Original scientific paper
Mechanical Movement of the Population and Regional Development
Ivan Lajić
Abstract
The objective of this article is to show the extent to which mechanical movement of the population influences basic regional development processes, and what that relation is in individual historical periods. The effects of migration on indirect or direct definition of regional structures, interrelations and processes are considered. When the influence of migration on regional development is being viewed, its twofold function should be taken into account. The mobile part of the human population (the migrational contingent) changes its geographical position mechanically by leaving the region of origin and thus, proportionally to its demographic volume, »carries off« its human potential (biological, structural, cultural etc.) into the immigrational region, in this way impoverishing the region of its origin to the extent to which it enriches the immigrational region. Each form of migration unavoidably influences the regional starting point and the migrational destination as well. If we regard the region as a separate territorial unit in which no restrictive migrational barriers exist, we may speak of a region that is neutral from an emigrational, immigrational or migrational aspect, depending on the qualifying sign on the migration balance. In the first case, it is a matter of a more intensive mechanical outflow from the region than the simultaneous mechanical inflow to that region. In the second case, more people are moving into the region than are moving out of it, while in the third, the migrationally balanced case, the level of migrational flows is equal or almost equal to immigrational flows. In a separate chapter, there is a discussion on the positive and negative effects of migration on the demographic development of the receiving region and on the region of origin of the migrants.
Keywords
region; regional development; migration; emigrants; immigrants
Hrčak ID:
18384
URI
Publication date:
30.9.2007.
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