Internal migration in Brazil: trends at the beginning of the 21st Century

During the last 60 years, the internal migration in Brazil were strongly related to the processes of urbanization and spatial redistribution of the population, marked by the intense population mobility and inserted in different stages of economic, social and political processes experienced by the Country during this period. From 1970, we assisted de launching of the more recent changes in the national migration process. After a long period of economic crisis, more severe in the 1980s and somehow held in 1990, Brazil enters in the ‘2000s with new perspectives on their economic dynamics and for this reason it require a new look at its internal migration. In the field of migration, it is true that a recovery in the economy, employment and poverty reduction should have effects on the volume and intensity of migration flows. The understanding of interregional migration in the last four decades incorporates the processes of in-migration, emigration and return migration marked by its specific historical features of “migratory complementary”. The return migration, although not a new phenomenon in national migratory history, was configured as a key element for understanding the long distance flow, especially those of Southeast to Northeast.