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Abstract

The regional distribution of immigrant populations in Western countries has changed over the last decades. Such changes are usually explained by changes in immigrants’ initial settlements and/or their subsequent internal migration patterns. This Research Note draws attention to a third factor: emigration. When immigrants in urban areas are more prone to emigrate than their rural peers, this contributes to a less urbanized immigrant population. Using Norwegian data, this study follows the immigrant cohort who arrived between 2000 and 2013, grouped by their immigration category, during their first 10 years after arrival in Norway. The results show how emigration from the most urban areas has contributed to a less urbanized (remaining) immigrant cohort. For some immigrant groups, this de-urbanizing emigration has outweighed the urbanizing effects of internal migration.

Keywords

emigration immigrants urbanization de-urbanization geographical population distribution

Introduction

A spatial dispersion of immigrants has been observed in many high-income countries over the last decades (Hugo and Morén-Alegret 2008; Winders 2014). In the United States, the emergence and rapid growth of new immigrant destinations has been described as “one of the most striking demographic trends of recent decades” (Flippen and Farrell-Bryan 2021), and several works document how the foreign-born population has dispersed throughout the US (Hirschman and Massey 2008; Lichter and Johnson 2006).

In Europe, many immigrants have found their way to nonmetropolitan areas in countries such as Spain, Sweden, Czechia, and the UK (Collantes et al. 2014; Hedberg and Haandrikman 2014; Haandrikman et al. 2024; Janská et al. 2014; Robinson 2010). Since the number of immigrants has tended to increase in urban areas, too, the proportion of the immigrant population living in rural areas has not necessarily increased in all European Union (EU) countries. Natale et al. (2019) indicate that the overrepresentation of immigrants in cities versus rural areas narrowed between 2011 and 2017 in Portugal, Greece, and Latvia, but not in other EU countries. In Germany, Heider et al. (2020) found that foreigners’ migration reinforced the existing spatial disparities in population development between 2007 and 2017.

Changes in the geographical distribution of immigrant populations are typically attributed to changes in where new immigrants settle upon arrival, and/or to their subsequent internal migration. However, the geographical distribution of a country's immigrant population also changes if emigration propensities vary between immigrants in different parts of the country. If immigrants in urban areas have a higher propensity of emigrating—meaning that the share of immigrants who emigrate is higher in urban than rural areas—this will be a factor contributing to a less urban (remaining) immigrant population, while factors such as internal migration and changes in initial settlement may work in the same or opposite directions.¹ These factors may, in turn, vary between immigrants with different immigration categories. Previous studies (Argent et al. 2025; Åslund 2005; Haandrikman et al. 2024; Jaeger 2006; Kaida et al. 2020; Laukova et al. 2022; Zorlu and Mulder 2008) have shown that persons with different reasons for immigration display different migration patterns.

This Research Note uses rich Norwegian register data to follow a full cohort of immigrants who came to Norway from 2000 to 2013 during their first 10 years after arrival. The aim is to investigate to what extent different emigration propensities contribute to changes in this cohort's geographical distribution, compared with the effects of internal migration, and how these two factors play out for different subgroups of immigrants by their immigration category.

The results show that immigrants’ emigration propensities tend to be somewhat higher in more central parts of the country. Internal migration, on the other hand, tends to go from less to more central areas, but these patterns differ markedly by immigrant category. For some groups, in which emigration is relatively common, the de-urbanizing effect of emigration is stronger than the urbanizing effect of their internal migrations.

The Norwegian Context

The Northern European country of Norway is a relevant case for studying the effects of emigration on the geographical distribution of immigrants, for several reasons. Norwegian register data provide high-quality information on the residence municipality of the whole population each year, as well as their internal and international migrations. It also provides information about the immigrant category, that is, immigrants’ grounds for residency or reason for immigration.

