The emigration still plays a crucial role in the demography and economic development of peripheral areas in Lithuania and other post-communist countries. The depopulation of peripheries followed by shrinking service networks make a lot of challenges for rural communities, which together with local leaders can make influence on the well-being and attractiveness of rural places. This study seeks to reveal the main consequences of migration on small rural places and the role of local actors (community leaders and new settlers) in changing the trajectories of their development. The quantitative methods based on secondary data analysis were used for the establishment of problem regions and their demography. Apart from the three metropolitan regions all other regions are shrinking and aging fast, especially in the deepest peripheries. The small but visible immigration to peripheral places was monitored during the last few years. The actual depopulation of rural areas could be overestimated as these areas are being used as second homes during summer season. The qualitative research methods were used for the analysis of the attitudes and role of local actors. Local leaders do not perceive their regions as unsuccessful and futureless places. They have positive attitudes towards new settlers and the war refugees from Ukraine, who could influence the future of these areas. Attitudes towards illegal immigrants from more distant countries are more ambiguous.
This research was funded by a grant („Peripheral regions in Lithuania: migration and local communities“, Nr. S-MIP-21-57) from the Research Council of Lithuania.

Work strategies of returned migrant workers to their home regions from the East of China vary greatly, ranging from wage-employment to small- and medium-sized entrepreneurship or participation in other sectors of the economy. This paper focuses on the work strategies of returned garment labourers and entrepreneurs. The analysis is based on eleven biographical interviews with seven garment workers and four garment entrepreneurs. In addition to being wage-employment garment workers after they returned to their home region, this paper also examines why some of them decided to become entrepreneurs in their home region. By exploring how generations of Qianshan people have engaged in the garment industry during their circular migration, it examines the concentration of garment processing in Qianshan. This concentration has led to a trend in the garment industry to relocate garment processing from the bases of the children's wear industry in Zhili to Qianshan. Furthermore, as garment processing is only one subsector of the garment industry and more subsectors will be completed in Zhili, this paper further examines how facilitated correspondence and logistics enable the production chain of children’s wear to function between Qianshan and Zhili. Overall, this paper shows the work strategies of and the relationship between returned garment labourers and entrepreneurs.

Swiss mountain regions are becoming attractive to real estate investment projects that aim to attract new types of residents (e.g. amenity migrants). These projects offer combined living and working possibilities mainly for people originating from urban areas. Several basic existential functions can be satisfied and new professional environments seem to evolve. This phenomenon leads to amenity driven migration and the renegotiation of meanings between cores and peripheries (Eder, 2019). This raises the question to what extent rural-urban linkages are affected by migration processes. The goal of this research is to develop an appropriate methodological approach to capture and assess linkages that emerge through novel migration practices that are connected to the aforementioned new development projects. Current research on rural-urban linkages focused on topics such as economic opportunities (Bosworth & Venhorst, 2018) or multilocal work practices and digitalization (Bürgin et al., 2021). In this paper, we present a systematic overview of the studies researching rural-urban linkages and focus our review specifically on the used methods. This approach opens the opportunity to gain an understanding how linkages are in scholarly discourse understood and methodologically assessed. We will derive a broader conceptualization of the different types of rural-urban linkages and assess which methods are for which kind of linkage useful. We pay particular attention to the question how time and space aspects can be researched utilizing novel spatio-temporal techniques such as participatory drawing, ethnographic methods, etc. The paper contributes to an appropriate definition and a main understanding of the concept of rural-urban linkages.

In the 20th century, migration patterns in Iceland were characterized by strong flows from farming communities towards towns and villages and later from all types of non-metropolitan communities towards the Reykjavík capital area. In contrast, the first two decades of the 20th century were characterized by increased internal migration from the capital area towards exurban regions, rapidly declining rates of internal migration from more rural areas towards the capital area and a massive increase in international in-migration to both urban and rural areas. In this study, official statistics and survey data will be used to map the currents underlying this shift in migration patterns and examine the extent to which counter-urban migration can be explained as delayed return migration of people who originated in non-metropolitan regions. Particular attention will be given to the extent to which migrants of rural origin return to the regional centers of their regions of origin via temporary residence in other countries. Finally, the implications for both the interpretation of 21st century counter-urbanization and the development of regional policy will be discussed.