Moving home : conceptual and policy implications of the housing-mobility nexus

The Australian population is one of the most mobile in the world. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2006), 50.4 per cent of Australians changed their place of usual residence in the 5-year period between 2001 and 2006. While the scale, at which this mobility occurs, ranges from the neighbourhood to the international, the frequency, distance, destinations of, personal motives and structural forces informing these moves have changed dramatically in recent decades. A variety of factors have brought about this change in how population mobility occurs, including technological changes that have facilitated the increase in both virtual and physical movement and the frequency and speed at which both occur. Other changes bringing about an increase in mobility include demographic change (e.g. aging populations and retiree migration, the emerging trend of young Australians to remain in the parental home for a longer period of time), economic (e.g. welfare-led migration as a product of structural economic change, increased mobility of workers such as Fly-In, Fly-Out (FIFO) work associated with mining industries), socio-cultural change (e.g. the role of mobility in the cultural practices of Indigenous Australians, transnationalism and an emerging culture of multiple migrations over an individual’s lifetime). As McIntyre (2006, p.4) explains, housing ‘in the industrialized world, lies at the intersection of a global network of information, product and people flows’. Therefore, it is essential that when we are seeking to understand the issues and implications of the changes to how we move, we also take into account the role of housing in how these mobilities occur. The type, tenure and location of housing can facilitate or impede individuals’ ability to move. The home is therefore a key entity from where we launch a range of mobilities be they temporary or permanent, virtual or corporeal. The link between housing and mobility has been an ongoing concern for policy-makers. This Essay provides an analysis of what contemporary research tells us about the relationship between housing and mobility. It begins with an examination of how social science research has explained the causes and consequences of mobility generally and the housing-mobility nexus specifically. It then goes on to examine contemporary themes and issues in the housing studies literature that are a result of and/or produce mobility. The Essay concludes by advocating for two conceptual shifts in how housing researchers and policy-makers approach the housing-mobility nexus: 1. The need to adopt a broader understanding of mobility. 2. The need to account for a politics of mobility when considering the housing-mobility nexus