The attraction of the rural: Characteristics of rural migrants in Sweden

Abstract

This paper investigates the characteristics of rural migrants in Sweden divided into periurban and remote countryside using register data at the individual level. The results show that during the two years of investigation, 1987 and 1993, there was a concentration of the population in general but the periurban countryside gained migrants from the cities. In addition, the migration pattern had an aging effect on the population in rural areas. It is also shown that migration selectivity is relatively stable during the study period. The countryside is less attractive than urban areas to those with high income and high education but when the two types of countrysides are compared to each other the periurban is more attractive. Despite the renewed interest in rural living which has been reported in other studies, remote rural areas are less attractive to migrants than periurban areas in Sweden.

Notes

¹ The classification is based on the TOPSWING database (Total Population of Sweden Individual and Geographical database), which links information from various official statistical records and censuses provided by Statistics Sweden. This database covers anonymous individual records of all residents in Sweden with an annual update for the period 1985 – 94 and includes information about age, sex, citizenship, country of birth, household conditions, education, incomes, etc. It also contains information about place of residence by 100 m squares.

² The Swedish National Rural Development Agency (Glesbygdsverket, 2001) defines settlements with more than 3000 inhabitants as towns, while all types of settlements with fewer than 3000 inhabitants are classified as countryside (glesbygd). By using this classification it was found that most villages and smaller central places became part of the countryside, while larger central places became part of the urban area.

³ A 25 km limit was chosen since most people's daily mobility is within that distance. By using the size limit (80 000 people) most important regional centres were included in the category ‘cities’ and their surrounding rural areas in the ‘periurban’ category, while category ‘small towns’ included only smaller places and some regional centres in the more dispersed regions.

⁴ Migrants are defined by their place of residence in December 1986 compared to December 1987 and December 1992 compared to December 1993. The numbers of migrants in the analysis are 240'018 for 1987 and 253'558 for 1993.

⁵ The populations (over the age of 18) of the categories in 1993 were 3.8 million in the cities, 950 000 in the small towns, 1.6 million in the periurban countryside and 2.4 million in the remote countryside. According to the official figures the population in urban areas (tätortsområden) reached 83.4% (7 160 000) of the total population in 1990.

⁶ In 1993, however, there was no significant difference between the propensity to move to the periurban areas among those aged 26 – 40 versus those aged 40 – 61.

⁷ Unfortunately the data do not distinguish between unmarried singles and unmarried cohabitants.