Countervailing Immigration and Domestic Migration in Gateway Cities: Australian and Canadian Variations on an American Theme

Abstract

This article addresses the spatial regularity of countervailing population flows of immigration and net domestic migration, respectively, into and out of large gateway cities. This regularity has been noted most often in the United States, and the argument presented here makes two new contributions. First, it extends the analysis to the principal Australian and Canadian gateway cities of Sydney and Toronto, making use of an extended time series of annual data. Second, it argues for the importance of the neglected effects of housing markets, in contrast to conventional accounts that stress cultural avoidance or labor market competition, in differentiating the two demographic streams. The article shows how trends in the housing market separate the locational preferences of immigrants from two diverse groups of domestic migrants.

Key Words:

• immigration
• domestic migration
• white flight
• labor markets
• housing markets
• gateway cities