Moreover, Norway has received many immigrants over the last decades (for annual numbers, see Appendix Figure A1). These are most notably labor migrants from Eastern EU and neighboring countries, but also a substantial number of refugees and family migrants, as well as migrants who come for education, from all over the world. Among Norway's current 5.6 million inhabitants, 17 percent are immigrants (Statistics Norway 2025). In Norway, regional policies are high on the political agenda, with an official goal of increasing the population in rural municipalities (Meld. St. 27 2023). Like many other Western countries (Kaida et al. 2020), Norway has a program for dispersing refugees to municipalities where they start their integration process, often in less urban parts of the country (Adserà et al. 2022).

Although mainly a country of immigration, emigration from Norway has increased since 2000. Currently, more than 30,000 persons leave the country annually—most of them were immigrants while in Norway (Tønnessen et al. 2025). Emigration propensities are highest from the most urban parts of Norway (Skjerpen and Tønnessen 2025; Tønnessen 2024).

Norway has a well-established centrality index, which is useful for studies of differences along the rural–urban continuum, where all of Norway's 357 municipalities are classified based on travel time to workplaces and service functions (Høydahl 2020). The most central municipalities (the capital Oslo and neighbouring municipalities) constitute Centrality 1, whereas Centrality 2 comprises other large cities such as Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, and Drammen. The most remote municipalities are found in Centrality 6. Figure 1’s left side displays the Norwegian municipalities by these centrality classes; the darkest red are the most central, whereas the darkest blue are the least central municipalities.

Figure 1.

Norway's municipalities by centrality (left), and all immigrants (and natives) living in Norway by their municipality's centrality, 2000–2023 (right).

Figure 1’s right panel shows the distribution of Norway's total immigrant population across the centralities. A de-urbanization of the total immigrant population over time can be seen from the declining proportions in Centrality 1. Although immigrants still live more urbanized than natives in Norway, as the columns to the far right indicate, the immigrants have become more geographically dispersed since 2000 (while the general population has become more urbanized). More details on each centrality's population and immigrant shares are found in Appendix Table A1.

Data and Methods

This Research Note follows all immigrants who came to Norway from 2000 to 2013, during their first 10 years after arrival (N = 571,394).² Among these, 35 percent (201,390) had emigrated by year 10 after arrival.

Following the same arrival cohort over time allows for comparing immigrants with similar durations of stay. Moreover, if immigrants’ geographical distribution is mainly affected by their initial settlement, their internal migration, and their (geographically selective) emigration, a cohort study makes it possible to focus on the latter two factors, without being disturbed by changes in the samples’ composition and changes in new immigrants’ initial settlements.³

The data used for most register-based research on emigration from Norway, including this study, are described by Tønnessen et al. (2023), which also has more information about categories, definitions, and Norwegian migration history and context.

Immigrants are defined as persons born abroad with two foreign-born parents and four foreign-born grandparents, who have migrated to Norway to stay for at least six months.

The geographical distribution of immigrants is measured using Statistics Norway's 2023 centrality index; hence, this study focuses primarily on immigrants’ changes in centrality and not on shorter-distance residential relocations. Since 2000, Norway has gone through some changes in the municipality structure. In this study, the municipality structure from 2023 is applied to the whole period, which also means that the definition of the centralities is constant over the period. Since the two most remote centralities, Centrality 5 and Centrality 6, have a quite low share of Norway's population and an even lower share of Norway's immigrants (Appendix Table A1), these two have been merged into one centrality group, “Centrality 5 + 6.” Appendix Table A2 shows all the internal migrations conducted by this study's sample. The largest flows are between Centrality 1, 2, and 3.

