Quantitative, Demographic, and Geographic Approaches to Internal Migration

The mainly temporal viewpoint adopted by the demographer allows him to analyse internal migration either by comparing consecutive periods (epoch analysis) or by following the life span of an individual (cohort analysis). This analysis leads to models of migration that are based on Markov processes. The principally spatial viewpoint taken by the geographer enables him to see how migration affects the distribution of the population in an area (spatial-differentiation analysis), and to study the flows between zones (spatial-interaction analysis). In fact only a combined spatial and temporal approach can throw fresh light on migration analysis