ABSTRACT
The 200 years from 1750 brought fundamental changes to the British housing market in terms of tenure, housing quality, architecture, finance and access. This chapter, first, summarizes some of these trends and relates them to the individual migration process, before examining in detail the ways in which residential mobility has been related to housing type and tenure. Housing is a particularly important variable to consider because not only does a residential move, by definition, require a change of house (whereas, for instance, migration does not always lead to job change), but also housing itself can be seen as symbolic of broader social, economic and cultural changes within society. Thus housing choice is in part a statement about an individual family, and their choice of a home, and in part a reflection of wider societal trends for which housing provision provides a good barometer.
