Dynamics of intraregional features of migration of the population of the Stavropol Territory

Abstract

Using official statistics, this article carries out an historical and geographical analysis of factors and trends of migration processes of the population of the Stavropol Territory over the past 60 years in order to identify intra-regional features of population migration (at the level of cities and districts). The main research tools are analytical, cartographic, historical reconstruction, statistical, comparative geographical, and comparative historical methods. The study also used scientific literature, archival statistical data from the North Caucasus Statistical Service, and materials from a sociological survey. The time period according to characteristics of factors, trends, and forms of population migration in Russia was divided into three parts: the last three Soviet decades (1963–1991); forced migration (1992–2000); and contemporary (2001–2019). The study revealed the transformation of population migration at each of the considered periods. The article focuses on identifying dynamics of coefficients of migration growth in cities and districts of the Stavropol Territory at different periods. The main regularity of the intraregional features of population migration in the Stavropol Territory is a gradual increase in the area of territories with negative migration performance, which was natural for agro-industrial Stavropol in the conditions of the classical stage of urbanization, and which was characterized by significant migrations of the rural population to cities. This pattern was interrupted in the 1990s, when stress factors were at work, and the opposite trend was noted. However, in the contemporary period, the growth of cities and regions with a migration decline has become a defining trend. Today, only territories included in the Stavropol and Caucasian Mineral Waters urban agglomerations have migration attractiveness in the Stavropol Territory. Thus, in the contemporary period there has been an increase in the importance of the position of territories in the “core-semi-periphery-periphery” system, as well as an increase in the socio-economic spatial polarization of Russia and its regions. The revealed patterns and tendencies of migration processes in the Stavropol Territory “fit” into the broad context of V. Zelinsky’s theory of mobile transition, which is natural in the context of the change of the industrial era with a post-industrial society.