488
Regional Demographic Decline and Immigration
Regional Demographic Decline and Immigration
Wednesday, 13 July 2016: 14:15-15:45
Location: Elise Richter Saal (Main Building)
RC41 Sociology of Population (host committee) Language: English
While on a national level, demographic change in most developed societies means aging and sometimes declining populations, on a regional level population development is far more heterogeneous and in many areas population decline is much more pronounced. Regional demographic decline is often said to go hand in hand with a peripheralisation of the respective regions.
This seems especially plausible when demographic decline itself is a consequence of economic downturns such as deindustrialization, or if the redistribution of public revenues is institutionally tied to population indicators. Then demographic decline can reinforce economic trends and lead to a “downward spiral”. Recently, under labels such as “de-peripheralisation” or “global countryside”, various (regional) coping strategies have been discussed with respect to regional (demographic) decline. Among the more prominent ones is immigration as a way to come to terms with a declining resident population, as has been observed recently in Spain and in other countries.
But do such examples represent universal models, which can be copied elsewhere? Is it possible to deliberately induce immigration to demographically declining regions? What are necessary conditions for immigration-based coping strategies to be viable? These and related questions are to be discussed in this session.
This session is open to different types of conceptual papers and theoretically grounded empirical studies based on qualitative and/or quantitative methods. Papers with a comparative empirical approach are especially welcome.
Session Organizer: