LAUSR

Over the 1997-2002 period, residential migrations among Chilean cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants maintained the intensity they had had ten years earlier which contrasts with the decrease in this type of mobility in smaller cities during the same period under review. Through the modeling and implementation of network analysis methods to the bilateral migratory flows between cities –collected through census microdata– it is revealed that interurban residential mobility is highly polarized, stable and compatible with a remarkable dynamic of changes in the direction and magnitude of flows. The spatial organization of interurban migrations has different levels and scales, whose hierarchy and ways of integration are strongly associated with the configuration of urban networks, that is, the spatial distribution of cities, population and specialization of economic activities. Although the material from the period  under review shows a slight decrease in the destinations for residential mobility, there are no signs of an intense and widespread decentralization process.