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This article explores how organizations balance the pressures to pursue efficiency through standardization with the need to remain responsive to local needs. The study combines rich ethnography with detailed loan data to show that both standardization and flexibility through relational ties provide substantial organizational benefits but also carry significant costs; thus, no strategy is inherently superior, and their coexistence generates the best results. Such coexistence, however, creates contradictions that must be managed. Here, I use microfinance as a strategic setting and gain analytic leverage from the random assignment across branches of loan officers who exhibit significant heterogeneity in rule enforcement styles: some enforce rules strictly, whereas others frequently bend them to respond to client needs. I find that loan officers with relational styles exercise discretion productively to enhance organizational performance. Yet their effectiveness is contingent on the presence of rule-enforcing peers, as evidenced by the significant underperformance of branches with a high concentration of officers of either type. In contrast, branches that contain discretionary diversity, or a balance between enforcement styles, perform best. This is not due to diversity per se, but because loan officers process decisions in local credit committees. Committees that contain discretionary diversity generate a productive tension that induces participants to justify decisions along broader organizational goals, thus maintaining a productive balance between standardization and flexibility. Implications for organizational theory and practice are discussed.

\"Despite manifold studies in the field of migration, the process of migration decision-making and behaviour is still not fully understood. In this article a more elaborated theoretical framework for the explanation of migration decision-making and behaviour is proposed by including a life-course perspective on goal formation into a psychological model of action phases. Hypotheses derived from this framework in regard to the influence of all relevant groups of predictors on certain stages of the migration process are empirically tested. The results support an explanation of the migration process within a three-stage model, in that perceived opportunity differentials between the place of living and alternative places, the influences of 'significant others', life-course events, and resources are prominent. Varieties in the importance of those factors in different phases of the life course are analysed and interpreted referring to the changing importance of instrumental goals within the theoretical framework. The data come from a tailor-made panel study with initially 2,400 respondents in Germany. For the analyses generalized ordinal logistic regression and probit models with sample selection are used.\" (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku). Forschungsmethode: Theoriebildung; Grundlagenforschung; empirisch; Befragung. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 2006 bis 2007.

This article investigates the impact of labour mobility on plant performance in Denmark. Our study shows that the effect of labour mobility can only be assessed when one accounts for the type of skills that flow into the plant and the degree to which these match the existing skills at the plant level. As expected, we found that the inflow of skills that are related to skills in the plant impacts positively on plant productivity growth, while inflows of skills that are similar to the plant skills have a negative effect. We used a sophisticated indicator of revealed relatedness that measures the degree of skill relatedness between sectors on the basis of the intensity of labour flows between sectors. Intra-regional mobility of skilled labour had a negative effect on plant performance, but the impacts of intra- and inter-regional mobility depended on the type of skills that flow into the plant.

This paper measures migration flows and determinants in two slum settlements in Nairobi City between 2003 and 2007. The results confirm the high intensity of migration with a quarter of the total slum population and a third of those aged 15-30 being renewed annually. A circular migration system is at play whereby the majority of slum dwellers are short-term migrants spending on average less than 3 years in the area. Migration is more intense during early adulthood (20-24), and despite very similar determinants across gender, mobility is more intense among women compared to men. The increasing feminization of migration is likely to change the face of slum settlements, resulting in more balanced sex ratios, in line with city-wide trends in Nairobi over the past half century. The high population turnover is due to the insecurity of livelihoods, tenure, and poor basic amenities and social services in slum settlements.

The article analyses and discusses the development of Leipzig and especially its inner east as an ‘urban space of arrival’ since 1990. It represents a study about arrival in the post-socialist context that is fairly rare in the international debate so far, since most of the arrival debate builds on western European evidence. Leipzig’s inner east was characterised by shrinkage until the end of the 1990s and by new growth, especially after 2010, as the whole city grew. Since the second half of the 1990s the inner east has developed into a migrant area, referred to here as an ‘arrival space.’ Today, in 2020, it represents the most heterogeneous part of the city in terms of population structure and is one of the most dynamic areas in terms of in- and out-migration. At the same time, it represents an area where large amounts of the population face different types of disadvantage. Set against this context, the article embeds the story of Leipzig’s inner east into the arrival debate and investigates the area’s development according to the characteristics discussed by the debate. Our results reveal that Leipzig’s inner east represents a meaningful example of an arrival space in a specific (post-socialist, shrinkage followed by regrowth) context and that arrival and its spatial allocation strongly depend on factors like population, housing, and real estate market development, as well as policymaking and, significantly, recognition.

In this paper I explore the relationship between population and housing. I argue that this relationship is two-sided. On the one hand, the size of a population, and particularly the number of households, determines the demand for housing. On the other hand, the availability of suitable and affordable housing may attract certain categories of migrants. It also influences young people’s opportunities to leave the parental home, marry or cohabit, and have children. Furthermore, home-ownership hampers residential mobility and migration by binding people to a place.

