Wilbur Zelinsky’s ‘hypothesis of the mobility transition’

The concept reveals the historical evolution of population migration, the regularity
of the transition from a sedentary lifestyle in a traditional economy to an increase in
territorial movements of the population as the industrial society is established, associated
with progress in the field of transport and communication, the expansion of the
information space, the formation of unified national and then the world labor and capital
markets. Zelinsky clarifies and develops the theory of demographic transition, including
in it, in addition to changes in fertility levels and mortality, as well as the dynamics of the
territorial mobility of the population. According to Zelinsky's concept, each of the five
stages of the demographic transition designated by him is characterized by certain forms
of population mobility. Exactly he called the gradual change of these forms a mobile
transition.
Thus, with the modernization of society, not only does the general territorial
mobility of the population increase, but the nature of migration processes changes
according to the progress through the transition phases. Zelinsky's innovative approach
consisted primarily in the fact that he felt the role of globalization in the modifications of
international migration and considered migration processes in their structural dynamics
and in connection with other dynamic processes, both demographic and socio-economic:
economic growth, transport development, formation new channels of information
transmission, an increase (or decrease) in economic opportunities, an increase in the well-
being of the population as a condition for the formation of migration intentions.
I have singled out this theory among others because it revealed the existence of
complex and time-varying links between population migration and the development of
society, which allowed to abandon such banal, but entrenched in the mind of ideas like
"Migration is born of poverty".