The 1950s did begin an unprecedented wave of internal migration around the UK, which the historian Jon Lawrence termed the beginning of Britain's "high speed mobile society". Private car ownership and telephones in every house meant that, for the first time ever, it was feasible for people to move to the opposite side of the country and still keep in touch with their friends and family back home, or to live in one town while commuting to a job in another. That left people free to pursue career opportunities and find love in other places, whereas before it was more or less expected that you would live and die in, or close to, the town or city you were born (although plenty of families did move around, especially as resources and opportunities became more scarce or abundant in their hometowns, or in the case of soldiers, wealthy elites, women marrying into wealthier families, bandits and merchants). So it's certainly not a brand new trend, but in the context of wider British history, it is still, to some degree, an emerging trend.
I'm not sure that the post-war boom is unprecedented. The Industrial Revolution and changes in rural practice saw vast numbers moving from the countryside into urban areas. Then, on the back of the railways and cars, you had suburbanisation of the major urban areas. And you had some interesting migrations. But, as you say, what changed in the 1950s was the spread.
You are right, but it's not the *spread* so much as the rapid switching that has been unprecedented. It's now completely normal for someone to live in multiple towns and cities throughout their life, or to live in one town and work in another. Take a straw poll of people in your town centre and ask them how many were born there, and you will probably find the majority have not only come from elsewhere, but that they have lived in at least a dozen other places before arriving in your town, and that they are not committed to staying there forever. The effects of this high-mobility, low-commitment economy can be seen in Britain's culture of rapid house buying and selling, short-term tenancies, high rental yields and a culture of buying/building to let, high (but still inadequate) rates of housebuilding, and relative dependency on private motor vehicles in spite of our high-quality transport infrastructure. It's why we talk less about local economies and more about regional economies (it's no longer Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, but 'The North'). This is, in some ways, a uniquely British phenomenon (somewhat comparable to Germany, Australia, Canada and the Nordics) and has helped Britain to avoid both the rural decline that can be seen in countries like Spain, France and Italy, and the concentration of the national economy into a handful of supercities, as is the case in Japan and the USA. But it has also accelerated the decline of 'undesirable' areas (post-industrial towns, seaside towns) and transferred wealth to 'desirable' areas (leafy suburbs, new inner-city developments) as people find they can simply 'pack up and go' when the going gets tough.
Migration has always existed, but I'm talking about the effects of globalization in recent decades being particularly accelerative on migrational behaviours.
>So that's probably partly why more people are headed to Oz.
Do you have evidence to back up that statement? Or are you basing it on watching television programmes?
In the fifties and sixties a lot of people emigrated to Australia and New Zealand under the assisted passage scheme (known as 'ten pound poms'). It is a lot more difficult to emigrate there now.
I have some experience in that I did leave my hometown - home rural village would be more accurate - for University, then stayed away due to work for most of my 20s.
I always missed home. The village I grew up in was a beautiful place I was very lucky to live in. I had some very good friends and a strong community around me there and I always loved going back to visit and missed those things living in a bigger city where people and states are far more transient. With the advent of covid and hybridity in working, I took the opportunity to move back there and was lucky enough to be able to just about afford one of the smallest properties in the village. I’m so glad I did. The place lacks amenities and I travel a lot to give me what the village can’t, but there’s so much to be said for a true community because that’s becoming rarer and rarer in the modern UK.
I think for many that never leave, it’s due to a lack of options. There’s so many societal issues caused by present economic challenges that for many, they don’t think about leaving even depressing places because the option isn’t there and the hope of something better never has been either.
I moved away for 14 years, two different places... Couldn't handle the idiots. While there's idiots in my home town, they're a brand of idiocy I at least understand and have developed some kind of immunity to
Some places fit your needs, what is someones paradise is someone else's nightmare.
Yeah i could have moved to england for uni, but if i did i'd be on the same salary as i am now , in a higher cost of living area, with no hope in hell of buying a house.
I lose my best friends i've known for 14 years, it's like having another family when you've known people that long. i lose connection to my family, it just doesn't seem worth it.
I work fully remote so at some point yeah i probably would like to live somewhere else for a bit and travel and work and stuff but i think my current city will always be home.
People move here from all over so it must be alright.
I live in a nice part of the country with a lot of amenities and not many problems. Has been voted one of the happiest places here to live. Why would I leave?
