This innovative book brings together the world's leading scholars of rural migration to examine the theoretical construction of counterurbanisation as a pervasive feature of most modern Western societies and, in a series of specially written contributions based on original research, indicate the problem and issues that the process involves, touching on class, gender, community, conflict, economic and social change, isolation and lifestyle. This is an important summary of -state-of-the-art- research in this important field of population geography.

This is a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of population migration in the contemporary world. The major sources of migration data and methods for description and analysis are presented, along with a summary of the various theories and patterns of migration. These are then explored in respect to movements linked to employment stage in the life course, quality of life, societal engineering, violence and persecution and cultural factors.