Following People Through Time: An Analysis of Individual Residential Mobility Biographies

Following People Through Time: An Analysis of Individual Residential Mobility Biographies

Coulter, R.
Van Ham, M.

OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment

2013-04-24

Marie Curie programme under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / Career Integration Grant n. PCIG10-GA-2011-303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting, and neighbourhood effects). 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.

residential mobility
moving desires
life course
biography
longitudinal analysis

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b34627e0-c2c4-4064-ae77-5b9f7a76d565

Taylor & Francis

2014-10-24

0267-3037

Housing Studies, 28 (7), 2013; Authors version (post-print)

https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2013.783903

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c) 2013 Taylor & Francis