Thomas Niedomysl

What matters more for the decision to move: jobs versus amenities

Highly skilled workers are increasingly recognised as a key competitive asset for regional development, and claims have been made that emphasise the importance of certain amenities for the prospects of attracting this particular group of workers. We use a recent large-scale survey to investigate the relative importance of jobs versus amenities for the decision to migrate, as perceived by the migrants themselves. The paper thereby adds important insights to the existing literature that has hitherto mainly focused on analysing the extent to which aggregate migration flows correlate with employment-related or amenity-related factors. The results show that jobs are considerably more important for the decision to move among highly educated migrants compared with migrants with lower education.

The Globalisation of Marriage Fields: The Swedish Case

Marriage fields—the geographical areas where people meet to partner—traditionally tend to be relatively small and local. Increasing international travel and the use of the internet have broadened the geographical opportunity structure of potential partners. This increases the chances of meeting a partner from abroad, possibly resulting in a rise in international marriage migration. This paper uses unique longitudinal population data for the whole of Sweden to explore the globalisation of Swedish marriage fields. The results show an increase of ‘marriage migrants’ in Sweden between 1990 and 2004, although absolute numbers remain relatively low. The paper yields two new insights not previously recorded in the literature. First, we found a substantial proportion of all marriage migrants in Sweden to be males, while most existing literature on marriage migration focuses almost exclusively on females. Second, the pattern of geographical origins of marriage migrants is highly gendered, with male and female marriage migrants in Sweden originating from different regions in the world. This suggests that different mechanisms underlie male and female marriage migration.

Residential Preferences for Interregional Migration in Sweden: Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Geographical Determinants

Policy makers are showing increasing interest in factors that make places attractive for prospective new residents. This paper focuses on residential preferences for interregional migration and aims to explore what place attributes people would value highly if they considered migrating. Special attention is given to differences in preferences between population subgroups in terms of demographic, socioeconomic, and geographical determinants. An ambitious prestudy with 390 respondents was carried out to ascertain relevant place attributes for the main study. The main study was carried out via a survey sent to a national sample of 5000 Swedes, of whom approximately 53% took part. The results give valuable information on how demographic, socioeconomic, and geographical aspects determine residential preferences in Sweden, and make some contributions to methodological issues on researching preferences in a migration context.

Evaluating the Effects of Place-Marketing Campaigns on Interregional Migration in Sweden

During the last few years, Swedish municipalities have become increasingly engaged in competition to attract in-migrants. An important element of these efforts has been the use of place-marketing campaigns and promotion. Very little is known, however, about these attempts in terms of the number of municipalities involved, economic efforts, ways of marketing, target groups, etc. Furthermore, and more importantly, as for place-marketing studies in general, there have been few attempts at evaluation. The authors purpose is to provide an overview and to evaluate the effects of place-marketing efforts made by municipalities in Sweden to attract in-migrants. The empirical material is based largely on survey responses from 220 municipalities, and provides data for a general overview as well as for the evaluative approaches employed in the study. Among other findings, the results suggest that, although this kind of marketing has definitely become more important over the last few years, there is little evidence of any significant effects on interregional migration flows.

On distance and the spatial dimension in the definition of internal migration

Migration is commonly defined by a temporal and a spatial dimension. It is generally agreed that these dimensions are problematic and could seriously distort understanding of migration, but data constraints have effectively obstructed further insights. This article focuses on the spatial dimension where migration is typically defined as movement across administrative borders. Borders usually serve as proxies for migration distance but the validity of such proxies is largely unknown, posing a considerable challenge to migration research. Using data for all internal migrants in Sweden, the only known country where migration distances are available in sufficient detail, we present the first accurate description of actual migration distances and investigate the relationship between actual migration distances and migration-defining boundaries. More specifically, we examine how the volumes of migration and the characteristics of migrants change when migration distances vary and when different types of migration-defining boundaries are employed. The findings show that notable shares of short-distance migrants are included almost regardless of which migration-defining boundary is employed, but migrant differentials are less affected than might be expected.