The immigrants are categorized based on Statistics Norway's official statistics on immigrants’ reasons for migration at (first) arrival to Norway (www.ssb.no/en/innvgrunn). Although immigrants moving to Norway may have a multitude of motivations for their move, this variable only shows one reason, based on information from Norwegian registers and authorities, such as immigrants’ type of legal residence permit or (for EU citizens) their self-declared reasons for coming to Norway when having their identity documents checked with Norwegian authorities. This variable is well-established in analyses of Norway's immigrants. In this study, some amendments have been made: First, the official statistics on reasons for immigration do not cover immigrants who are Nordic citizens, as they do not have to state the reason for immigration upon arrival in Norway. This study uses register data on citizenship at arrival to define the group “Nordic citizens,” which mainly consists of Swedes and Danes who come and work in Norway. Second, the official statistics have one category called “refugees,” which covers both people who have been granted asylum in Norway (after having arrived in the country and applied for it) and quota/resettlement refugees. This study uses more detailed register data to separate these two refugee groups, primarily because moving patterns in the first year(s) differ between quota refugees, who arrive directly at the municipality they are assigned to, and asylum seekers who may live in an asylum center (often in rural Norway) when they are granted asylum (and thus enter the population register), before moving on to their assigned municipality.⁴ Third, since family migrants tend to have similar moving patterns as the rest of their family, and since refugees display somewhat different moving patterns than other migrants, more detailed register data are used to split the category “family migrants” from the official statistics into “family to refugees,” which are those who have come to Norway to unify with a refugee, and other family migrants, “family to non-refugees.” Apart from these changes, the other categories of reason for immigration (labor and education) are kept as in the official statistics. It should be noted that short-term labor migrants (less than six months in Norway) are not included, and that the category “education” also includes au pairs. For 3,229 immigrants who came in this period, the reason for immigration is unknown. They are removed from the study population. In summary, the immigrants in this study are divided into seven immigrant categories:

Labor migrants (33% of the sample), mainly from Poland and Lithuania.

Education migrants (9%), including au pairs, from countries such as the Philippines, China, and Germany.

Nordic citizens (14%), mainly from Sweden and Denmark.

Refugees with granted asylum (10%), from countries such as Somalia, Eritrea, and Iraq.

Refugees who came on a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees quota (3%), from countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, and Myanmar

Family migrants who came to a non-refugee (24%), Poland and Thailand are the largest origin groups.

Family migrants who came to a refugee camp (7%), many from Somalia and Iraq.

The results of this study are descriptive, mainly presented as figures for the full cohort and by immigrant category. Descriptive sequence analysis has also been conducted, with results displayed in the Appendix.

Results

Stayers, Internal Migrants, and Emigrants

To provide some initial indications of the migration behavior among the immigrants in this study, by reason for immigration, Figure 2 shows the share of immigrants who—by year 10 after arrival—had emigrated, moved internally, or stayed put in their first municipality.

Figure 2.

Stayers, internal migrants, and emigrants by year 10 after arrival in Norway. All immigrants who arrived 2000–2013, in total and by immigrant category. Lower Panel: also by first centrality.

Among all immigrants (left column), 25 percent had moved to another centrality group, whereas 35 percent had emigrated by year 10 (30% directly from the first municipality and 6% via another municipality). One-third (33%) still stayed in their first municipality, and 6 percent had moved to another municipality within the same centrality group.

For the different subgroups of immigrants, the patterns diverge notably: More than 60 percent of the Nordic citizens and those who came to Norway for education had left the country 10 years later. On the other side, refugees (asylum and quota) have low emigration propensities. Quota refugees, as well as family refugees (to refugees and others), most often tend to remain in their first municipality, whereas asylum refugees most often tend to move between centralities (this also includes moves from asylum centers after asylum has been granted). Labor migrants, who are the largest group, lie in between, with about 40 percent who emigrated and 30 percent who stayed in their first municipality.

In the lower panel in Figure 2, the immigrants are also distributed by their first centrality.⁵ For all immigrants (left), emigration propensities—the annual share in each group who emigrate—are highest from the most central parts of Norway, whereas those who start their life in Norway in more remote parts of the country have higher internal migration propensities. The urban–rural difference in internal migration propensities is strongest for the two refugee groups, with much more internal migration among those who started in less central municipalities. However, for labor and Nordic migrants, those who arrive in remote areas do not migrate more internally than others. Immigrants—and particularly refugees—who move between centralities often end up in Centrality 1, 2, or 3 (Appendix Figure A2).