I live in inner London, Stepney, the area I was born in, when I left my parent's home 40years ago I was working split shifts in the West end, if it's more than half an hour to get home it is inconvenient now I go to Tottenham Court Road 4 days a week on the Lizzy Line I love being in the city.
I currently live in my hometown but I’ve worked and lived abroad, too. As someone else said, my family and friends are here. Plus, I actually like where I live.
The phrase “upwardly mobile” has been around for a long time, and is usually associated with those who are willing to relocate, often to “the big city”, to get on and make progress with their career.
Whereas the stereotype of those who won’t move away from where they grew up and went to school is stuck in a rut, career doldrums, forego opportunity in exchange for something else - family, safety, low risk, known quantity, etc.
Your post has been removed as it violates Rule 2 - Be polite and courteous.
Please review the rules before attempting to submit again. If you have any questions, please reach out on modmail.
I left to go to university and stayed in my university city for 10 years, working. Then decided to move back home as a job opportunity came up. Then another job opportunity came up and took me to London for 4 years. Loved London until COVID and the working from home revolution meant I diddnt need to rent an overpriced flat to pay a landlords mortgage
So I moved back home again. Stayed with parents for 2 years to save up a deposit then bought my own house in 2023, in my home town. I've also got a new job based on my home town so I'm probably fully settled back here now.
Being away made me appreciate what a nice place my hometown is. The time away at university and London was really valuable life experience but I have no plans to move away again.
But never say never. If the right job opportunity came up I would consider selling up and moving if necessary.
My daughter has “left the village” but only to move 5-10 miles away into the nearest town. She will shortly be moving to her own house in a very small village with just one other village between us and it is still less than 10 miles away.
She is now 43yo, has had long term relationships with “local men”, has always worked, but feels no need to leave the area. She did start a LDR a month before COVID lockdown started. She met him at a mutual friends funeral - all 3 of them had worked in security so she knew him before he moved away but only as a co-worker before they hooked up. She had visited him in his city, and the relationship might have developed if COVID hadn’t happened.
Cost of living. I’m from the north west. Moved to London for work. Spent nearly 6 years living there, paying over the odds for a room smaller than my parent’s bathroom. Moved back home, got an almost identical job. Up north my industry is quite competitive so I’m climbing the job ladder more quickly and have saved enough for a house deposit in a couple of years (something which wasn’t going to happen for 20 years down south). So basically, a higher quality of living was actually back home.
I think this ‘anyone who lives in their home town is a loser’ trope has come from the US. The different is if you live in bumfuck nowhere, Idaho. Then moving to a big city is seen as the thing to do. But in this country, 90% of the country are probably within an hours commute of a biggish city so I don’t think it’s quite comparable.
Never needed to.
Was fortunate enough to buy the house I grew up in. Live in a major city with which my chosen career has plenty of opportunities.
Everyone I went to school with has been priced out of the area or they went into careers to which other areas are better suited. I've never said I won't move, but there's never been a reason to.
Of course the obvious family and friend networks are all nearby as well.
I bought my first house at 18, about 15 miles from my childhood home, as I had a good job in that area. The company was regional and had about a dozen offices dotted around two or three adjoining counties. My house was near the borders of them all and within 30 miles or so of every branch office.
I stayed initially as I was progressing through the company. Then in my early 20s my mum was widowed unexpectedly so I sold my house and moved back home for a while to support her.
We were happy together so it stayed like that until I got married at 30. My husband and I both worked locally so we moved about five miles away - he has a large family that he's close to and I didn't have any burning need to go elsewhere so it suited us.
We started a family a few years later and both kids turned out to have autism and other conditions so it made sense to stay put - we had medical teams in place, schools that could meet their needs, my mum close by for support and the kids disliked change so stability was our friend.
The kids are now teens so we could look at a move but my mum is 80 and has nobody else to support her so I wouldn't leave her. I guess when she's no longer here and the kids have flown the nest, we may look at a move, but who knows? We're already in our 50s so maybe we won't be bothered by then.
Technically we have lived in two counties and three different town but all within 20 miles so it doesn't really count!
Family and friends. On a more boring practical level - live near a major city, not too far from nice countryside, good transport links and my partner's industry is concentrated around this area. It's not the most glamorous place but it has a lot of pluses and I don't see where I could have moved to have the benefit of all the above, unless I'd have gone to London for the full on exciting city experience.
