Introduction to a virtual issue on the geographies of migration

For this virtual special issue, 12 of the 15 papers1 selected from those published in Geographical Research over the last 12 years (2006–17) have been authored primarily by academics based in Australia. The papers reflect geographers’ enduring engagement with migration as a phenomenon that cuts across different spatial scales. Until recently, migration studies published in the journal were overwhelmingly concerned with internal movements within the Australian continent. There are signs that the locus of interest is shifting to broader geographical terrains in the past two years—within the pages of the journal what begins to emerge are studies of migration issues located in a variety of contexts ranging from the Norwegian High North to Bihar, one of the poorest states in India. The Australian focus of migration scholarship in Geographical Research is clearly the dominant pattern in the first half of the 12-year period under consideration. Yet, it is interesting to note that when Graeme Hugo—one of Australia's pre-eminent geographers and demographers best known for his sterling contributions to migration studies—published a paper in the journal, he chose to focus on Asia as the centrepiece in his analysis of the ‘parametric increase in the scale and complexity of global international migration’ (Hugo, 2006, p.155; see also Hugo, 2005a, 2009). That paper grapples with the enormous economic, social, and political diversity in Asia, and reviews key developments in international labour migration in both the highly skilled and unskilled circuits, student migration, diaspora, and undocumented migration. In highlighting the striking ‘circularity’ in people movement and the widening of migrant social networks between origin and destination, Hugo (2006, p.165) frames the drivers of Asian migration as a response to global change, particularly involving the “3Ds”: demography, development, and democracy. In the decade following the publication of Hugo's 2006 paper, however, almost all other papers with a migration focus turned their attention to Australian patterns and processes. It is a missed opportunity for the journal that few contributing scholars followed Hugo's lead in looking at migration as a phenomenon with global traction and implications beyond Australian shores. The locus of attention moved instead to rural regions in Australia, with eight papers published in 2007 and 2008 (that is, half of the selection) analysing the role and impact of migration in rural areas.2 For example, Argent, Smailes, and Griffin's (2007, p.217) well-cited paper challenges the notion of a ‘post-productive transition’ in rural areas (that is, a move from production to consumption as the main driver of the value of rural space), and argues for ‘amenity-driven rural land use and community change’ as part of rural multi-functionality (p.222). By developing a quantitative model for measuring what the authors call an “amenity complex” and applying it to southeastern Australia, they conclude that rural amenity generally declines with distance from the coast, and that the relationship between amenity and in-migration rates has strengthened over time. The paper also notes the limitations of using a quantitative approach to understanding the less tangible factors at play in shaping the preferences of primarily exurban migrants relocating to rural areas. A more qualitative approach to understanding the migration from urban to rural settings can be found in Lauren Costello's (2007) study on a small, semi-rural community north of Melbourne published in Geographical Research in the same year. Costello suggests that the reasons for moving to rural areas are multifaceted, reflecting retirement migration, lifestyle migration, middle-class aspirations, and aesthetics, as well as migrators seeking cheaper housing outside metropolitan areas. She also examines the impact of newcomers on rural place-making, taking care not to attribute causality to the presence of new arrivals, but distilling insights into how the interplay of different resources, expectations, and values reshapes ideas about community, heritage, and local development in rural Australia. Running parallel to the arguments put forward by Argent et al. (2007) and Costello (2007) but focused primarily on out-migration from rural areas instead, a special issue entitled ‘Getting on, getting up and getting out? Broadening perspectives on rural youth migration’ edited by Gibson and Argent (2008) further advances the visibility of Geographical Research as an outlet for work on the complex relationship between migration and rural development in Australia. Comprising five research papers and an introduction, the special issue usefully highlights the importance of ‘collaboration and cross-fertilisation amongst rural, cultural and population geographers in the study of cultures of rural youth migration’ (Gibson & Argent, 2008, p.137). By meshing demographic with cultural approaches, that collection of papers combines statistical analyses of migration trends with more interpretive accounts of rural community change that give weight to ‘how people imagine themselves, how they see their identities as belonging or being constrained in particular places, or as capable of transformation through moving to other places’ (Gibson & Argent, 2008, p.137). The complex motivations behind youth mobilities can be glimpsed in Argent and Walmsley's (2008) contribution to the 2008 special issue. There, and notwithstanding an increasing rate of loss of young people from rural regions migrating in search of “bright city lights”, they observe that there are also, in their study, relatively high proportions of youth who move within the immediate regions of their childhood homes. The intentions to migrate out of non-metropolitan coastal communities among school-leaving youth in New South Wales are further explored in Danielle Drozdzewski's (2008) paper. Drawing on a survey conducted with high school students in these rural communities, Drozdzewski argues that young people's out-migration intentions need to be understood in the context of ‘the initiation of new life trajectories and the search for independent identities away from the parental hone and community’ (p.159). Taking a contrasting perspective—that of urban-based university students in Western Australia—but also drawing on survey methodology, Amanda Davies (2008) shows that resistance to migrating to the Wheatbelt region among young people is predicated on perceptions of rural lifestyles as socially isolating and employment opportunities as limited in terms of career advancement. While these results are not surprising, Davies (2008) also suggests that those with some lived experience of rural communities have comparatively more positive perceptions of rural areas. What remains unexplored in these cross-sectional studies of perception, however, is the fraught