Migration between English city regions: are the highly skilled no longer leaving old industrial cities?

Mike Coombes, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Anthony G. Champion, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

This paper addresses key questions facing policy-makers in the area regeneration field, because one key to an area’s regeneration is that people choose to live there. Thus analysing who migrates, and where from and to, is a vital to understanding the prospects for cities and city regions. The paper considers whether larger English cities are continuing to lose human capital as a result of migration and, in particular, whether they have net out-migration of highly skilled occupational groups. There is now much policy with the aim that cities ‘should do better’ in attracting mobile people. Has the cities’ sustained growth of professional and managerial work, and selective residential redevelopments such as gentrification, reversed the long-standing trend in Britian of urban-to-rural net migration by the highly skilled? The analyses use the 2001 Census migration dataset, compiled for all the largest English city regions (as defined using 1991 commuting and migration patterns).