Spatial Analysis of internal migration in Luxembourg

The aims of this paper are to look at the spatial patterns and to model internal migration in Luxembourg. Between 2010 and 2011, 17344 people or 3.7% of the total population moved from one municipality (commune) to another within Luxembourg, showing a very dynamic migratory system. Luxembourg City is a net migration looser in terms of internal migration: 3128 people moved out of Luxembourg and 1428 people moved in to the capital in the same period. This paper presents an innovative migration flow map while attempting to explain, for the first time in Luxembourg, the driving forces of migratory moves at a fine geographical scale, most of the literature being focussed on the strong international migration, thus hiding local residential processes. The data analysed refer to the migration flows between the 116 local authorities (communes) in Luxembourg and the 12-months migration question. We present models for out-migration, in-migration and migration flows. For the latter, we fit unconstrained gravity models using Poisson, and Negative Binomial (NB) regressions, and their Zero Inflated variants in order to account for overdispersion and the large number of zero flows. The empirical results are very interesting and show processes that differ from other countries. It appears that cultural and urban planning factors rather than labour force factors affect the decision to migrate within Luxembourg, which is plausible given the location, the size and the ethnic background of the population residing in Luxembourg.