In time of crises. What about internal migration to the French rural areas since the early 2000s?
Résumé
Based on quantitative analyses at the national scale, my presentation focuses on internal migration towards French rural areas since the beginning of the 2000s. During this time period, two World crisis – financial in 2007-2008 and COVID since 2020 – have potentialy modified demographic and migration processes in depth. We make the assumption that they have been different consequences on the demographic renewal trend of the sparsely populated areas since the 1980-1990s: a "brake effect" of the financiel crisis versus a "accelerating effect" of the COVID crisis. About recent trends, the aim is both to assess the existence of an "urban exodus" - especially named like this in France by the media - while qualifying it with regard to past dynamics. First results show a positive effect at the end of 2020 and the first part of 2021, but trends less clear after this period.
At least in the French context, the main issue is about data available. To have sufficiently recent and detailed data, my study is based on two open and public sources: firstly, aggregated and indivdual census data from 1999 to 2020 (it means the last annual survey available in the census 2018) for updating demographic trends in the municipalities less than 10 000 inhabitants (Pistre, 2016); secondly, individual "land values data" (DVF database) since 2014 – according to the data preparation method of Mériskay and Demores (2022) – to evaluate the most recent "pull effects" through the volume of real estate sales and the price’s changes.