Internal Migrations as a Driving Force of Regional Disintegration: An Empirical Analysis of NUTS-2 Regions in Turkey

Internal migrations, which involve population movements within the borders of a country for economic, political or social reasons, is seen as both a cause and a result of regional imbalances. In this framework, the effect increasing internal migrations have on developed and underdeveloped regions may differ through the effect of the different socio-cultural and economic conditions between regions. The aspect of imbalance is directly related to the extent to which migration affects parameters such as wage, production, consumption, human capital levels, entrepreneurial migration, unemployment, and household income in regions with different stages of development. This study analyzes the effect internal migration has on regional imbalances in Turkey’s NUTS-2 regions during 2008-2019 using the bootstrap quantile regression method. According to the analysis findings, internal migration increases growth in all NUTS-2 regions, but this effect is stronger at higher income levels. In this context, as a region’s income levels increase, the effect of net migration on growth also increases. When considering the migration direction to be from low-income regions to high-income regions, internal migration has been found to increase interregional disintegration in Turkey.