Shifting Migration Determinants for Family Households With Children From a Life-Course Perspective

Abstract

During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, many urban planners focused on urban exodus. However, a research gap exists as to whether the spread of the infection affected changes in the migration destination determinants of family households. This study aims to clarify the shifting determinants of the migration destinations of family households with children who migrated from the urban centre of the Japanese metropolitan areas because of the spread of the infection during the pandemic. This study adopted a life-course perspective of the shift in migration destination determinants from the pre-pandemic to the pandemic periods. The participants were recruited through a web-based questionnaire survey. As a result, this study concluded that family households with children who mentioned the spread of COVID-19 infection as a migration motive exhibited significant shifts in their migration destination determinants, emphasising the importance of social interaction-related factors. The social interaction factors are the favorability of communities, community ties, returning to their hometown, and proximity to relatives. Conversely, the influence of work, living environment, and housing factors on family migration did not change much from the pre-pandemic to the pandemic periods. This means that the pandemic did not affect migration motives related to work, the living environment, and housing. Therefore, the unique contribution of this study lies in its revelation of the temporal precedence of shifts in the prioritisation of social interaction determinants from pre-pandemic to pandemic periods. Our findings suggest that they might migrated from urban centres to other cities that offer opportunities for social interaction.