Opportunity, Preference and Constraint: an Approach to the Analysis of Metropolitan Migration

The paper aims to consider how the fragmentation in the literature on migration may be overcome and to develop an integrated model of migration which can be applied to all types of population flow in the London metropolitan region. The need for such an approach follows from the complexity of flows observed at the 112-zone level of disaggregation as well as the unresolved problems of the literature. Despite this catholicity of aim the theoretical basis of the model is essentially economic, drawing on aspects of human capital, and search and spatial choice theories with an emphasis on the interaction between three concepts, opportunities, preference and constraints, in determining observed levels of migration.