Geographical Distribution

In Figure 3, the two left columns display differences between the geographical distribution of the full cohort in year 1, and their distribution in year 10 after arrival (for those still in Norway, who have not emigrated). The proportion who lived in the most central/urban parts of Norway (Centrality 1 and 2) increased slightly from year 1 to year 10. This could be the result of internal migration, geographically selective emigration, or both. The right part of Figure 3 aims at disentangling these two possible explanations, with dotted black horizontal lines showing the initial urban share (Centrality 1 + 2) for the full cohort and for non-emigrants. Column 3 is the same as Column 1. Column 4 displays the geographical distribution at year 1 of those who later emigrated from Norway. It shows that those who later emigrated were more urbanized at the time of arrival than the full cohort. Hence, the difference between Column 3 and Column 4 shows that immigrants who arrived in more urban parts of Norway were more prone to emigrate. Column 5 shows the distribution at year 1 among those who did not emigrate within the first 10 years. This group arrived in less urban parts of Norway, and their geographical distribution can be followed until year 10, as seen in Column 6 (which is identical to Column 2). The difference between Column 5 and Column 6 is the effect of internal migrations among the non-emigrants. In this case, internal migration has been in an urbanizing direction.

Figure 3.

Geographical distribution of immigrants who arrived 2000–2013 in Norway at year 1 (full cohort, emigrants only, and non-emigrants only) and year 10 after arrival (non-emigrants only). Differences between columns indicate mechanisms at work. Horizontal lines show the initial urban share (Centrality 1 + 2) for the full cohort and for non-emigrants.

Hence, the two mechanisms—internal migration and emigration—more or less offset each other, as can be seen from the difference between columns 3 and 6 (or between columns 1 and 2). While the internal migration patterns contribute to a more urban immigrant cohort, higher emigration propensities among urban immigrants pull in the opposite direction.⁶

In Figure 4, Columns 3–6 in Figure 3 are replicated for each of the subgroups by immigrant category. Again, the groups have quite heterogeneous migration patterns.

Figure 4.

Geographical distribution of immigrants who arrived 2000–2013 in Norway at year 1 (full cohort, emigrants only, and non-emigrants only) and year 10 after arrival (non-emigrants only), by immigrant category. Horizontal lines show the initial urban share (Centrality 1 + 2) for the full cohort and for non-emigrants.

The difference between each group's first and second columns indicates that emigrants tend to be more urban from the start, in all groups (when “urban” is defined as Centrality 1 and 2). For internal migration among the non-emigrants, results differ: Refugees (asylum and quota) have a strongly urbanizing internal migration, with the fourth column in each group being markedly different from the third column. Families to refugees, as well as education migrants, also have urbanizing internal moving patterns. On the other hand, labor migrants’ and Nordic citizens’ internal migration is rather de-urbanizing.

The conclusions above are based on “urban” being defined as the share in Centrality 1 and 2. Other definitions could yield somewhat other conclusions. For instance, Nordic citizens, whose share in Centrality 1 and 2 declined during their first 10 years in Norway, also had a declining share in the most remote municipalities (Centrality 5 + 6).

Appendix Figure A3 shows results of descriptive sequence analyses for each group, confirming the patterns of high emigration propensity among Nordic and education immigrants, and high internal migration propensity among refugees, mostly from the least central parts of Norway. These analyses are based on annual register data on the residence municipality, whereas producing results like those in Figures 3 and 4 only requires data on two points in time with 10 years in between, which could also be available from censuses.

While Figure 3 indicates the direction of the effects of emigration and internal migration, respectively, the weight of each varies between our groups: In groups with high emigration, the effects of emigration will be stronger than in groups where few emigrate. Similarly, in groups with large differences between those who emigrate and those who do not, or between the non-emigrants’ distribution in year 1 and year 10, we can expect a stronger effect of emigration and internal migration, respectively.

Table 1 summarizes these results for each group as well as for all immigrants. Emigration contributes to the de-urbanization of the cohorts in all groups, indicated by a minus (−) in the table. For internal migration, the direction of the effect is negative (contributing to de-urbanization) for labor migrants and Nordic citizens, and positive for the other groups (slightly positive for family to non-refugee). The end column shows the sum of these two effects, indicated by the differences between the full cohort's geographical distribution in year 1 and the distribution of the remaining cohort at year 10.

Table 1.

