Industrial Clusters and Migration in Malaysia

—1970-2000—

Abstract

In this paper, we picked up Malaysia as a representative of developing countries that aim to achieve the two prongs of “poverty reduction” and “equity” simultaneously to analyze the relationship between industrial clusters and internal migration. So far, many precedent studies about internal migration in Malaysia have only made a point on directions and scales of it and often neglected the dynamic effects of economic development and industrial transformation on it. In this paper we aimed to clarify the effects of industrial clusters on directions and scales of internal migration in the context of economic development and industrial transformation from 1970 to 2000.

In our analyses, it became clear that states gathering population from outside areas have changed from Selangor to other developed states as Penang and Johore and then the number of out-migrants from central- and northern-periphery areas became smaller because development of central-type clusters contributed to reduction of out-migration from these areas. On the other hands, eastern area which is still heavily dependent on traditional industries as agriculture, government services and agro- or resource-based industries could not attract the population and getting suffered from out-migration to other areas.