Are People Changing Address Less? An Analysis of Migration within England and Wales, 1971-2011, by Distance of Move

Abstract

Expectations of migration and mobility steadily increasing in the longer term, which have a long currency in migration theory and related social science, are at odds with the latest US research showing a marked decline in internal migration rates. This paper reports the results of research that investigates whether England and Wales have experienced any similar change in recent decades. Using the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS) of linked census records, it examines the evidence provided by its 10-year migration indicator, with particular attention to a comparison of the first and latest decades available, 1971-1981 and 2001-2011. This suggests that, as in the USA, there has been a marked reduction in the level of shorterdistance (less than 10km) moving that has involved almost all types of people. In contrast to this and to US experience, however, the propensity of people to make longer-distance address changes between decennial censuses has declined much less, largely corroborating the results of a companion study tracking the annual trend in rates of between-area migration since the 1970s (Champion and Shuttleworth, 2016).

Is Longer-Distance Migration Slowing? An Analysis of the Annual Record for England and Wales since the 1970s

“…Our negative result prompted us to triangulate with a very different source, which as reported in the companion paper to this one (Champion & Shuttleworth, ) broadly confirms the stability of longer‐distance migration rates in England and Wales since the 1970s. This suggests that there are serious limitations to this type of generalising conceptual approach, such that if we want to set internal migration in its wider context, we need to think far more flexibly about social change, migration, and the ways in which general structural social forces are felt by individuals and mediated in different national contexts.…”

Linked lives and constrained spatial mobility: the case of moves related to separation among families with children

“…; Sheller and Urry ; Urry ) has heralded a plethora of studies that tend toward a view of mobility as an increasingly dominant and empowering process of late modernity. Yet, empirical trends in population data for the USA and UK (Champion and Shuttleworth ; Cooke ), and many other Western contexts (Bell and Charles‐Edwards ), show residential mobility/migration propensities across a range of geographical scales have been at least constant, and very often in sustained decline. As such, assumptions linking late modernity to increased mobility appear incorrect, at least in the context of residential moves within countries.…”

The effects of information and communication technologies on residential mobility and migration

“…Although there is the general assumption that we live in an increasingly mobile society, residential relocation and interregional migration (one important dimension of mobility) have actually been declining in the United States where it has fallen by nearly 50% since the early 1980s (see Cooke, , ; Fischer, ; Molloy et al, ; Rogerson, ; Wolf & Longino, ) and there is growing evidence that it is declining in many other advanced countries (see Champion, Cooke, & Shuttleworth, ; Champion & Shuttleworth, , ) and indeed in Northern Ireland too (Campbell & Shuttleworth, ). There are two strands of research, each emerging from a common concern that the migration decline is linked to demographic processes.…”