How attractive are UK cities to internal and international migrants?
In the last few weeks, the immigration issue gained lots of coverage in national and local news. Home secretary Theresa May recently announced planned caps on net migration to the UK and the rise in popularity of the UK Independence Party in the local and European elections also reflects public concerns over this subject.
This blog explores one side of the issue by looking at how attractive UK cities are to internal and international migrants. I used ONS data to map net internal, international and total migration flows to 64 UK cities over 1 year (2011-2012), 3years (2009-2012) and 5 years (2007-2012). All time scales showed more or less the same patterns, and below are the 5-years maps with 8 particular points worth highlighting:
How does this compare to the U.S?
In a recent blog, Richard Florida from CityLAB presented 3 maps showing the international, domestic and net migration patterns in U.S cities for 2012 and 2013. U.S cities seem to witness similar patterns to those in th U.K.
According to the blog, most U.S cities (especially large ones) saw a net inflow of migrants between 2012 and 2013. Similarly to UK cities, this was mainly driven by international migration, since most U.S cities gained population from international destinations while quite a few cities (especially large ones) lost people to the rest of the country.
Despite migration being a national concern, it can affect different cities in different ways. Our recent briefing on immigration reform demonstrates this point and in my next blog, I will include maps showing population growth in UK cities in the last 5 years and how significant was the role of migration in driving that growth.
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