Arctic Yearbook 2014 | Page 87

Arctic Yearbook 2014 87 Figure 2: Percent of population born outside region in selected Arctic regions, circa 2010 Khanty-Mansiy Okrug Yamal-Nenets Okrug Chukotka Okrug Alaska Murmansk Magadan Kamchatka Komi Nenets Okrug Karelia Yakutia Arkhangel'sk Faroe Islands Greenland Iceland 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Source: National statistical offices. In 2010, for all of Russia, 31 percent of the population were born outside the region they were living in, of which 8 percent were foreign-born. For all Arctic regions, the percent born outside the region were much higher. The highest shares of outsiders were in the Khanty-Mansiy and Yamal-Nenets okrugs, where 70 percent were born outside the region. All of the Arctic regions also had much higher foreign-born populations. Along with Moscow and St. Petersburg, many of the periphery regions in the Arctic and Siberia have the highest rates of migration turnover. In these regions there are high levels of both in-migration and out-migration and there is a high correlation between the two indicating considerable migration turnover in the Arctic regions, and a quite footloose population. Age Structure of Migration in the Arctic People who migrate are quite selective and distinct by age, level of education, level of risk taking and entrepreneurship, and in some cases, gender, from populations who do not migrate. People are most mobile in their young adult ages when they are starting their careers and starting families. This high mobility of migrants to the Arctic can be seen by contrasting the age structures of ‘natives’ and migrants in two Arctic regions – Alaska and Greenland (Figure 3a & 3b). The two examples are meant to be illustrative and not necessarily comparable. Because of the different ways ‘native’ is defined in Alaska and Greenland (and elsewhere in the Arctic), a strict comparison cannot be made. The Alaska Native population has a much younger population as indicated by the much larger cohorts of persons under age 20, 39 percent of all Alaskan Natives against 27 percent of nonnatives. Starting at age 20, the non-indigenous population becomes relatively larger in part because these are the most mobile age groups when young people begin to migrate to Alaska in large   Migration in the Arctic