ABSTRACT
Internal migration is the major factor shaping the population distribution of Great Britain and an understanding of this process is essential to many aspects of central and local government planning and to the business strategies of private enterprises. An effective means of developing such understanding is through the mathematical modelling of migration choice. The migration process itself has often been deconstructed into two phases of decision making; whether to move and where to move (Stillwell and Congdon 1991; Nam, Serow and Sly 1990). These phases need not be independent: for instance, the decision to make a short-distance ‘housing-related’ move may be prompted by a particular destination becoming available. However, longer-distance moves such as those examined in this chapter are more often ‘employment-driven’ and in these cases the two decision phases can be broadly considered to be independent.
