Special issue  

Population geography presents a strong conceptual orientation on demography, a discipline which relies mainly on quantitative studies. Many of the concepts used in this field seem to have only very limited value for understanding ongoing processes of societal changes. Under the umbrella of family studies conceptual and methodical approaches are to be found that help reconsider established assumptions related to the term population, such as the notion of family.

The demographic dividend (DD) is one of the most important concepts within development cooperation. It was high time that the concept of the DD was put under scrutiny. Our findings reveal that simplistic demographic explanations for economic growth are appealing to political leaders and decision makers. We argue that the promotion of the DD to decision makers works as a low-level vehicle to achieve support for broader sets of multi-sectoral policies, which we call a positive demographization.

Im Sinne einer feministischen wissenschaftskritischen Intervention, formuliere ich in diesem Beitrag zwei Impulse für eine intersektionalen bevölkerungsgeographische Wissensproduktion über reproduktive Ungleichheiten. Dazu mobilisiere ich das von Schwarzen Feministinnen entwickelte Konzept der reproductive justice.

Based on a critique of statistical and cartographic analyses of migration patterns of young adults in rural areas of Central Germany, we conclude that there is an emergence of cultures of (out-)migration in some rural regions and discuss possible approaches from psychoanalytically informed migration research and complex systems theory that may help us to understand why, in these regions, adolescents often consider leaving the most viable option.

The field of population geography in the last few years has intensively focussed on populations that are on the move. While the topic of migration is of great interest and will also be in the future, researchers have also started to focus more on immobile populations. In this paper, literature on immobile populations has been collected and analysed. The paper concludes on what we already know about immobilities from extant research and makes suggestions for future research.