Who stays in their birthplace? The role of multigenerational local ties in young adults' staying behaviour

Abstract

We explore staying and migration behaviour using a multigenerational perspective on local ties. Based on Swedish register data, we take a shared birthplace between young adults and one or more of their parents and grandparents as a proxy for multigenerational local ties in the young adult's birthplace. Our aim is to investigate whether the presence of this type of longstanding, multigenerational local ties in the birthplace increases one's propensity to stay or return there during young adulthood. Using multinomial logistic regressions, we model the residential trajectories between ages 18 and 30 of individuals born in 1981, 1982, and 1983 who lived in their birthplace at age 18 (i.e., stayed in, moved from, or returned to the birthplace by age 30; N = 185,897). We find that the propensity for staying in one's birthplace increases with each additional parent or grandparent with whom the birthplace is shared. Overall, differences between ties shared with parent(s) and grandparent(s) are surprisingly similar, except ties that are shared with both parents. These have a particularly strong and positive effect. Although men seem to be tied more strongly than women to their fathers and paternal grandparents, we found no differences between men and women in their ties to mothers and maternal grandparents.

Life events, social conditions and residential mobility among older adults

“…All in all, nearby social ties seem to help retain older adults in their communities. These results are consistent with recent quantitative and qualitative research on nearby social ties serving to deter residential mobility among younger sample populations (Gillespie, 2022; Thomassen, 2021; Thomassen et al, 2023).…”