Overview

This course is about internal migration in the United States. Each year about 11 million people move across county lines and five million move to a different state. By comparison, about one million immigrants entered the country from abroad annually in recent years (pre-pandemic). Thus, interstate migration flows are five times larger than the annual inflow of immigrants from abroad (see CPS Historical Migration/Geographic Mobility Tables., particularly, Table A-1. Annual Geographic Mobility Rates, By Type of Movement: 1948-2021). Internal migration, even at the longer distance scale of interstate migration, has a larger effect on local and regional population change in the U.S. than immigration.

The course will overview histories of U.S. internal migration and discuss theories of migration that attempt to explain why and where people migrate. A substantial component of the class will include instruction on how to access U.S. internal migration data and explain methods for analyzing that data to summarize geographical and temporal trends in U.S. internal migration. Students will do assignments and a final project that uses these migration data and methods. Migration theory will guide the empirical work in assignments and projects.

Familiarity or comfort with using R and RStudio is highly recommended for this class. You will be expected to use this language and integrated development environment for assignments that process and shape downloaded migration data and analyze and visualize that data starting in week 2. Some class sessions will likely be hands-on exercises in downloading, processing and summarizing data using R and RStudio. Having your laptop in class will be most effective in these instances. You will write/publish your assignments and the final project as Quarto/R Markdown scripts with embedded code, output, and textual descriptions of what you have done and found.

At the end of the class you will have learned:

• about key migration events in American history (e.g. Great Migration of the mid-twentieth century, the decline of migration rates in the late twentieth century), and theories for explaining who moves and their destination geographies.
• how rates and patterns of migration changed during the pandemic period. It is too soon to tell whether any of those changes, such as they are, have persisted. We need data through 2022 at least to assess this question.
• how to access contemporary and historical survey and administrative data on U.S. internal migration.
• techniques and R code for shaping, analyzing, and visualizing that data.
• the use of Quarto for writing reproducible reports that include your code, descriptions of what you have done, and your analysis.
• how to use these skills to investigate historical and contemporary internal migration by geography and population sub-groups (age, education, nativity, race and ethnicity, etc.).

Grade Breakdown (subject to change)

Weekly schedule (subject to change)

1. Week 1 Internal migration
   1. What is it, overview of migration rates and flows
   2. scales of migration: states, counties, in-between: metro areas, commuter zones.
   3. Using R/RStudio
2. Week 2. Why do people move
   1. Theory on who moves, why people move.
   2. Variation in rates of moving across groups
   3. Population aging and migration.
   4. Secular decline in migration
3. Week 3. Sources of Migration Data, Using that Data
   1. Surveys, Admin records.
   2. Social media data
   3. Grabbing migration data and manipulating it.
   4. Organizing the data, migration matrix, rates etc
4. Week 4. Migration rates 1
   1. Calculating outmigration rates
   2. Variation across space and time
5. Week 5. Migration rates 2
   1. Differences by age, education
   2. Using a migration schedule to predict migration, explain variation across space.
6. Week 6. Migration histories and lifetime migration
   1. Longitudinal data and migration histories
   2. Immobility, onward, repeat, and return migration
   3. Lifetime migration as a substitute, meaning of lifetime migration: rates, variation across country, change over time.
   4. Measures of return and onward migration from these data.
   5. Grabbing lifetime migration data
7. Week 7 Migration flows 1
   1. Descriptive measures
   2. Netmigration
   3. Migration efficiency
   4. Flow matrices - constructing, processing
8. Week 8 Migration flows 2
9. Migration distance: centroid measures
10. Visualizing flows
11. Week 9 Migration flows 3
    1. Gravity models
12. Week 10 Project presentations