Paula Puskarova (p), Katarina Csefalvayova, Francois Gemenne

Maria Rego

Asylum regimes are often defined as the sets of norms and policies that define how asylum is implemented in a given country. In Europe, the fragmentation of asylum regimes has often been identified as a key reason explaining migration ‘crises’ and political disputes among member-states. In this paper, we argue that asylum regimes are not just about norms and policies, but are equally shaped by actors and services of the welfare regimes. To support this argument, our paper brings together some of the key findings of a larger exploratory study on the different modi operandi in multi-actor governance of asylum across European states. We focus on the role of nonstate actors for the access of asylum seekers to labor market and welfare services, and given the varying public-private mix we propose a typology of asylum welfare regimes in Europe. We observe that yet asylum welfare is to significant degree delineated by traditional welfare regimes sensu Esping-Andersen (1990), individual countries sharing a welfare regime have not necessarily developed one approach to securing asylum welfare over the past years. Our results highlight that the fragmentation of asylum regimes across Europe is not just the outcome of different norms and policies, but also results from different public perceptions, economic performances and capacities to engage municipalities.

Justyna Wilk (p), Marzena Walaszek

Paula Puskarova

Population and its structure are mostly determined by migrations and natural increase. But European regions differ from the intensities, directions, and dominant factors of their population changes. These result from different geographical, social, cultural, economic, administrative, and political conditions but also some exceptional circumstances like economic crises, pandemics, natural disasters, military conflicts etc. Therefore, our main interest is to see the population changes over time, their dominant factors, and spatial diversification across European regions with a special attention to the period of COVID-19 pandemic.
The aim of this paper is to study the population changes across Europe. We concern the situations of more than one thousand European NUTS 3 in the last five years using Eurostat database. We use crude rates of natural change and net migration. We apply Webb’s typology to recognise their population changes resulting from natural increase and migration flows.
Our research study results in eight types of NUTS 3 according to the major factor of population growth, and population decline. We identify which types of population changes are dominant across European regions, and what their spatial structure is. We compare population changes of NUTS 3 in terms of their urbanisation, and geographical location to see the demographic challenges, they face in the forthcoming years.

Daniela Ghio, Fabrizio Natale, Alfredo Alessandrini, Lewis Dijkstra, Christoph Deuster (p)

Justyna Wilk

Heterogeneity in rural-urban definitions limits comparability of population dynamics across territories. By applying a new harmonised definition of cities, towns and semi-dense areas, the paper offers a decomposition of population changes, setting apart the contribution of each demographic component (natural increase, international and internal migration), and accounting for the reclassification effects. The analysis is carried out at a 1-kilometre resolution for all countries in the world over the following 40-year intervals: a) from 1975 to 2015, using the Global-Human-Settlement-Layer datasets: b) from 2020 to 2060, adopting the Shared-Socioeconomic-Pathway scenarios to project future population dynamics. Distinguishing the settings of new cities from the expansion of existing city boundaries, results show the incidence of reclassification effects on population changes. We find that, over the past periods, natural and migration components led population changes almost exclusively in the areas that experienced a transformation of their status becoming new cities, whereas projecting future trends, merely the natural component would play a major role on city population growth. Our findings give evidence of the feeble contribution of internal migration on the city population changes, enforcing the conceptualisation that decreasing rural-urban mobility is related to the achievement of advanced urbanization developments.

Maria Rego (p), Patrícia Martins, Leonida Correia

Christoph Deuster

Over the last decades, the territorial distribution of the Portuguese population has concentrated in a few municipalities, mainly in the metropolitan areas, in the coastal region between Lisbon and Braga, and in the southern coast. In general, the population decreased in the remaining territory and the rural territories have been experiencing the greatest population losses. Even so, not all rural territories have suffered the problem of depopulation with the same intensity: while some municipalities have seen their population shrink since the 1960s, others have managed to maintain some capacity to retain (and even attract) population. Considering these two distinct contexts in rural areas, this study aims to identify the determinants of the greater resilience of some rural territories. For this purpose, statistical data for rural municipalities in mainland Portugal over the last two decades are used. Resilience is understood as the ability of territories to withstand and overcome disturbances and crises, without changing their structural conditions. In terms of public policies, the identification of the factors that explain the existence of distinct levels of resilience is of great importance for the definition of development strategies and the promotion of territorial cohesion. In this study, the resident population growth rate is used as a proxy for territorial resilience. As determinants of this resilience, economic, social and environmental factors are explored, using dynamic models with panel data. The results show that migration, as well as characteristics related to the labor market and the activity of local authorities, are related to differences in territorial resilience.
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This work is supported by national funds, through the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under the UIDB/04011/2020, UIDP/04011/2020 and UIDB/04007/2020 projects.