Metropolinių Lietuvos miestų migraciniai regionai XXI amžiaus pradžioje

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Metropoliniai regionai; Migracija; Regioninė geografija; Regionų geografija; Lithuania; Metropolitan regions; Migration; Regional geography.

ENhe problem of emigration is topical in Lithuania but the main attention is paid to foreign emigration flows. The internal migration is the main focus of this paper, which tries to reveal the main spatial trends of redistribution of population inside the country and to find out the role of metropolitan cities here. Authors analyse changing emigration from Lithuanian municipalities to the main metropolitan cities of the country. Multinodal urban structure of the country did not help to ensure even economic development and as a consequence settlement system of the country starts to change adopting to the new reality. Migration is the main process of this adoption and metropolitan cities are the main hotspots of this change. Number of migrants and amounts of redistributed income tax have been used for the revelation of migration flows from all municipalities to Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda. The volumes of inner migration flows was constantly growing since 2004 till 2016, especially those directed to the capital city. The intensity of migrations to the metropolitan cities depend on location of a municipality and flows of emigrants drop fast with the distance. Municipalities, which are located far from all metropolitan cities have the strongest relations with Vilnius but these relations are weak (Vilnius attracts less than 10 % of all emigrants) and foreign emigrations are more intensive. The centralisation processes are very well expressed and the role of Vilnius in various fields of social and economic life is increasing. The findings, however, show that notwithstanding the growing dominance of Vilnius, the country withholds multi nodal development as Kaunas and Klaipeda continue to play role of interregional development centres concentrating better paid jobs and residents there as well.On the other hand, peripherization processes overtake remaining country, which is losing population at an impressive pace. Though in many cases the main cities play positive role directing their emigrants to municipalities located close to them, but more peripheral regions have very weak possibilities to reverse ongoing processes of depopulation in the near future. [From the publication]