Migration has often been considered as a geographic movement, but it necessarily involves selective nature of migrants’ characteristics. In particular the selective labor market related migrants’ attributes are important to be considered to the re...
Migration has often been considered as a geographic movement, but it necessarily involves selective nature of migrants’ characteristics. In particular the selective labor market related migrants’ attributes are important to be considered to the recent notions of human capital based regional development strategies. This paper compares the migrants’ characteristics to and from Jeju using the 2 percent individual data samples of Population and Housing Census Report from 1980 to 2000. Results show that the migration of Jeju occurs mostly with the Capital region, revealing that migration shows social mobility more over geographic mobility. Out-migrants from Jeju compared to immigrants show higher ratios in studying, in paid workers, in college and over educational background, in professional and technical occupations; for the case of students, they are more in university and graduate school. With respect to the recent emphasis on human capital in the knowledge-based economy, this study brings attention to the human capital expansion not in static such as nurturing them within regions, but in dynamic such as attracting them considering the higher migration tendencies of professional workers as well as constructing their collaborative relationships in Jeju.