Local Ties as Self-Reported Constraints to Internal Migration in Spain

The internal migration literature has identified various factors that deter migration and encourage staying, but has been less concerned with people’s own reports about what makes it difficult for them to migrate or makes them want to stay. We explore factors that make it difficult to change the place of residence—from here on denoted as constraints—reported in the Spanish survey on Attitudes and Expectations of Spatial Mobility in the Labour Force (N = 3892). These constraints were uniquely asked from all respondents through an open-ended question, regardless of their migration intentions. We find that many self-reported constraints correspond to factors that have previously been associated with decreased migration propensities. In order of frequency, respondents reported ties to family and friends, ties to their residential environment, financial limitations, and ties to work as constraints to migration. Our results further show that the likelihood of mentioning ties to family and friends as constraints decreased with age, was higher for women than for men and for people who lived close to most of their social network than for those who did not. Mentioning ties to the residential environment as constraints was positively associated with being partnered, and also with living in one’s birthplace. People who were unemployed were less likely to mention ties to work and were more likely to report financial limitations as constraints than people who had a permanent contract—whereas being self-employed was positively associated with mentioning ties to the residential environment

Who stays in their birthplace? The role of multigenerational local ties in young adults' staying behaviour

We explore staying and migration behaviour using a multigenerational perspective on local ties. Based on Swedish register data, we take a shared birthplace between young adults and one or more of their parents and grandparents as a proxy for multigenerational local ties in the young adult's birthplace. Our aim is to investigate whether the presence of this type of longstanding, multigenerational local ties in the birthplace increases one's propensity to stay or return there during young adulthood. Using multinomial logistic regressions, we model the residential trajectories between ages 18 and 30 of individuals born in 1981, 1982, and 1983 who lived in their birthplace at age 18 (i.e., stayed in, moved from, or returned to the birthplace by age 30; N = 185,897). We find that the propensity for staying in one's birthplace increases with each additional parent or grandparent with whom the birthplace is shared. Overall, differences between ties shared with parent(s) and grandparent(s) are surprisingly similar, except ties that are shared with both parents. These have a particularly strong and positive effect. Although men seem to be tied more strongly than women to their fathers and paternal grandparents, we found no differences between men and women in their ties to mothers and maternal grandparents