ABSTRACT
The chapter attempts to summarise the case-study chapters and to answer the broad question set out as the topic for the book: is the migration decline seen in the USA something observed across all high-income countries? The conclusion is that, although there is a tendency towards similar declines across the case studies, the divergent experiences of Sweden and Germany mean that a migration decline cannot be automatically ‘read off’ from stage of development. Despite this, there are common experiences of ageing, delayed life events, higher education growth, restrictions in the housing market and economic restructuring that can be related to migration decreases in more than one country. At the same time, national context is important as also is whether the country is historically high- or low- migration. The chapter goes on to identify areas for future work, including: collecting more and better data, more comparative work across a wider selection of countries, a greater focus on technological change, deeper analysis of the links between address-changing and the life course and the consideration of internal migration in the context of other forms of spatial mobility.
