Moving House, Creating Home: Exploring Residential Mobility

Abstract

This paper begins with a review of the residential mobility literature that arose out of housing and planning policy aimed at decreasing the negative effects of urban transience. The literature identified the range of factors influencing residential mobility, but Rossi's (1955) claim that mobility was a 'natural' outcome of life stage changes became the basis for the majority of this work. Most of this literature arose out of quantitative research approaches but writers drew attention to the inability of these approaches to capture the increasing complexity of family life and residential mobility. Drawing on data from the Christchurch, New Zealand, house and home study, this study argues that the qualitative ethnographic method used provides a more holistic approach to, and understanding of, the events and issues which influence household mobility over time. Within this context, the paper presents excerpts from interview data framed as ontological narratives and related stories embedded in social and economic contexts. Some of the themes identified are those of identity, home and place attachment, change and social differentiation, and the impact of gender relations on mobility decisions and experiences. These findings, like those in previous literature, are relevant to housing and planning policy making given the increasing diversity of residential developments and issues of access to social, financial and environmental resources. Understanding how individuals and families establish relationships between themselves and the places in which they live is important given increasingly divided and differentiated experiences of contemporary urban life.

Keywords:

• Residential Mobility
• Housing Careers
• Housing Journeys
• Housing History
• Ontological Narratives