East-west or up the urban hierarchy? Internal migration patterns in Slovakia since post-socialist transformation to COVID-19 pandemic

Changing spatial patterns of migration are closely related to the transformation of economy and society. Most current studies focus either on international migration or on the migration of particular urban regions. Our study evaluates migration trends in the entire national regional system, and thus it contributes to its comprehensive understanding. The study aims to evaluate the relationship of internal migration from economically lagging eastern to more developed western regions of Slovakia on the one hand, and migration between categories of regions according to the hierarchical position of their urban core on the other hand. The study follows the differential urbanization concept and analyses detailed data on individual migrations in Slovakia in 1996-2020. It thus covers the period from the post-socialist transformation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show the increasing intensity of east-west and up the urban hierarchy migration. Due to the significant polarization of migration between the eastern and western regional subsystems, we examined separately in both subsystems the migration excluding flows between the subsystems. The results revealed a concentration of population into metropolitan regions in both subsystems, although the intensity of the processes was lower and the onset of trends delayed in the eastern subsystem. A significant feature of development in the post-socialist period was intensive exurbanation in both subsystems. The study thus points to the importance of subnational and regional approaches to migration research, and reveals trends that can contribute to the explanation of migration development even in countries where such detailed migration statistics are not available.