But as development ‘diffuses’ over time due to the shift in understanding from development as economic growth to that of distributive justice, the strength of the core diminishes. The erosion of traditional values and the equalisation in values between the core and the periphery is important in the reversals.
Educational facilities and other infrastructural services increases wellbeing in the peripheries and open up economic opportunities for employment. These in conjunction with diseconomies of scale developing in the old cores acts as a disincentive for migration or creation of reverse migration.
Migration is therefore a reflection of the degree of diffusion of development into old peripheries rather than just pull economic forces in old cores and new opportunity zones. The level of social change across space dictates the cravings of people for change and the choice to move to places with better change for better living.