Joanna Sage

The regional migration of young adults in England and Wales (2002–2008): a ‘conveyor-belt’ of population redistribution?

This paper calls for a more encompassing perspective of the regional migration patterns of young adults (16–24), extending studies of labour-motivated graduate migration. It is argued the long-distance movement(s) of young adults per se is a leading constituent of demographic and population changes in society; emphasising the connections between youthful stages of the lifecourse and high levels of population mobility that include students, graduates and other subgroups. Using revised National Health Service Central Record data to interrogate regional migration flows in England and Wales (2002–2008), our descriptive analyses reveal three key findings. First, it is shown that young adults are increasing as a proportion of regional migrants; reaffirming academic representations of young adults as a highly mobile age group. Second, it is identified that migration flows decreased for age groups between 2002 and 2008, with the notable exception of 16–24-year-olds. This suggests that young adults do not adhere to the increasing trend of non-migration, as individuals and households increasingly ‘stay-put’ due to detrimental socio-economic conditions (Cooke, T. J. 2011. “It is not Just the Economy: Declining Migration and the Rise of Secular Rootedness.” Population, Space and Place 17: 193–203). Third, major regional differences between the migration flows of 16–24-year-olds are observed, which beg questions about the escalator regions. The findings of the paper are pertinent to ongoing debates of population change, particularly given the reconfiguration of national policies (e.g. funding of higher education and housing benefit) is leading to new expressions of young adult migration.

New-build Studentification: A Panacea for Balanced Communities?

Rising concern about the negative impacts of students on ‘host communities’ has triggered debates about the consequences of studentification in the UK. For some commentators, purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) appears the panacea for studentification, as it offers the potential to reintroduce balance to studentified communities by redistributing student populations in regulated ways. This paper explores this contention, drawing upon focus groups and household surveys conducted in the vicinity of a PBSA development in Brighton, UK. The paper concludes that the location of this development in a densely populated neighbourhood has engendered adverse student/community relations, conflict, feelings of dispossession and displacement of established local residents. It is asserted that future developments of PBSA should be mindful of these issues and their implications for questions of community cohesion, quality-of-life and belonging in established residential communities. These findings are discussed in relation to debates of age differentials, segregation and new-build gentrification.

Youth migration and spaces of education

This special theme on youth migration, a key strand of the broader phenomenon of the population movements of young people and which the above quote suggests is increasing globally, emanates from three sessions on Youth Migration and Mobility at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference (London, August 2011). Tellingly, our call for contributions on youth migration yielded a diverse set of papers for the sessions that were, unintentionally, united by the common theme of education-induced youth migration. This link between youth migration and education forms the core of this special theme, with the main aim to explore how, why and where education-related factors shape contemporary forms of youth migration, and vice versa. There is a well-established scholarship on young persons (i.e. school pupils, college and university students) migrating across local, regional and national boundaries to increasingly ‘consume’ school and college (e.g. Smith and Higley 2012), national higher education (HE) (e.g. Hinton 2011) and international HE (e.g. Waters, Brooks, and Helena Pimlott-Wilson 2011). Also important here, although less researched, are the movements of individuals (e.g. teachers, academics, managers/administrators, agencies) and institutions (Waters and Leung, this theme) to produce, manage and deliver education for young people in highly competitive education labour markets and market places (e.g. Jöns 2009; Kim 2009). The focus of the theme therefore connects with this wide scholarly interest with underresearched young migrant populations, and the unfolding processes that are shaping the new ways in which more and more young people move within and between nations (King and Ruiz-Gelices 2003; Findlay et al. 2006). This is typified by calls to progress more fully the understandings of the migrant agency of both children (e.g. Dobson 2009; Ni Laoire 2011; Tyrrell et al. 2013) and youths (e.g. Brooks and Waters 2010; Geisen 2010), and how migration is implicated in the formation of contemporary childhood and youth identities and experiences. As Barker et al. (2009, 7) assert, for example, there is a need to ‘develop multiple understandings of how, when, why and where younger age and mobilities are co-constitutive’ (Skelton 2009; Holt and Costello 2010; Skelton and Gough 2013).

The diverse geographies of studentification: living alongside people not like us

Recent discussions of studentification have emphasised the development of exclusive purpose-built student accommodation in city centres, shifting the focus away from Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) in established residential neighbourhoods. In this paper we explore the growth of student housing on a former social-rented (council) housing estate, and the social friction that it has created—arguing that the production of student HMO has remained prolific, and is pushing the studentification frontier into outer-city deprived communities. Drawing on empirical evidence from a former social-rented housing estate, we explore the recent emergence of a ‘student area’ where student occupation is having marked impacts on a relatively deprived local population. These findings have implications for urban policy making, given they highlight the negative outcomes of studentification in deprived communities, and reveal the challenge this poses for providing affordable housing, and engendering sustainable communities in university towns.