Beyond the Immediate Impacts of COVID-19 on Internal Population Movements in Mexico: Facebook Data Reveal Urban Decay and Slow Recovery—A Research Note

Previous research has shown that internal mobility declined and outflows from large cities increased during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in many Global North countries. However, the longer term impacts of the pandemic on mobility levels and patterns across the rural-urban hierarchy and in Global South contexts remain poorly understood because of limited high-resolution data. Drawing on location data of Facebook users, we examine changes in long-distance movements (>100 kilometers) across population density categories in Mexico from April 2020 to May 2022. We find a 40% decline in long-distance movements during April-December 2020 relative to a prepandemic baseline, with the largest reductions-more than 50%-in flows to and from large cities. In contrast to Global North patterns, we observe no increase in outflows from large cities. Movement patterns gradually returned to baseline during 2021-2022, but recovery was slower in the most densely populated areas. Our findings provide the first medium-term evidence of how the pandemic affected internal mobility across the rural-urban hierarchy in a major Global South country. They highlight the distinct dynamics of mobility disruptions in highly urbanized and socioeconomically unequal contexts and demonstrate the value of digital trace data for studying population movements where conventional statistics are unavailable.