ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the household as a barometer of socio-demographic change. It traces a shift in interest from the individual to the household and identifies household processes driving residential mobility and migration. The chapter analyses a similar shift in the way households are conceived, epistemologically, from that of a closed, consensual ‘unit’ to that of a multi-faceted ‘lens’ receiving and transmitting the preferences, decisions, structural constraints and unintended consequences of everyday routines and practices. It examines the socially and geographically situated constitution of the household as a complex institution in multiple economies and local, regional and trans-national circuits of consumption, production and social-(re)production. Close attention has been paid to the relationship between household structure and relative mobility because long-distance relocation entails the coordination or sacrifice of individual attachments to a job, place or social network.
