Temporary Population Mobilities Between Estonia And Finland Based On Mobile Phone Data And The Emergence Of A Cross-Border Region

People move for various purposes and lengths of time. Temporary mobilities across borders have become increasingly important but are difficult to observe. In considering temporary population mobilities between Estonia and Finland, the present focus is on the volumes of temporary mobility, characteristics of visits, visitor types, temporal rhythms, distribution of visits to destinations, and their contribution to the emergence of a cross-border region. By making use of passive mobile positioning data (CDR, DDR), it is shown that mobility between Estonia and Finland is frequent, but the durations and temporal rhythms relate to different purposes in different directions. While most visitors are tourists (94% from Estonia to Finland and 99% from Finland to Estonia), regular cross-border travellers (i.e. transnationals) make up 5% of the visitors from Estonia to Finland. Intensive cross-border mobility, relating to regular visitors who spend time in both countries, contributes to the development of a cross-border region between the two countries. Mobile positioning data are of value for measuring and understanding the different types of visitor flows in cross-border regions.