Moritz Meister, Jan Cornelius Peters (p), Anja Rossen

Employing event history analyses, this paper investigates the spatial mobility of young workers after the completion of vocational training in Germany. In particular, we are interested in the factors determining return migration, i.e. the decision to move back to a local labor market, which has been left before. Besides individual characteristics such as the success at the destination of initial migration, we consider properties of the regional environment in order to provide new evidence for the significance of regional characteristics for different types of migration, i.e. initial and return migration, and heterogeneous effects across workers at different stages of individual working lives. Our results may help to understand which factors contribute to the heterogeneity of the migration balances of rural and urban areas across age groups.
Our analysis is based on extensive secondary data, the Integrated Employment Biographies (IEB) of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). They provide us with very detailed information about individual labor market biographies and places of residence in the period 1999-2017 as well as local labor market conditions. Furthermore, we are able to merge various indicators for the regional endowment with amenities.
First results show that within the first 17 years after vocational training about 18 percent of all workers leave the local labor market at least temporarily, i.e., they move to a municipality which is more than 50 km apart from the municipality of residence during vocational training. However, about 40 percent of these mobile workers return in subsequent years, in most cases very close to the location of residence during vocational training. Rural areas experience on average the largest (net) outflow of former apprentices, but also a net-gain from return migration.

Matthias Huber (p), Till Nikolka, Panu Poutvaara, Ann-Marie Sommerfeld, Silke Übelmesser

This study contributes to the understanding of how migration decisions are made, with a focus on the underlying factors that drive migration intention before actual migration takes place. We also analyze what distinguishes migration aspirations from migration intentions. We base our analysis on two novel datasets. First, we conducted a survey among university students in different countries to analyze migration intentions and aspirations more generally among university students. Second, we conducted a survey among language course participants at 14 Goethe Institutes (GI) worldwide. Language course participants are a self-selected subset of the population, which is likely further in the process of considering migration than the overall population. We categorize individual migration intentions into migration considerations and migration preparations. This allows to identify different degrees of intention which are closer to migration behavior. Using binary logit regressions, we identify determinants of migration intentions on the individual and the country level. Our results show that the influence of individual and household characteristics differs over the different degrees of migration intentions. Additionally, we have a more detailed look at the interaction of migration aspiration with intentions. While migration intentions refer to the actual situation of the individuals, aspirations are desires in case of an ’ideal situation’. We focus on those individuals whose migration aspirations and their migration intention do not point in the same direction – thus identifying migration barriers and drivers.

Jaako Simonen (p)

One of the most important reasons for the emergence of industrial agglomeration are the benefits which local (skilled) labour pool provides for firms. The geographical proximity of many firms generally assumed to facilitate job-matching and employment switching. Labour mobility between firms is argued to be an important means of transferring knowledge and fostering innovation too. However, current literature provides very few empirical studies where labour mobility has been clearly linked to the spatial distribution of activities together with the individual factors, especially over the industry life cycle. In this paper we analyse how regional features, e. g. regional amenities, industrial structures as well as individual characteristics of employees e.g. age, family status, previous movement affect regional labour mobility along the industry life-cycles of high technology sector. In order to do this, we employ panel data on the regional and industrial labour mobility of the Finnish high technology firms and regional economies. Our findings show that structure of the high technology sector as well as regional economic and amenity variables and individual characteristics of employees have an influence on the migration decisions of the high technology workers, although their roles vary in within-region and across-region mobility as well as at the different stages of the industry life-cycles. Moreover, the role of regional economic factors are analysed from the point of view of the origin and receiving region, as well as rising and declining industries.