Rethinking counter-urbanisation: Explorations into Australian internal migration away from the cities

Presenting author: Nick Osbaldiston (James Cook University)

Literature on migration has often discussed the impact climate change may have on how we live and move into the future. There has been very little, however, on the manner in which climate change may shift our internal migration patterns within Australia. In this paper, I use recent research from Tasmania on internal migration from the mainland to demonstrate how climate change is starting to alter how we want to live in the second and third ages of life.

Using survey and interview data, it will be shown that heat of the mainland is driving a quest for a better way of life through the climatic conditions found in Tasmania. Middle-aged and retired people seek out not just a cooler temperature, but a seasonality that they argue is being lost on the mainland. This work highlights the current implications for rising temperatures and starts a conversation about how climate change may alter choice into the future.

Presenting author: Rachel Winterton (La Trobe University)

This qualitative research explored how retirement migrants articulate and experience rural citizenship. In doing so, it examines the factors that influence the rights, responsibilities, and everyday practices of retirement migrants as rural citizens. Thirty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with people who had retired to rural communities within two local government areas in Victoria, Australia.

Findings indicated that locality-based and sociocultural constructions of rurality impacted both positively and negatively on retirement migrants' ability to claim their rights, fulfil their citizen responsibilities and their everyday experiences of inclusion. However, the impacts of these elements of rurality were largely mediated by retirement migrants' expectations of rural community settings. These expectations were associated with individual motivations for relocation, life-course experiences, mobilities and resources. These findings highlight the differential, temporal and precarious nature of citizenship for rural ageing cohorts. As such, this research contributes to contemporary understandings of how rural and individual determinants intersect to facilitate processes of inclusion or exclusion for diverse older people.

Presenting author: Natascha Klocker (University of Wollongong)

Other authors: Paul Hodge (University of Newcastle), Olivia Dun (University of Melbourne, University of Wollongong), Eliza Crosbie (University of Newcastle), Rae Dufty-Jones (Western Sydney University), Celia McMichael (University of Melbourne), Karen Block (University of Melbourne) 

Regionalisation is a hallmark of Australia's approach to international migration, reflecting governments' growing concern with where new arrivals live. Residence in regional Australia is encouraged (mandated, for some visas) in response to urban population pressures alongside rural population and economic decline. Parallel to regionally-focused visa schemes exists a pattern of voluntary urban-to-rural migration among some international migrants. Such secondary mobility counters the policy logic that international migrants only live outside cities when required to do so.

This paper explores 18 African migrants' motivations for 'urban flight': Australian cities have failed to sustain their wellbeing and they consider rural life a remedy. Their preference for rural locations is not purely instrumental, it is shaped by deep-seated affective connections. Given the challenges of regional population retention, settlement policies should be recalibrated to support the aspirations of international migrants who feel an affinity for rural places, rather than compelling the rural settlement of others who do not.

Presenting author: Rana Dadpour (James Cook University)

Other author: Associate Professor Lisa Law (James Cook University)

This paper unpacks the notion of 'region' in the current migration debate to understand how Cairns fits into a wider meta-geography of internal urban-rural migration in Australia. It begins by unpacking different definitions of 'region' that include notions of 'access', 'rural', 'remote' and their different constructions of regionality.   We discuss different systems of classification and their imagined geographies such as the ASGS Remoteness Areas (ASGS-RA), Rural, Remote and Metropolitan Area (RRMA) and Accessibility Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA classifications).  We show how definitions and classifications of regions are constructed in particular ways to address political and social issues such as economic development, health and wider policy making agendas. 

The analysis aims to develop a framework to understand key dimensions of regionality relevant to migration to Cairns in the COVID-19 moment.  Critically analysing different systems of classifications help us understand the Cairns scenario and how it might be positioned in relation to the recent rural-urban internal migration debate in Australia.