ABSTRACT
Much has been written in recent academic and policy literature about the competitive
imperative for cities to attract and retain high levels of “human capital” (Turok, 2009;
Musterd & Murie, 2010). Despite potentially greater international mobility throughout
the EU, coupled with the claim that the “creative class”—that is, workers who are
highly educated and talented-are individually and collectively highly mobile, moving
frequently in search of urban “quality of place” (Florida, 2002a), only limited, mostly
quantitative research has been undertaken to provide an understanding of the factors
associated with the movements of these workers.
