Zelinsky Model


The Zelinsky Model of Migration Transition, also known as the Migration Transition Model or Zelinsky's Migration Transition Model, claims that the type of migration that occurs within a country depends on how developed it is or what type of society it is. A connection is drawn from migration to the stages of within the Demographic Transition Model. It was developed by Wilbur Zelinsky, longtime professor of geography at the Pennsylvania State University.

Model stages

: This is before the onset of the
urbanization, and it is very little to no migration and natural increase rates are about zero. There are very high levels of mobility, but very little migration.
Stage two : During stage two a “massive movement from countryside to cities" occurs. And as a "community experiences the process of modernization”.
There is a “rapid rate of natural increase”. And Internationally there is a high rate of emigration, although the total population number is still rising.
Stage three : Stage three corresponds to the “critical rung...of the mobility transition” where urban-to-urban migration surpasses the rural-to-urban migration, where rural-to-urban migration “continues but at waning absolute or relative rates”, and “a complex migrational and circular movements within the urban network, from city to city or within a single metropolitan region” increased, circulation and non-economic migration starts to emerge. Then the net-out migration trend shifts to a net-in migration trend as more people immigrate than emigrate. That is, more people move in rather than out.
Stage four : During stage four the “movement from countryside to city continues but is further reduced in absolute and relative terms, vigorous movement of
migrants from city to city and within individual urban agglomerations...especially
within a highly elaborated lattice of major and minor metropolises” is observed. A large increase of urban to suburban migration can also occur.
There is a “slight to moderate rate of natural increase or none at all”.
Stage five : During stage five “Nearly all residential migration may be of the interurban and interurban variety…. No plausible predictions of fertility
behavior because of a declining population,...a stable mortality pattern slightly below present levels”.