ABSTRACT
In the early twenty-®rst century, our connections to place might appear to have lessened in importance as people have become more mobile. Migration `has never been so pervasive as it is today', according to the anthropologist, Toon van Meijl (in press, p.11). Movement within nation states has also become common and unremarkable. In many Western countries, including the United Kingdom, changing where you live has become a waymarker for an adult life course, especially a middle-class one. Young people aspire to leave their parents' home and move to a place of their own, probably a rented ¯at, and then to get a foot on the housing ladder by becoming ®rst-time buyers. The next step is to afford a family house with a garden, perhaps changing again to what my local paper describes as an `executive home'. In retirement, people may downsize, for instance to a bungalow, with a possible ®nal move to sheltered housing or retirement accommodation. Linked to this focus on changing residence, there is enormous interest in the housing market and ¯uctuating property values. At the time of writing, there is considerable discussion about the effects of a slump in property prices linked to the general economic downturn. However, there are still numerous television programmes which celebrate people selling and buying houses, sometimes even to move to another country, for example, to Australia or New Zealand for a more prosperous or leisured family life, or idyllic surroundings somewhere in continental Europe for retirement.
