ABSTRACT
Most models of migration behaviour have been developed on the premise that it is individuals who move. Even where groups of people, such as a household, migrate, it has been assumed that there is a primary decision maker within the household who is accompanied by dependants (typically a wife and children). This perspective favours interpreting marriage and family relations as an extra variable that produces deviations of migrant behaviour relative to mobility patterns of a single mover. Mincer (1978), for example, notes that so-called ‘marriage ties’ reduce mobility, while Clark (1986) offers several generalizations about the migration of North American couples, which include the dampening effect of marital status on migration, especially if both spouses work. According to Clark (1986:71), ‘the fact that working wives generally earn less than than their husbands makes it far more likely that females will be tied movers or stayers’.
