Internal Migration in the Countries of Asia: A Cross-national Comparison

This book explores how population mobility varies among the countries of Asia. While much attention has been given to international migration, movement within countries is numerically much more significant. Coupling innovative methods developed in the global IMAGE project with the contextual knowledge of experts on 15 Asian countries, the book measures and explains how people across Asia differ in the probability of changing residence, the ages at which they move, and the impact of these migrations on the distribution of human settlement within each country. It demonstrates how stage of economic development, coupled with historical events, local contingencies, cultural norms, political frameworks, and the physical environment shape human migration. By using rigorous statistics in a robust comparative framework, this book provides a clear understanding of contemporary migration in Asia for students and academics, and a valuable resource for policy-makers and planners in Asia andbeyond.

Martin Bell is Adjunct Professor at the Asian Demographic Research Institute, Shanghai University, and Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland. With expertise spanning demography and population geography, his interests focuses on the analysis of population mobility and internal migration. He led the global team that undertook the IMAGE program (International Migration Around the GlobE) which developed the conceptual and methodological foundations on which the project reported in this volume is based.

Aude Bernard is Adjunct Research Fellow at the Asian Demographic Research Institute, Shanghai University and Lecturer at the Queensland Centre for Population Research, The University of Queensland. She has made scholarly contributions to the comparative analysis of migration by developing innovative methods of analysis, including age and cohort measures of migration, and proposing new conceptual approaches to understanding migration.

Elin Charles-Edwards Adjunct Research Fellow at the Asian Demographic Research Institute, Shanghai University and Senior Lecturer at the Queensland Centre for Population Research, The University of Queensland. Her research explores migration, mobility and the ways in which populations vary over space and time. Research interests include temporary population mobility and its estimation, internal migration, and applied demography for planning.

Yu Zhu is Professor at the Asian Demographic Research Institute, Shanghai University in China, and leading the pillar on internal migration and urbanization of the Institute. He is also Professor at the School of Geography, and Director of the Center for Population and Development Research, Fujian Normal University in China. His research straddles the disciplines of demography and human geography, focusing on issues relating to migration and urbanization.