Learning benefits of using 2D versus 3D maps: evidence from a randomized controlled experiment

The traditional important role of maps used for educational purposes has gained further potential with recent advances in GIS technology. But beyond specific courses in cartography this potential seems little realized in geography teaching. This article investigates the extent to which any learning benefits may be derived from the use of such technologies. A controlled experiment was conducted to examine whether information recall is improved when cartographic information on population distribution is presented in 2D versus 3D form. The results show statistically significant differences in learning benefits between the two formats, largely in favor of 2D representation. These findings suggest that learning benefits can be derived from paying greater attention to map format in educational settings.

Back to the city: internal return migration to metropolitan regions in Sweden

Longitudinal microdata on the Swedish population, 1990–2006, are used to examine the numbers and characteristics of internal return migrants, emphasizing Swedens three largest cities. Our study indicates that metropolitan regions are gaining population from net return migration, which thus carries people in the same direction as does most internal migration. Evidence also indicates that returnees to metropolitan regions are more likely to stay permanently than are migrants returning elsewhere. Furthermore, return migrants to metropolitan regions are distinguished from other return migrants in ways that emphasize the advantages of these regions, higher incomes and levels of education being among the pronounced attributes. However, metro-bound returnees do not have as many children as do other return migrants.

Inter-regional migration of business owners: who moves and how does moving affect firm performance?

ABSTRACT Business owners play an important role in driving regional economic growth, and policy-makers seek to attract and retain such entrepreneurs by most means available. This paper analyses migration patterns, the factors that influence the propensity to move and assesses the relationship between firm performance and individual migration both before and after the move. The results show that (1) known explaining variables of migration propensity also hold for business owners; (2) owners with more substantial firms in terms of turnover and employees are more geographically anchored; and (3) a simultaneous move of residence and firm has an unclear impact on firm performance.

Doctoral dissertations in human geography from Swedish universities 1884-2015: demographics, formats and productivity

ABSTRACT The doctoral dissertation is a key component of postgraduate education that plays an important role for knowledge production and hence the development of a discipline. Swedish human geography currently lacks an overview of dissertations. This article fills this knowledge gap by reporting findings from a unique database covering all doctoral dissertations between 1884 and 2015. The paper focuses on the demographics of the authors (age, gender), the format of the dissertation and explores productivity variations for authors of compilation dissertations. The findings show a notable increase in the number of doctoral dissertations since the late 1960s but a decreasing share of doctoral dissertations in the social sciences since the 1970s. In terms of demographics, we show that while the age of the authors remains relatively stable, the gender-balance has improved considerably. In terms of format, the monograph has rapidly given way to compilation dissertations, which now account for half the number of dissertations. More than 70% of all dissertations are now published in English. Statistical results suggest that the likelihood of completing a compilation dissertation is greater if the doctoral candidate is young and if attending Umeå University. But individual author productivity for compilation dissertations is mainly influenced by unobservables.

Spatial and temporal patterns of economic segregation in Sweden’s metropolitan areas : A mobility approach

The statistical resources at hand for segregation research are usually almost exclusively confined to annual or decennial records where the only available spatial information is the individual’s place of residence. This coarse temporal periodicity and spatial resolution provides a very limited account of people’s diurnal lives. Incorporating mobility and temporal dimensions in segregation analysis is advocated within a growing body of research but there has rarely been sufficient data to make this possible. In this paper, we employ a fine-grained mobile phone dataset outlining the daily mobility of a substantial sample of the residents in Sweden’s metropolitan areas. Combining spatial trajectory data with detailed socio-economic residential statistics, we are able to study how everyday spatial mobility in cities shapes the segregation experiences of people and changes the segregation levels of places. Results indicate that while mobility alleviates segregation for some individuals, the population of a large number of areas remain highly segregated even when daily mobility is taken into account. Individuals residing or spending time in central urban areas are more exposed to individuals from other areas because of daily moves to these central places. Daytime movement to central areas also reduces segregation significantly for people from places remote from city centres but with high average levels of mobility whilst daytime segregation levels remain close to their original night-time levels in low-mobility areas in the outskirts of the cities.