Levels of internal migration vary significantly across countries, with high mobility found in new world countries such as Australia. The dynamics of population mobility remain, however, poorly understood because they are almost exclusively analysed with cross-sectional data and period measures. While these measures have the advantage of providing information that is current and easy to interpret, they lack explanatory power because they fail to account for the diversity of migration experiences within populations and for cohort differentials. This paper seeks to advance understanding of internal migration in two ways. Methodologically, it proposes ten cohort-based measures of completed migration, migration timing, migration spacing, parity distribution and parity distribution ratios that can be used to systematically quantify migration levels and patterns across countries. Substantively, it applies the proposed measures to internationally comparable retrospective survey data for Australia, the United States and 14 European countries that provide complete residential histories from age 17 to 55 for the cohort born between 1947 and 1951. The analysis reveals that differences in migration levels are mainly due to the extent of repeat movement, which is underpinned by differences in mean ages at first and last move, which together delineate the average length of migration careers.

Mobile dwelling has become a valuable concept in contemporary geographical thought. It captures an empirical condition that defines our historical present, with potentials to help us better understand the complexity of some of the most ethically and politically charged events that are currently taking place globally. It also invites more progressive and less bounded ways of problematizing a conventionally sedentary concept. In this paper we look backwards to explore the genesis of this concept by tracing its legacies in geographical thought on domesticity and labour; and we look forwards by speculating on future avenues for thinking this concept anew. The first part of the paper synthesises a diverse set of literatures that have examined the relationship of domesticity and labour through different forms of mobility. Through geographical work on tourism, transport, home, migration, and labour markets, we identify and draw out how the concept of mobility has featured in distinctive ways. In the second part of the paper, we suggest a number of novel conceptual directions that we believe offer exciting potentials for advancing the concept of mobile dwelling along new lines.

This paper presents a creative approach to understanding the lived experience of residential mobility in a coastal Australian city. The lived experience of mobile individuals as they move homes is often overlooked in residential mobility research. Using a novel methodological approach, I explore the experiences and processes of residential mobility through incorporating interview methods and qualitative geographical information systems (GIS).
Thirty-four migrants (international and domestic) to the Maroochy area, Queensland, Australia, were interviewed about their experiences of moving to each of the locations they have lived in their lifetime. The participants were also shown satellite imagery of each of the places they have lived through Google Tourbuilder and Google Earth to help recollect past moves and to provide spatial information to input into GIS software (QGIS). The interviews were then transcribed, coded for each location and inputted into QGIS to reveal spatial context to the migration experiences. The interviews elicit information about migrants’ experiences of moving, while the mapping exercise charts residential mobility pathways. This method has broader applications to mobility studies by enhancing explorations of the lived experience of moving from place to place.

A significant change to the provision and management of social housing has been the transfer of housing stock from the state to non-government ‘community housing providers’ (CHPs). While considerable research has been conducted on various aspects of the emergence of CHPs and the impact on delivery and access to social housing, less is known about how the transfer has changed the governance of tenant mobility. Analyzing data from key policy documents and a series of interviews with social housing stakeholders, we examined the impacts of the transfer in Sydney, Australia. This study found that the shift to CHPs has created a disaggregated policy landscape and radically changed tenant access to traditional mobility policies. CHPs have greater power to force tenants to become mobile, while tenants’ ability to access and initiate mobility is reduced. As a result, tenants can experience two different types of housing mobilities: they can become a hyper-mobile population experiencing forced mobility, whilst simultaneously being a sedentary population with restricted self-initiated motility (access to mobility). We argue that these changes to social housing tenant’s motility are symptoms of wider structural issues whereby the sector has been restructured to prioritize the choice and flexibility of CHPs rather than tenants.