Settled or Unsettled? Linking Migration Trajectories From Adolescence to Young Adulthood and Their Social Correlates in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Early-life migration can shape subsequent migration, but how migration patterns in young adulthood resemble or differ from those in adolescence remains unclear. This study examines cross-phase migration trajectory linkedness between adolescence (ages 13–17) and young adulthood (ages 21–25), and the social conditions under which such linkedness takes different forms. Using the British Household Panel Survey and its successor, Understanding Society (N = 478), we construct annual migration sequences incorporating frequency, timing and distance, and quantify their resemblance using dyadic sequence analysis. The analysis identifies both resemblance and contrast in cross-phase linkedness between adolescent and young-adult migration. Resemblance is dominated by sustained immobility across both life phases, whereas contrast reflects divergence between the two phases, most often from immobility in adolescence to mobility in young adulthood. Regression analyses suggest that early marriage is associated with a lower likelihood of sustained immobility across both phases, whereas adolescent residence in London–South East is associated with a higher likelihood of this pattern. Being female and living in owner-occupied housing during adolescence are both associated with the pattern of an immobile adolescence followed by a mobile young adulthood. The main findings are broadly robust to alternative classification schemes. Together, these trajectory-level patterns caution against assuming that changes in mobility at one life stage translate uniformly into longer-term internal migration trends.