Lialina A. V., Voloshenko K. Yu., Plotnikova A. P.  Rural migration in the Kaliningrad Region: Scale and geography of flows // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №4. P. 185-207.

EDN: UPONPO

Annotation

Today’s migration in rural areas of Russian regions is highly spatially heterogeneous, reflecting opposite directions of urbanization, deurbanization and suburbanization. The covid-19 pandemic together with an increase in remote employment and exclavity of the Kaliningrad Region under external restrictions (which is manifested in the region’s increased vulnerability, isolation, peripherality, closeness, limited resources and potential), on the one hand, and the region’s growing popularity among internal tourists, on the other hand, determine the transformation of internal and external migration, which undoubtedly affects rural areas. The article aims at identifying changes in the scale and geography of migration flows in rural areas of the Kaliningrad Region in 2011–2023. Relative indicators of the intensity of migration flows, which are traditional for migration studies, were calculated for the first time based on the data on internal migration between municipalities separately for rural areas. The authors applied typologization and cartographic methods to explain the differences in migration attractiveness and the features of migration in the near suburban, far suburban and peripheral zones. Thus, migration in rural areas of near suburbs is characterized by rapid growth, mainly due to the inflow from other regions and the regional center, but also as a result of resettlement in the eastern part of the region. Rural areas in far suburbs and peripheries have slowed their loss of population due to a noticeable replacement of rural-urban outflow by interregional migration.

Keywords

Rural area, internal migration, rural-urban migration, municipalities, suburbs, periphery, agglomeration, Kaliningrad Region.  

About the authors

Anna V. Lialina, PhD (Geography), Researcher, Center for Socio-Economic Research of the Region, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University. A. Nevskogo St., 14, Kaliningrad, 236016, Russia.
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Ksenia Yu. Voloshenko, PhD (Economy), Head of the Center for Socio-Economic Research of the Region, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, A. Nevskogo St., 14, Kaliningrad, 236016, Russia.
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Angelina P. Plotnikova, PhD Student, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, A. Nevskogo St., 14, Kaliningrad, 236016, Russia.
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