INEI And CELADE Present Study On Internal Migration At Departmental, Provincial And District Levels

The National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) and the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Center- (CELADE) - Population Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), present the research Peru: Internal migration and sociodemographic dynamics of departments, provinces and districts in the first two decades of the 21st century. This study analyzes the mobility transition approach, the evolution of internal migration and its characteristics at the departmental, provincial and district levels using the 1993, 2007 and 2017 National Population and Housing Censuses

The head of INEI, Dante Carhuavilca Bonett, and the Director of CELADE-Population Division of ECLAC, Simone Cecchini, expressed the close historical collaboration between both institutions, which has yielded various results, from population projections to studies on socio-demographic vulnerability, online census processing with the use of REDATAM, and training in demography and population for INEI officials.

The work between the two institutions was highly collaborative and had the specific purpose of generating this national capacity, which was achieved through the creation of INEI teams, the development of which involved "learning (or remembering or reinforcing) by doing". This capacity building through practice was also applied to the management of the CELADE-ECLAC Population Division's REDATAM program, which was used for most of the census processing.

The study quantifies and examines internal migration in Peru in empirical, theoretical and policy terms. To this end, several specialized procedures are applied to estimate the intensity of internal migration, to determine its selectivity and to calculate four direct socio-demographic territorial effects of internal migration at the territorial scale: growth, redistribution, composition and inequality. All these procedures required intensive processing of census microdata bases, the only source available in Peru for these studies with representativeness at different scales of geographical disaggregation.

The presentation of results was in charge of the Head of INEI, Dante Carhuavilca Bonett, and Jorge Rodríguez Vignoli, Senior Researcher of CELADE-ECLAC, also participated. Comments were made by Hugo González, Representative of the United Nations Population Fund in Peru (UNFPA), Carlos Eduardo Aramburú, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) and Matteo Mandrile, Senior Program Coordinator of the International Organization for Migration (IOM-Peru).

According to the results of the 2017 Census and analyzing the migratory history, 20.4% of the country's population migrated from their place of birth to another department. The peak of this indicator was reached with the 1993 Census, with 22.1%.

In the last three censuses, there are 10 attractive departments (positive net migration) and 15 expellers (negative net migration), with almost the same departments in each case, except for Ica and San Martin, whose net migration rate changes between 2007 and 2017, as San Martin goes from being attractive to being an

Ica went from being a population expeller in 1993 and 2007 to being an attracting department in 2017. Likewise, the attractiveness of Arequipa and Ica increased, while the Amazonian departments of Loreto, Amazonas and Ucayali showed ups and downs.

The head of the INEI said that, at the province level, 145 of the 196 provinces expel population and register a negative internal migratory balance. This proportion was even higher in 2007 (154 out of 195 provinces), so that during the 21st century there is a slight trend towards convergence between the segment of attractive provinces and the segment of expelling provinces.

On the other hand, 6 of the 9 provinces that changed from having a positive to a negative net migration rate are located in the jungle, such as Bongará and Rodríguez de Mendoza (Amazonas), Huallaga, Picota and Rioja (San Martín) and Satipo (Junín), ratifying the volatility to which these provinces are exposed, which can have sudden rises or falls in their attractiveness.

Referring to the districts, the head of INEI pointed out that between 2007 and 2017, the number of districts with negative net migration and mobility rates increased. In 2007, there were 1 thousand 398 expelling districts, in 2017, it went to 1 thousand 441 were expellers. Meanwhile, the number of attractive districts for migration or with Net Migration Rate - NMR or positive mobility remained at 430 in both censuses.

Most of the expelling districts are located in the natural region of the Sierra. Moreover, the number of districts in the Sierra, as well as in the jungle, that are expellers increased from 1,30 in 2007 to 1,48 in 2017 in the Sierra and from 181 to 213 in the Jungle, in the same period.

With respect to sex composition, internal migration tends to increase the sex ratio in most of the entities at the three political-administrative levels: departments, provinces and districts. This effect is explained by the opposing impacts of immigration, which tends to increase the sex ratio, and emigration, which tends to reduce it. In some departments, such as Madre de Dios, the impact is significant, reaching almost a 3.0% increase in 5 years, because the selectivity of immigration to that department is markedly male. On the other hand, Lima is one of the few departments where internal migration generates a reduction in the male ratio, with a drop of about 0.5%.

Dante Carhuavilca pointed out that internal migration has an important effect on age composition due to its marked youth selectivity. He emphasized that migration tends to increase the demographic dependency ratio in most departments, provinces and districts, due to the emigration of young people, which causes a reduction in the percentage of young people and an increase in the percentage of other age groups, including the elderly, which is why internal migration tends to "age" the entities that expel population, including most of the rural areas.

The highest migration intensity was recorded in the 15 to 29 years age group, 30 to 44 years age group and 5 to 14 years, both in 2007 and 2017.

By educational level, in the departments, provinces and districts, there is greater migratory selectivity and mobility in the population with higher education, which is twice that of the population with lower educational levels (up to primary school). At the inter-district level, the migration and mobility intensity of people with higher education exceeds by more than 10.0 percentage points those with primary education, and during 2007, this trend continued.

The INEI reported that, between 2007 and 2017, the dynamism in Mining and Construction activities prevailed in the migration of men compared to women, this configured changes in selectivity patterns orienting towards the male population, in departments (from 5.6% to 5.9%.

In the period 2007-2017, in the administrative divisions: department, province and districts, the migratory intensity of people who have Quechua mother tongue grew, followed by people who had Aymara mother tongue. In the departments, the migratory intensity of Quechua-speakers went from 4.1% in 2007 to 4.9% in 2017; as well as the migration intensity of Aymara-speaking people, from 3.8% to 3.9%, respectively. Meanwhile, the migration intensity of Spanish-speakers decreased at the three administrative levels.

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