Internal migration of the population

According to the definition, internal migration is the resettlement of the population within the country from one region to another. As a rule, this flow is caused by economic and social reasons. Internal resettlement is the opposite of external, when residents leave their country and settle abroad.

General trends

Urbanization is a key factor in internal migration throughout the world. The scale of the consequences of the growth of cities is so great that some researchers refer to this process as "the great migration of the peoples of the 20th century". In search of a better share, villagers are rapidly leaving their native villages. This process concerns Russia. Her trends are discussed below. As for most developed countries, urbanization has stopped at 80%. That is, four out of five citizens of Germany or the United States live in cities.

In countries where the population is insignificant or has an uneven density, internal migration takes the form of settling new areas. Human history knows a lot of such examples. In Canada, the United States, Brazil and China, the population was initially concentrated in the eastern regions. When the resources of those places began to end, people naturally went to explore the western provinces.

The history of internal migration in Russia

In each historical era, internal migration in Russia had its own specific features, while always remaining a stable process. In the IX-XII centuries. Slavs settled the Upper Volga basin. Migration was directed to the north and north-east. Until the second half of the XIX century, it was small in scale, as it was constrained by serfdom in the village.

Colonization affected the European north, as well as the Urals, where the resettlement took a "mining" character. From the Lower Volga region the Russians migrated to the south, to Novorossia and to the Caucasus. Large-scale economic development of Siberia began only in the middle of the XIX century. In Soviet times the eastern direction became the main one. In a planned economy, people were sent to remote areas, where new cities or roads were to be built. In the 1930s. Began forced Stalinist industrialization. Together with collectivization, she pushed out of the village many millions of citizens of the USSR. Also, internal migration of the population was caused by forced deportations of entire peoples (Germans, Chechens, Ingushes, etc.).

Modernity

In modern Russia, internal migration manifests itself in several trends. First of all, it is visible in the division of the population into rural and urban. This ratio determines the degree of urbanization of the country. Today, 73% of Russians live in cities, and 27% live in villages. Exactly the same figures were during the last census in the Soviet Union in 1989. At the same time, the number of villages has increased by more than 2 thousand, but the number of rural settlements with at least 6,000 inhabitants has halved. Such disappointing statistics indicate that by the end of the 1990s, Internal migration has led to the risk of the disappearance of more than 20% of the villages. Today, the indicators are more encouraging.

In Russia there are two types of city points - urban-type settlements and cities. How are they determined? According to the criteria, the settlement is recognized as urban if the share of the inhabitants engaged in agriculture does not exceed 15%. There is another barrier. In a city there should be at least 12 thousand inhabitants. If internal migration leads to a decrease in the population and a fall in the figure below this bar, the status of the settlement can be changed.

"Magnets" and the suburbs

The Russian population is spread unevenly across the vast territory of the country. Most of it is concentrated in the Central, Volga and Southern federal districts (26%, 22% and 16% respectively). At the same time, very few people live in the Far East (only 4%). But no matter how skewed the figures, internal migration is a constant, ongoing process. Over the past year, 1.7 million people have taken part in the movements across the country. This is 1.2% of the country's population.

The main "magnet", where internal migration of the Russian Federation is conducted, is Moscow and its satellite cities. Growth is also observed in St. Petersburg with the Leningrad region. Two capitals are attractive as employment centers. Almost all other regions of the country experience a migration loss (from there they leave more than they arrive there).

Dynamics of regions

In the Privolzhsky Federal District, the largest migration increase is observed in Tatarstan, in Southern - in the Krasnodar Territory. In the Urals, positive figures are observed only in the Sverdlovsk region. There goes the population from the Siberian and Far Eastern regions, where there is a migration loss everywhere. This process has been going on for several decades.

Internal migration is the main reason for the population decrease in the Siberian Federal District, which, in exchange with other regions for 2000-2008, Lost 244 thousand inhabitants. The figures do not leave any doubt. For example, in one Altai Territory for the same period, the loss amounted to 64 thousand people. And only two regions in this region are distinguished by a small migration increase - these are the Tomsk and Novosibirsk regions.

Far East

More than other residents in recent years lost the Far East. Both external and internal migration work on this. But it is the travel of citizens to other regions of their native country that led to the loss of 187 thousand people over the past ten years. Most people leave from Yakutia, from Chukotka and from the Magadan region.

The statistics of the Far East in a certain sense is logical. This region is located at the opposite end of the country from the capital. Many of its residents go to Moscow to realize themselves and forget about isolation. Living in the Far East, people spend giant money on periodic trips or flights to the West. Sometimes round-trip tickets can cost the whole salary. All this leads to an increase and spread of internal migration. Countries with a huge territory like air need an affordable transport infrastructure. Its creation and timely modernization is the most important challenge for modern Russia.

The impact of economy and climate

Economic factors are the primary factors determining the nature of internal migration. The Russian bias arose because of the uneven level of social and economic development of the country's regions. As a result, there was a differentiation of territories in terms of quality and standard of living. In remote and border areas they are too low in comparison with the capitals, and therefore, are unattractive for the population.

For the vast territory of Russia, the natural and climatic factor is also characteristic. If conditional Belgium is homogeneous in its temperature characteristics, then in the case of the Russian Federation, everything is much more complicated. A more suitable for life and attractive climate draws people to the south and to the center of the country. Many northern cities arose in the Soviet era thanks to a system of rundowns and various shock construction projects. In a free market, people born in these regions tend to leave them.

Social and military factors

The third group of factors are social, which are expressed in historical and kinship ties. They are a common cause of the so-called. "Return migration". Residents of the eastern and northern regions, when they leave for Moscow, often return home, because they have a family, relatives and friends there.

Another group of factors is a military threat. Armed conflicts force people to leave their homes and settle in safe regions, away from the hotbed of bloodshed. In Russia, such a factor was of great importance in the 1990s, when the fierce war continued in the North Caucasus, and primarily in Chechnya, for several years.

Prospects

The development of internal migration is hampered by uneven housing prices and the poor development of the housing market in the regions. To solve this problem, state support and financing of problem areas, republics and territories is needed. The regions need to increase the incomes of the working population, additional jobs, increase the revenue side of the budget, and reduce the need for budget financing.

Other measures will be favorable. The revitalization of internal migration is facilitated by the reduction of the negative impact of industry on the environment, as well as the improvement of the demographic situation.