Piotr Rosik (p), Marcin Mazur

Stephan Schütze

As any change to the boundaries of a study area must affect the location of its midpoint, so Brexit turned Gadheim, a small Bavarian village, into the new midpoint of the EU in 2020. The exact location of such a midpoint depends on a number of factors, including the research methodology, the weighting of the “masses” involved and the measure of distance decay adopted. The aim of this study is to present the theoretical background for the trajectory, or path, followed by the economic and demographic centres of Europe and of the EU, using different research methods, including various dimensions of the potential model (spatial extent, time or distance decay, travel duration and barriers or restrictions on borders), spanning the period from 1950 to 2020 for centres in Europe and, for the centre of the EU. Interestingly, the European geographic midpoint (Geographical Midpoint of Europe) is relatively distant from the European core (Blue Banana, Hot Banana, European Megalopolis, European Backbone or Liverpool-Milan axis), i.e. a densely populated, highly urbanised area known for its many decades of domination in terms of GDP per capita. The rapid economic growth observed in central-eastern Europe, combined with the economic stagnation of southern Europe after 2008 (Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal) has resulted in an interesting potential trajectory of the economic centre of Europe towards the north-east.

Alfredo Alessandrini, Christoph Deuster (p), Fabrizio Natale

Piotr Rosik

This report describes a set of global net migration estimates in five-year intervals from 1975 to 2020 at a spatial resolution of about 1 km. Our estimates rely on an indirect estimation technique based on the demographic balancing equation. Compared to existing sets of estimates of spatially disaggregated net migration, three novelties characterise our new estimates. First, we expand the time coverage of the estimates by using updated population data at high spatial resolution from the Joint Research Centre Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) project. Second, we apply a standard definition of rural-urban typologies in the three classes of cities, towns, and rural areas. Third, we refine the estimation approach by accounting for variation of fertility and mortality across these typologies. This provides a more accurate representation of demographic behaviour across the rural-urban continuum. Validation exercises show that the new approach of accounting for fertility and mortality differences at sub-national level is consistent with basic empirical findings. In addition, the mobility patterns revealed by our net migration estimates are consistent with net migration data at sub-national level derived from Eurostat and national statistical offices. In line with former analyses, the new set of estimates allow analysing the relationship between climate change and migration at high spatial resolution and exploring geographical patterns of urbanisation, rural-urban migration, and population redistribution at the global level.

Stephan Schütze (p)

Christoph Deuster

An academic debate in the US and increasingly in Europe has emerged on the relationship between internal migration and the geographic polarization of party supporters. The debate began with Bishop and Cushing's Big Sort thesis, which argues that people choose places compatible with their lifestyle and worldview, leading to communities of like-minded people who live and vote similarly. However, the literature has mixed empirical evidence on how political aspects of the region shape moving behavior and intentions, and most studies have focused on party support and Anglo-American context, leaving the impact of other political aspects and the generalizability of the findings unclear. For Germany, this study investigates the influence of the regional political culture on the individuals' moving intention, while taking into account other migration incentives such as labor and housing markets. Combining individual survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) with regional data from the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), hierarchical logistic regression models are applied. It is expected that the intention to move is higher among residents whose political preferences, orientations, values, and attitudes are opposed to the political culture in the region. This study contributes to the literature on geographic polarization by providing new insights into the political motivations to move and by expanding our knowledge of political geography through regional sorting. It clarifies the extent to which aspects of a region's political culture influence the intention to move, considers other political factors of relevance and competing explanatory approaches.