to attract newcomers.METHODSA series of multilevel random intercept regression models are run on Canadian census data from 2006. Canada-wide findings are compared to those for five sizes of community - from small towns with fewer than 10,000 people to major metropolitan cities.RESULTSDespite the continued growth of major metropolitan areas, city size is not an attractor in and of itself. Rather, one of the most powerful draws for both small towns and large cities is the diversity of the existing population, as measured by the proportion of residents who are immigrants and/or visible minorities.CONCLUSIONSThese findings challenge some long-held stereotypes about rural living, and suggest that rural development strategies ought to include measures for enhancing diversity as a means of attracting all types of internal migrants to small towns and cities.1. IntroductionAccording to economists, internal mobility is an important contributor to economic vitality in capitalist economies. Under ideal circumstances the voluntary relocation of people from one region to another can help mitigate problems of supply and demand in the labour market, assist regions to develop comparative advantages, and encourage the circulation of skills, capital, and networks within a country (Borjas 2005). Sociologically speaking, however, mobility is a more nuanced phenomenon. People have complex and frequently non-economic reasons for moving or staying in a given region. Cultural attachments to place, stage in the life-course, skills, and family situation can all enhance or restrict possibilities for mobility (Ommer 2007).This article examines the combined impact of individual, household, and community characteristics on residential mobility in Canada. Our research has two aims. First, we are interested in the role that these different characteristics play in internal migration more generally. Many existing studies focus either on the individual characteristics of migrants, or the characteristics of communities that are successful in attracting them (e.g., Clark and Withers 1999; Erickcek and McKinney 2006; Fotheringham et al. 2000). Considering them together permits us to identify the unique effects that individual, household, and community characteristics have on internal migration, thus yielding a more nuanced portrait of mobility and the attractiveness of certain types of places to certain types of people. Our second aim is to compare these effects across different sizes of community. Like many advanced capitalist nations, over the last fifty years Canada has become an overwhelmingly urban and suburban country. The pull of large cities, along with declining employment in traditional rural sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, have de-populated many formerly vibrant regions of the country (Parkins and Reed 2013). Senior governments have sought to arrest this decline by encouraging new immigrants to settle in towns and small cities, with mixed results (CIC 2001; Texeria 2009). And yet there are many anecdotal examples of small towns across Canada that defy the odds and continue to grow (Young 2013). Our analysis therefore pays special attention to smaller communities, comparing their experiences to those of larger centres in the hopes of developing policy recommendations for assisting rural areas to attract newcomers. …