The Analysis of Motivation-Specific Migration Streams

Abstract

This paper investigates the usefulness in migration analysis of disaggregation according to motives, constraints, and/or search procedures. A two-stream gravity model distinguishing between ‘long-distance’ and ‘short-distance’ migrational types is developed and applied to the analysis of intercounty flows in Great Britain, by means of a distance cut-off algorithm. The results confirm the distinctiveness and importance of these two streams which account for almost all the variance in flows at the intercounty level. The two streams are shown to respond differentially to environmental, housing, and employment factors. The two polarised types of movement cannot be equated simply with particular motives, however, but reflect basic decisions about search strategy.