Some interpretations of migration juxtapose jobs and amenities as alternative explanations for migration and regional growth but there is substantial evidence that migrants juggle a more complex set of motivations for migration than simply the attraction of a new job or a nice place to live. Occupational opportunities, family needs, communities, and lifestyles all play competing roles when households decide to move. This has always been true for local moves but appears to be relevant in longer distance moves also. We use data from the Housing, Income, and Labour Dynamics Survey in Australia to unpack the relative role of a wide variety of responses to the question – why did you move. The paper provides evidence that while migration is clearly related to labour market opportunities, non‐economic motivations including family change, lifestyle choices, and housing needs also play powerful roles in long‐distance migration decisions and often come with significant economic benefits. Clearly, jobs matter but it may be that they are the context within which migration occurs rather than simply an adjustment mechanism in the labour market. Survey data confirm that most moves are not generated by jobs per se, and the distribution of gains varies considerably by gender and reason for moves. Overall, this research emphasises the complexity of modern migration decisions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Households choose places from a hierarchy of options defined by social, economic and environmental contexts and these choices are conditioned by economic contexts and family status. While we know a good deal about the choice processes, we know somewhat less about the spatial outcomes of these decisions apart from the well-established finding that most residential changes involve relatively short distances. Recent research has begun to fill that gap and in this paper the research is extended by using data from the survey Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) to construct matrices of socio-spatial movement and consider the relationship of community in-flows and out-flows and the probability moving above and below the diagonal of the matrix. The research shows that there is substantial movement across the matrix of opportunities defined by an Index of Advantage and Disadvantage (Seifa). Economic resources and social status improves an individual’s chance of moving up, as expected, and there is little evidence of polarisation and isolation of the lowest decile communities. It is true that there is substantial within-decile movement but there is also movement away from the diagonal. The analysis suggests that the opportunity matrix is still open in Australia.

The pattern and level of separation among ethnic groups continues to change, and there are certainly more mixed neighborhoods both in cities and suburbs than two decades ago. The immigration flows of the past decade have substantially altered the ethnic mix and neighborhood mixing. In addition, multi-ethnic individuals themselves are altering the level of mixing among racial and ethnic groups. The research in this article shows that those who report themselves of more than one race have high levels of residential integration both in central cities and suburbs. These residential patterns can be interpreted as further evidence of tentative steps to a society in which race per se is less critical in residential patterning. The level of integration, for Asian mixed and black mixed is different and substantially higher than for those who report one race alone. The research in this article builds on previous aggregate studies of mixed-race individuals to show substantial patterns of integration in California's metropolitan areas.

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