ABSTRACT
The social characteristics of individuals affect the form, frequency and periodicity of their spatial mobility in all societies, and one of the most widely recognized of these characteristics is education. The educated tend to be the most mobile in any society, socially as well as spatially, both while they are in school acquiring an education and after they have left it. The close relationship between educational attainment and migration (identified by enumeration in an area other than a previous place of residence) is a familiar phenomenon in developed (Shryock and Nam 1965) as in developing countries (Conroy 1976), but the data and methodology used in most studies of the educational selectivity of migrants assumes a permanent migration rather than circulation. A close relationship between school enrolment and mobility, particularly into towns, has also been noted in many countries of the Third World, e.g. Sierra Leone (Swindell 1970), Ivory Coast (Saint-Vil 1975), Ethiopia (Gould 1973a), Thailand (Sternstein 1974), much of which involves absence from home for periods of a few months and may be therefore identified as circulation (Gipey 1978). This paper seeks to further identify the circulation generated as part of the process of acquiring a formal education. It does so with specific reference to East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda), countries where circulation is widely recognized as an important feature of population mobility (Elkan 1976, Parkin 1975).
