(Mis)Placing Optimism? Nordic Population Development and Residential Mobility Post-Pandemic

Linda Randall , Stockholm University

Urbanisation has been the dominant trend in the Nordic countries in recent decades. The majority of population growth has occurred in a small number of urban municipalities while many rural and remote municipalities have experienced population decline. In this context, the mobility patterns and migration trends observed during the COVID-19 pandemic invited a sense of optimism regarding longer-term rural development potentials. Though expectations have tempered somewhat since, unpacking the impact of the pandemic on population trends in different geographical contexts remains an important task. Several studies have explored internal migration during the pandemic, considering the implications for different types of municipalities (e.g., urban, rural, etc). One question which remains unexplored however, is how the mobility patterns observed during the pandemic fit with longer-term population development trends. This article seeks to address this, considering internal migration during (2020-2021) and directly following (2022-2023) the pandemic in the context of pre-pandemic population development trajectories (2000-2019) for all Nordic municipalities. The research is expected to demonstrate that optimism about the potential for more balanced population development post-pandemic was largely misplaced. In the vast majority of cases, the municipalities which experienced the largest increases in internal in migration during and directly following the pandemic were not those experiencing the most severe population decline in the two decades prior. The article closes with some reflections on the implications for rural policy.

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 Presented in Session P3. Migration, Economics, Policies, History