Many rural areas in Spain suffer an acute problem of depopulation. In recent years the arrival of foreign immigrant workers has contributed to alleviating the situation. The social services in rural areas play a fundamental role in the reception of these new residents, and in attending to their needs. These immigrants find themselves in a very vulnerable situation. Added to the needs of any family group with very limited resources are the terms of being a foreigner in an environment in which the coethnic support networks are very scarce. The capacity of both rural councils and local social services to promote the social integration of the immigrants is very limited due to the lack of resources, and to the difficulties associated with the provision of social services in depopulated rural areas. Through in-depth interviews, carried out in a mountainous depopulated region in northern Spain, we analyse the discourses of mayors, social workers and members of civil organizations. The conclusions suggest that the construction of welcoming communities requires reinforcing the community dimension of social work in rural areas, and from an ecological perspective that enhances social participation and coordination among the social actors. Specifically directed initiatives are needed by means of cooperation among the different levels of government and between public and private actors.

For some time now, there has been a lively debate about reurbanisation in Germany with regard to trends in spatial development. At the same time, the consequences of spatially imbalanced development can be observed in many regions. In large metropolitan areas in particular, the renewed appeal of cities has made living space scarce and expensive. There is extensive investment in residential construction and infrastructure, yet the first signs of a further shift in the trend are starting to emerge. It is against this background that this paper investigates migratory movements in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, covering a period of more than four decades. The resulting change in the distance between place of residence and the nearest major centre is calculated for each case of migration in the time period under investigation. By aggregating the individual values, an indicator is generated that can be used to identify different phases of spatial concentration and deconcentration. The results remind us that for a long time the predominant forces in migratory movements were centrifugal. This makes the transition to the spatial concentration phase that took place in the past decade, and that can be precisely traced from the values obtained, all the more striking. In the final years of the period under investigation, the results are significantly influenced by the handling of the publicly-directed migration of refugees and asylum-seekers within the state. If municipalities with admission facilities for these groups that exhibit anomalous migration data are excluded from the analysis, deconcentration processes appear in fact to be gaining the upper hand again in North Rhine-Westphalia. Renewed momentum in residential suburbanisation in the areas surrounding the major centres is behind this current development. Deceleration of the migratory losses from more peripheral municipalities can also be observed, however.

In the cooperation project ‘YOUMIG,’ funded by the INTERREG Danube transnational programme, challenges of youth migration were discussed in a transnational consortium consisting of project partners from different countries from Central and Eastern Europe experiencing difficulties such as a declining population and outmigration, as well as immigration of young people, which necessitated the provision of an integration infrastructure. Project outcomes included strategies as well as pilot activities performed by local-level authorities. The following article will consider outcomes as well as experiences from stakeholders involved in the project and investigate individual and organizational learning processes throughout the project. It will elaborate on the question of the extent to which transnational cooperation can potentially facilitate sustainable institutional changes and transformation. The results confirm the potential of transnational cooperation towards triggering learning and institutional change. Nevertheless, they underline that in the context of the project, the learning processes that could be achieved were predominantly of an individual nature and that the tangible outcomes could not lead to sustainable institutional changes.

Ravenstein, writing in 19th century papers, observed that migration varied with the life course. However, he did not investigate this variation in detail, as the necessary data were not then available. Age-specific migration has been a focus for researchers of migration in the 20th and 21st centuries. Building on this research, the current paper explores age-specific migration in Russia focussing on its spatial diversity. We compare age-specific migration patterns found in Russia and those observed in other developed countries. For this investigation, we mainly use Russian administrative data on residence registration for 2012-2016, together with information on populations by age in the latest census in 2010. The data are analysed using a classification of local administrative units classified by degree of remoteness from Russia’s principal cities (regional centres). The main results are as follows: In Russia, young people participate strongly in migration flows between peripheral territories and regional centres. The net migration surplus in regional centres is mostly produced by the migration of 15-19 year-olds starting further and higher education courses. Peak migration occurs in this age group. This type of migration represents upward mobility in the spatial hierarchy because institutions of higher education are located in the large cities. People aged 20-29 and 30-39 migrate in much smaller numbers, but they also replenish the population of regional centres. The inflow of middle-aged migrants and families with children was directed to the areas located closest to the regional centres, the suburbs. This type of migration is observed in regions with a well-developed middle class with high purchasing power, for example, in the city of Moscow and in the Moscow Region. Peripheral territories have similar profiles of age-specific migration, but of loss rather than gain. The farther they are from regional centres, the more significant the outflow of young people and the stronger the impact of migration on population ageing. The rural periphery and small cities attract only elderly migrants, but this inflow is far smaller than the outflow of young people. The directions and age selectivity of migration observed in other countries are thus also found in Russia, although there are important differences associated with the nature of housing in Russian cities and regions. * This article belongs to a special issue on “Internal Migration as a Driver of Regional Population Change in Europe: Updating Ravenstein”.