Urbanizing (+) and De-Urbanizing (−) Effects of Emigration, Internal Migration, and Both. Immigrants who Arrived in Norway 2000–2013, by Immigrant Category.

Immigrant Category	Emigration*	Internal Migration**	Emigration + Internal***
Labor	−	−	−
Education	−	+	−
Nordic citizen	−	−	−
Asylum refugee	−	+	+
Quota refugee	−	+	+
Family to non-refugee	−	(+)	−
Family to refugee	−	+	+
All immigrants	−	+	(+)

*Based on the residence year 1 of those who emigrated before year 10.

**Based on changes in residence from year 1 to year 10 among those still in Norway in year 10.

***Changes from year 1 (full cohort) to year 10 (those still in Norway).

Note: “Urbanizing” and “de-urbanizing” are measured by changes in the proportion living in Centrality 1 and 2.

In short, the two types of migration combined contribute to urbanizing the cohort of refugees and their families, and to the de-urbanization of the other subgroups. For the large group of labor and Nordic immigrants, emigration and internal migration pull in the same de-urbanizing direction. For migrants who come for education, and to some extent, families to non-refugees, emigration and internal migration pull in opposite directions, but the effect of emigration is stronger, so the total effect is de-urbanizing. For all immigrants in the sample, the total effect is slightly urbanizing.

While this study follows the 2000–2013 arrival cohort during their first 10 years in Norway, other factors not included in this study are needed to fully explain the de-urbanization of Norway's total immigrant population (Figure 1). Appendix Figure A4 explores one of these factors: changes in immigrants’ initial location 2000–2023, by immigrant category. The clearest decentralization trend is found among quota refugees and refugees’ families, while educational migrants have tended to settle more centrally over this period. For other groups, the trend is not as clear.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study is inspired by the call put forward by several scholars (King and Skeldon 2010; Wachter and Hornstra 2024) on the importance of integrating research on international and internal mobility. The study contributes to the literature in two ways: by showing that immigrants’ emigration and internal migration patterns in Norway differ markedly by their immigrant category, and by focusing on emigration as one factor that can help explain changes in immigrant populations’ geographical distribution.

The regionalization of the immigrant population, which is seen in many countries, including Norway, is usually explained by initial settlement and/or subsequent internal migrations, while (geographically selective) emigration has been overlooked as an additional contributing factor. However, if emigration takes a larger toll on the urban than the rural immigrant population, this will contribute to a de-urbanization of the remaining immigrant population.

Using data on all immigrants who arrived in Norway from 2000 to 2013, and following them for 10 years after arrival, this study shows that emigration—which tends to be more frequent among immigrants in Norway's urban areas—has contributed to a de-urbanization of this immigrant cohort. For many immigrant groups, internal migration works in the opposite direction, contributing to urbanization. For two groups—education migrants and family to non-refugees—the de-urbanizing effect of emigration is stronger than the urbanizing effect of internal migration, and the total effect is de-urbanizing. Refugees seldom emigrate, whereas more than half of the Nordic and education migrants who came to Norway 2000–2013 had left before year 10. For these latter groups in particular, the effects of emigration on geographical distribution can be strong. In principle, it does not have to be de-urbanizing like in the Norwegian case—if immigrants’ emigration propensities are highest in rural areas, emigration will contribute to a more urban remaining immigrant population.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Marianne Tønnessen

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article: This work is part of the EXITNORWAY project,which is financed by the Research Council of Norway under grant number 313823,and the PREMIUM_EU project,which is financed by the EU's Horizon Europe programme,grant number 101094345.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability and Ethics Statement

The data used in this study are provided by Statistics Norway and stored in a secure environment (TSD). Restrictions apply to the availability of the data,which were used under license for this project,see

. The EXITNORWAY project has received formal ethical approval from the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (NSD/SIKT) and Oslo Metropolitan University's Data Protection Officer. All analyses were undertaken on de-identified data.

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How Emigration Contributes to Less Urbanized Immigrant Populations

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The Norwegian Context

Data and Methods

Results

Stayers, Internal Migrants, and Emigrants

Geographical Distribution

Discussion and Conclusion

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Data Availability and Ethics Statement

References