In this paper, we emphasise the significance of studying the interrelations
between commuting and migration. The aim of the paper is to point out the
factors which affect these interrelations (demographic and socio-economic
characteristics of migrants and commuters, labour market, real estate market,
information, life style, etc.), with the special emphasis on the role of
commuting distance onto the chosen mobility type. Besides theorethical
frameworks and results of the selected foreign researches up to date, the
overview of research of interrelations between migration and commuting in
Serbia has also been presented. While earlier studies conducted by
Gawryszenski (1978), Termote (1980) and Reitsma&Vergoossen (1987) pointed to
the replacement of migration types between each other within country, in
recent literature the interaction between migration and commuting has been
studied in a trans-boundary context of the contemporary EU. Modern trend of
long distance commuting instead of migration and the concept of
substitution/replacement regarding migration and commuting have also been
discussed. In Serbia, there is a positive correlation between commuting
outflows and immigration in rural settlements of Vojvodina province. Namely,
commuting and migration are complement, which is the characteristic of both
processes sub-urbanisation and ex-urbanisation (Lukic, 2012). In addition to
ownership of real estate and previous migration experience, marital status
influenced the chosen mobility type in Serbia as well. Adjustment to changes
of Serbian labour market is mostly conducted via migration (Miletic, Lukic,
Miljanovic, 2011). Interrelations between migration and commuting are very
significant due to the tendency of transformation of some commuters into
migrants. This process has its consequences, both on demographic as well as
the overall socio-economic development of the area of commuters? origin and
destination. However, even though the surveys conducted in Serbia during the
1980s showed that around 30 per cent of commuters expressed desire to move to
their place of work, the degree of realization of these intentions remained
unknown. While in some countries traffic studies and data from the management
of the enterprises are used as sources of data on commuting, the studies on
the commuter population in Serbia are based solely onto two types of data
sources. These are census and poll surveys. Although they have more potential
than the official statistics for the analysis of the links between migration
and commuting and other characteristics of commuters, poll surveys on this
topic in Serbia are relatively rare due to financial and organizational
obstacles. Indeed, the last major survey was conducted in the 1980s.
Therefore, even though the interrelations between migration and commuting
have been confirmed, there is still a lot of space for their research
indicating the need for further methodology developments in researching these
types of population mobility.
On the interrelations between migration and commuting