terrain connecting intention and perception with human behaviour and action—this is where investment in longitudinal studies would yield far greater insights and explanatory power. The last two papers of the 2008 special issue draw on qualitative methods including in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork. Easthope and Gabriel (2008) move away from studying migration motivations or perceptions to examine how young people growing up in a “culture of migration” actively negotiate and make sense of both outward migration from and return migration to Tasmania. Taking the perspectives of the young people themselves, the researchers show how young people's construction of self-identity is intricately tied to how they understand the complex relationship between mobility and place. In the main, they argue that while young Tasmanians constantly weigh different options before them and negotiate their sense of self in the process of moving away and returning, their actions may resist but are often complicit in reproducing a longstanding migratory culture where leaving in order to experience self-development is normalised. Chris Gibson's (2008) paper rounds off the special issue with a study of music-making and young people's migration on the far north coast of Australia. On the one hand, he explains how the promotion of the creative industries in non-metropolitan areas has the potential to act as a basis for developing youth employment and retention strategies. On the other, he also cautions that the viability of such an approach also depends on putting in place ‘policy goals of increased tolerance of youth activities, improved provision of cultural services and performance venues, and lifestyle and career options for young people’ (p.193). As mentioned earlier, migration-related papers published in Geographical Research in more recent times appear to have greater diversification in terms of geographical contexts compared with the earlier papers. While the paper by Bell, Wilson, and Charles-Edwards (2011) deserves mention for presenting population projections for Australia from 2000 to 2051 using a new, probabilistic projection framework that incorporates expert judgement (following Lutz, 2009), five other papers published in 2016 and 2017 suggest interest in a broadening set of geographical concerns beyond the Australian continent. Davies and Hoath's (2016) paper, for example, connects the earlier interest in the journal in “amenity and lifestyle migration” to the relocation of Australian nationals to Bali, Indonesia. By analysing the results from a questionnaire administered to Australian residents in Bali, a popular holiday destination for Australians, they conclude that neither life-course nor lower costs of living were sufficient in explaining the reasons for the migration. Instead, more significant in influencing people's decisions to move were place-based factors—‘the combination of natural amenity, climate, lifestyle, and the ability to integrate into a Balinese “way of life”’ (p.47). Taking the cue from Michael Corbett's (2007) influential book Learning to Leave, Martin Forsey (2017, pp.60–61) uses ‘biographical reflection’ as a method to cultivate ‘small tales from the field’, drawing connections across rural Canada, the far north of Western Australia, Europe, and the United States in order to show why social class matters in educational mobilities and emplacement. While working-class sensibilities in deciding on children's educational needs tend to centre around a localised habitus, middle-class priorities tend towards valorising physical movement away from home for educational purposes, or even transnational mobility as a strategy of internationalisation, cosmopolitanisation, and acquiring social capital (see also Waters, 2009). The final three papers selected for this virtual special issue—all published in 2017 and authored by scholars not based in Australia—are indicative of a possible shift in geographical scope to encompass an interest in “elsewhere” with no direct connection to Australia. Focusing on university student life in Plymouth, UK, Mark Holton (2017) examines how identity performances are influenced by changing activity spaces in the course of their transition through university and as a result of varying mobility patterns. Echoing Easthope and Gabriel's (2008) observations, he notes that non-local students from a commutable distance or another region, and international students both experience complex identity negotiations as their adapt to living away from home (many for the first time). At the same time, local students who have not left home ‘struggle to reconcile their student and non-student identities because they often exist between two worlds’ (p.76). Connecting to the journal's interest in youth and education in rural settings (such as Gibson and Argent's special issue referred to above) but locating the discussion in the Norwegian High North, Gry Paulgaard (2017) draws on a qualitative study of young, unemployed men to show how traditional views of ‘rural masculinity’ linked to ‘occupations with proximity to nature, such as fishing, forestry and mining’ (p.44) are being challenged by more urban-centred versions of masculinities that position “the rural” as somewhat inadequate if not deviant. The final paper by Chetan Choithani (2017) focuses on the role of internal migration as a livelihood strategy in influencing food security among rural households in western Bihar, India. The findings drawn from a household survey show that migrants’ remittances help to increase household purchasing power and improve food access, and also enable investment in land and agriculture. The latter is of particular importance to enhancing household food security as land is viewed as a long-term safety net in a society with few other safeguards against poverty. In a sense, this paper (Choithani, 2017) takes the discussion full circle, beginning with Hugo's (2006) insightful overview of migration issues in Asia, and ending also in Asia with a younger generation scholar's more focused analysis of the significance of migration to developmental issues.3 Between the first and final papers in this collection, the others have focused overwhelmingly on Australian migration issues, and given particular attention to themes such as migration and rural lives, youth migration, student migration, and lifestyle migration. Given that migration processes and politics see no sign of subsidence on the global stage, it is likely that the next cycle of papers would see more concerted efforts in extending the geographical reach of migration research. I would like to thank Geographical Research's Editor-in-Chief Elaine Stratford, Editorial Assistant Kirstie Petrou, as well as Kristel Acedera (Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore) for their assistance with putting together this Introduction.

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