Migration shapes human settlement and plays an essential role in human development, but while progress has been made in measuring international migration, internal migration statistics (movements within countries) remain poorly developed. This paper reports results from the IMAGE project (Internal Migration Around the GlobE), an international collaborative venture that aims to establish how internal migration varies around the world. I review previous work, outline the major impediments to making reliable comparisons and set out a methodology that couples a novel estimation procedure to a flexible spatial aggregation facility. He will present league tables of migration intensities for 95 countries, representing four-fifths of the global population and explore links to levels of national development through simple correlations with a range of demographic, economic and social variables. He will also examine the way in which the age profile of migration varies between countries and show how these differences are shaped by the timing and prevalence of transitions in the life course.

Martin Bell is Professor of Human Geography and Director of the Centre for Population  Research at the University of Queensland. His key research interests focus on the measurement and analysis of population mobility and internal migration and include advice to the UN and World Bank as well as a range of theoretical and methodological contributions to the academic literature.