While researchers are increasingly re-conceptualizing international migration, far less attention has been devoted to re-thinking short-distance residential mobility and immobility. In this paper we harness the life course approach to propose a new conceptual framework for residential mobility research. We contend that residential mobility and immobility should be re-conceptualized as relational practices that link lives through time and space while connecting people to structural conditions. Re-thinking and re-assessing residential mobility by exploiting new developments in longitudinal analysis will allow geographers to understand, critique and address pressing societal challenges.

The extent to which socioeconomic (dis)advantage is transmitted between generations is receiving increasing attention from academics and policymakers. However, few studies have investigated whether there is a spatial dimension to this intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage. Drawing on the concept of neighbourhood biographies, this study contends that there are links between the places individuals live with their parents and their subsequent neighbourhood experiences as independent adults. Using individual-level register data tracking the whole Stockholm population from 1990 to 2008, and bespoke neighbourhoods, this study is the first to use sequencing techniques to construct individual neighbourhood histories. Through visualisation methods and ordered logit models, we demonstrate that the socioeconomic composition of the neighbourhood children lived in before they left the parental home is strongly related to the status of the neighbourhood they live in 5, 12 and 18 years later. Children living with their parents in high poverty concentration neighbourhoods are very likely to end up in similar neighbourhoods much later in life. The parental neighbourhood is also important in predicting the cumulative exposure to poverty concentration neighbourhoods over a long period of early adulthood. Ethnic minorities were found to have the longest cumulative exposure to poverty concentration neighbourhoods. These findings imply that for some groups, disadvantage is both inherited and highly persistent.

Taking the life course as the central concern, the authors set out a conceptual framework and define some key research questions for a programme of research that explores how the linked lives of mobile people are situated in time-space within the economic, social, and cultural structures of contemporary society. Drawing on methodologically innovative techniques, these perspectives can offer new insights into the changing nature and meanings of migration across the life course.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 5277 October 2010 ABSTRACT A Longitudinal Analysis of Moving Desires, Expectations and Actual Moving BehaviourMany theories of residential mobility contend that individuals express a sequence of moving desires, intentions and expectations prior to moving. Much research has investigated how individuals form these pre-move thoughts, with a largely separate literature examining actual mobility. Only a few studies have attempted to link pre-move thoughts to subsequent actual moves, but these often do not explicitly distinguish between different types and combinations of pre-move thoughts. Using 1998-2006 British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data, this study is the first to investigate whether moving desires and expectations are empirically distinct pre-move thoughts. Using multinomial regression models we demonstrate that moving desires and expectations have different meanings, and often occur in combination: the factors associated with expecting to move differ depending upon whether the move is also desired (and vice versa). Next, using panel logistic regression models, we show that different desire-expectation combinations have different effects on the probability of subsequent moving behaviour.JEL Classification: J61, R21, R23

Understanding why people move home is an important objective for population research. While studies are increasingly examining residential mobility motivations using the reasons reported in social surveys, data constraints and the conceptual legacy of behavioural theories mean that little is known about how people's reasons for desiring and making residential moves vary over the life course. In this paper, we address these issues using longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey. The results show that the reasons people report for desiring to move vary considerably over the life course. People are more likely to relocate if they desire to move for ‘targeted’ reasons like employment opportunities than if they desire to move for more ‘diffuse’ reasons relating to area characteristics. Life course events and moving desires intersect to strongly condition moving behaviour. These insights demonstrate how a deep engagement with life course theories can help researchers to overcome the difficulties encountered when using behavioural models to understand moving decisions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The life course framework guides us towards investigating how dynamic life course careers affect residential mobility decision-making and behaviour throughout long periods of individual lifetimes. However, most longitudinal studies linking mobility decision-making to subsequent moving behaviour focus only on year-to-year transitions. This study moves beyond this snapshot approach by analysing the long-term sequencing of moving desires and mobility behaviour within individual lives. Using novel techniques to visualise the desire-mobility sequences of British Household Panel Survey respondents, the study demonstrates that revealing the meanings and significance of particular transitions in moving desires and mobility behaviour requires these transitions to be arranged into mobility biographies. The results highlight the oft-neglected importance of residential stability over the life course, uncovering groups of individuals persistently unable to act in accordance with their moving desires.

Many longitudinal analyses of residential mobility decision-making use two or three waves of panel survey data to investigate who fulfils their moving desires. Few studies have, however, focused upon individuals who desire to move but who remain residentially immobile, either because it takes them a long time to relocate or because they abandon their moving desire. This is problematic, as undesired residential immobility could have negative consequences for individual well-being and prosperity. To address this research gap, this study uses 1991-2008 British Household Panel Survey data to analyse the duration and abandonment of moving desires. Importantly, the results show that the risk of abandoning a desire to move rises dramatically with age, suggesting that the well-documented residential rootedness of older people is not solely volitional. Event history analysis shows that these patterns are partly due to changing levels of ties and commitments over the life course. By demonstrating that ethnicity and income are also linked to the fulfilment of moving desires, the findings contribute to our understanding of the processes producing both social inequality and neighbourhood stratification.

Most studies of residential mobility decision‐making focus on the housing and neighbourhood satisfaction and pre‐move thoughts of individuals. This implicitly assumes that individual evaluations represent the wider household unit. However, if partners in a couple do not share evaluations of dwelling or neighbourhood quality or do not agree on whether moving is (un)desirable, ignoring these disagreements will lead to an inaccurate assessment of the strength of the links between moving desires and actual moves. Although overlooked in studies of residential mobility, partner disagreement plays an important role in the literature on family migration. This study is, therefore, one of the first to investigate disagreements in moving desires between partners and the subsequent consequences of such disagreements for moving behaviour. Drawing on British Household Panel Survey data and concepts from family migration studies, we find that disagreement about the desirability of moving is most likely where partners do not share perceptions of housing stress. Panel logistic regression models show that the moving desires of both partners interact to affect the moving behaviour of couples. Only 7.6% of couples move if only the man desires to move, whereas 20.1% of shared moving desires lead to a subsequent move. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.