COVID-19 and internal population movements across the urban hierarchy in Mexico. An analysis using digital data

Previous studies documented a decline of internal population movements during the COVID-19 pandemic across Global North countries, accompanied by an increase in movements from large cities to less densely populated areas. However, there is no consistent evidence on the effect of the pandemic on population movements across the urban hierarchy in the Global South. We use mobile phone data from Facebook users between April 2020 and May 2022 to analyse how the intensity and patterns of long-distance mobility (>100 km) changed in different population density categories during COVID-19 in Mexico. The results show a drop of 40% in the total number of movements during the period of April-December 2020. Contrary to developed countries, we do not identify an increase of movements away from large cities, but a consistent decrease in both outflows and inflows in all population density categories, except for inter-rural movements. In addition, we observe the largest reduction in movements to and from large cities, which declined by 50%. As in the Global North, the intensity and patterns of internal mobility progressively recovered across 2021 and 2022, returning to pre-pandemic levels. Nonetheless, large cities showed a slower recovery and continued to register slightly lower outflows and inflows still in May 2022.