The changing composition of the rural population of England 1971-1991 (original) (raw)

2000, In R. Cresser and S. Gleave (eds.) Migration Within England and Wales Using the ONS Longitudinal Study, The Stationery Office, London

A major problem for interpreting rural population change in the UK arises from confusion in analytical approaches to its investigation. This is readily illustrated with regard to views on counterurbanisation, which has been a prime issue in rural studies over the past 10-15 years (Champion, 1989a; Coombes et al., 1989; Vartiainen, 1989). For one thing, there is variety in interpretations of what counterurbanisation is (e.g. Dean et al., 1984; Champion, 1989b). For some it involves a redistribution of population from urban to rural areas, so a rapid increase in the rural birth rate accompanied by falling procreation in cities could constitute counterurbanisation (Coombes et al., 1989). For others it has more to do with migration balances and the reversal of rural outmigration in favour of an absolute or net rural in-migrant flow (Fielding, 1990; Flowerdew and Boyle, 1992). Here, of course, we have the possibility that the average size of incoming households is on average small, which, if allied with a decline in fertility, could result in counterurbanisation being associated with population loss (Weekley, 1988). Some demand that a restricted form of migration constitutes counterurbanisation, either by asking for a 'clean-break' with past population trends (Coombes et al., 1989) or else in cautioning against confusing urban decentralisation with counterurbanisation, which many see as involving more than urban spillover (e.g. Flowerdew and Boyle, 1992). There are also significant differences in the manner in which counterurbanisation is conceptualised and investigated analytically. Offering an empirical articulation of such differences, Halliday and Coombes (1995) show that conceptualisations which offer anti-metropolitan, anti-urban or pro-rural visions of migrant flows produce different estimates of counterurbanisation, with a relatively weak correspondence between these options. Adding a further twist, Fielding (1990) linked counterurbanisation to economic change, by holding that it is not the reverse of urbanisation, since the latter involved losses in the farm population. Yet a counter-argument could be that past movements from rural to urban areas that fuelled urbanisation were allied to the expansion of manufacturing, and, as manufacturing employment is declining, contemporary urban-to-rural migration might well comprise a 'genuine' counter-urbanisation. This last sentence should not be read as providing some justification for the continued use of the term counterurbanisation but indicates how it is possible to so confuse what is meant by this term that we can be distracted from focusing on what we actually want to know (Hoggart, 1997). On this score a number of issues could be critical, but for me two stand apart. These are population change in cities and change in the rural population. Of course these are comprised of various dimensions, for most research is concerned with the characteristics of population change (its demographic, sex and socioeconomic structures at the very least), as well as with the geographical linkages (migration) associated with particular changes. It is not intended to imply by this urban-rural divide that processes in these two milieu are not interrelated , nor that there is a simple distinction between urban and rural (Sayer, 1984; Hoggart, 1990). Even were the latter the case, there are good reasons for urban analysts to be interested in demographic issues in areas of low population density. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, and certainly well before this (Saville, 1957), rural depopulation was a major factor in the UK, with significant impacts on cities (Law, 1967). When rural research shifted attention in the 1960s toward investigations of commuter villages (e.g.