Internal migration ordomestic migration ishuman migration within a country. Internal migration tends to be travel for education and for economic improvement or because of a natural disaster or civil disturbance,[1] though a study based on the fullformal economy of the United States found that the median post-move rise in income was only 1%.[2]
A massive internal migration from the eastern statestoward the west coast during the mid-19th century.
Three waves of large-scale migration ofAfrican Americans: first from the agricultural south to the industrialized northeast and midwest in theearly 20th century, a second movement in the same direction with new additional destination to the West from roughly1940 to 1970,[4] and finallya reverse migration from other parts of the country to the urban south beginning in the late 20th century and continuing to the present.[5]
A steady migration, starting during theDust Bowl of the 1930s but accelerating after World War II, of all ethnicities toward theSun Belt of the southern and western U.S.
An ongoing migration of mostly working- and middle-class people of all ethnicities, but especiallywhites, from California to other states since about 1990, called theCalifornia Exodus.[6]
ACOVID-19 pandemic-related acceleration of migration from large, dense urban centers to less populated states andtowns. States in the South, such as South Carolina and North Carolina, and the Mountain West continued to record high net inflow through 2025, according to moveBuddha migration data, while high-density states like New York and California remained major sources of out-migration.[7][8]
InPhilippines, due to acentralised government and almost unequal distribution of government power and funds, people fromthe provinces head toMetro Manila to look for better jobs and opportunities. This has been continuing since then, although in much smaller numbers now, withMetro Cebu andMetro Davao now increasingly becoming more popular as alternative destination for internal migrants.
In Italy, during thecountry's economic miracle in the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called "industrial triangle" ofNorthwest Italy experienced waves of immigrants coming fromSouthern Italy, due to the southern portion of the country remaining underdeveloped and stricken with poverty.[10] The peak was reached between 1955 and 1963, when as many as 1,300,000 southerners moved to the northern industrial cities. After a pause in the 1980s the north–south migration has resumed, this time headed to other areas of the north andCentral Italy.
InPortugal, during the aftermath of thePortuguese Colonial War from May 1974 to the end of 1970s, between 500,000 to 1 million of the majority european population of Portugal's colonies, known as theretornados, migrated to mainland Portugal, known then as themetropole.
A subtype of internal migration is the migration of immigrant groups –often called secondary or onward migration. Secondary migration is also used to refer to themigration of immigrants within theEuropean Union.
Various methodologies are proposed and used in the literature to analyse internal migration. Ravenstein[17] used extensive cartographies to detail migration patterns. Slater[18] employed networks to model migration. Goldade et al.[19] employed geographical bounds and political afliation of communities, in addition to utilizing network structures. Gursoy and Badur[20] proposed signed network analysis, ego network analysis, representation learning, temporal stability analysis, community detection, and network visualization methods tailored for internal migration data and made their software available.[21]
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