ABSTRACT
Migration behaviour has long been of interest to economists, geographers, demographers and sociologists contributing to planning and policy formulation with respect to service provision and other issues of community interest. The economic and social implications, origin and destination effects and differences between migrants and stayers are often representative of other structures within a society and have been the focus of much of the migration literature over recent decades (Plane and Rogerson 1994). Yet, there is a conspicuous lack of information regarding the mobility behaviour of Indigenous populations. As recently as 1996, Taylor and Bell (1996a: 154) described the existing research on the migration of Indigenous peoples as “diffuse, partial and fragmented”. This fragmentation can be traced to a variety of origins, not least of which are data deficiencies and the failure of standard mobility measures to define a population that may conceive of home as a regional concept rather than as a specific place.