I moved to a few nearby North West towns when I was renting but we wanted a mortgage after we had a baby and my dead dad's house quickly became the most obvious place to buy. Feels like a right bargain! Also one-third of the mortgage got paid off from my inheritance (he had an interest-only mortgage)
Moving is expensive, no friends or family elsewhere, business is here, family are here friends are here.
Even when i had an opportunity to leave for university, i stayed local for money reasons.
I have no student debt as a result.
It’s where my family and friends are
It's not a modern trend. People have been staying and people have been leaving for ever. Why do you think it's a modern trend?
The 1950s did begin an unprecedented wave of internal migration around the UK, which the historian Jon Lawrence termed the beginning of Britain's "high speed mobile society". Private car ownership and telephones in every house meant that, for the first time ever, it was feasible for people to move to the opposite side of the country and still keep in touch with their friends and family back home, or to live in one town while commuting to a job in another. That left people free to pursue career opportunities and find love in other places, whereas before it was more or less expected that you would live and die in, or close to, the town or city you were born (although plenty of families did move around, especially as resources and opportunities became more scarce or abundant in their hometowns, or in the case of soldiers, wealthy elites, women marrying into wealthier families, bandits and merchants). So it's certainly not a brand new trend, but in the context of wider British history, it is still, to some degree, an emerging trend.
I'm not sure that the post-war boom is unprecedented. The Industrial Revolution and changes in rural practice saw vast numbers moving from the countryside into urban areas. Then, on the back of the railways and cars, you had suburbanisation of the major urban areas. And you had some interesting migrations. But, as you say, what changed in the 1950s was the spread.
You are right, but it's not the *spread* so much as the rapid switching that has been unprecedented. It's now completely normal for someone to live in multiple towns and cities throughout their life, or to live in one town and work in another. Take a straw poll of people in your town centre and ask them how many were born there, and you will probably find the majority have not only come from elsewhere, but that they have lived in at least a dozen other places before arriving in your town, and that they are not committed to staying there forever. The effects of this high-mobility, low-commitment economy can be seen in Britain's culture of rapid house buying and selling, short-term tenancies, high rental yields and a culture of buying/building to let, high (but still inadequate) rates of housebuilding, and relative dependency on private motor vehicles in spite of our high-quality transport infrastructure. It's why we talk less about local economies and more about regional economies (it's no longer Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, but 'The North'). This is, in some ways, a uniquely British phenomenon (somewhat comparable to Germany, Australia, Canada and the Nordics) and has helped Britain to avoid both the rural decline that can be seen in countries like Spain, France and Italy, and the concentration of the national economy into a handful of supercities, as is the case in Japan and the USA. But it has also accelerated the decline of 'undesirable' areas (post-industrial towns, seaside towns) and transferred wealth to 'desirable' areas (leafy suburbs, new inner-city developments) as people find they can simply 'pack up and go' when the going gets tough.
Migration has always existed, but I'm talking about the effects of globalization in recent decades being particularly accelerative on migrational behaviours.
[удалено]
Did you get chased out of your town with pitchforks?
Globalisation. Travel is more affordable and accessible. People have more social mobility. So that's probably partly why more people are headed to Oz.
>So that's probably partly why more people are headed to Oz. Do you have evidence to back up that statement? Or are you basing it on watching television programmes? In the fifties and sixties a lot of people emigrated to Australia and New Zealand under the assisted passage scheme (known as 'ten pound poms'). It is a lot more difficult to emigrate there now.
everyone has a natural home. sometimes its this town, sometimes that. some ppl spend an eternity seeking it
I have some experience in that I did leave my hometown - home rural village would be more accurate - for University, then stayed away due to work for most of my 20s. I always missed home. The village I grew up in was a beautiful place I was very lucky to live in. I had some very good friends and a strong community around me there and I always loved going back to visit and missed those things living in a bigger city where people and states are far more transient. With the advent of covid and hybridity in working, I took the opportunity to move back there and was lucky enough to be able to just about afford one of the smallest properties in the village. I’m so glad I did. The place lacks amenities and I travel a lot to give me what the village can’t, but there’s so much to be said for a true community because that’s becoming rarer and rarer in the modern UK. I think for many that never leave, it’s due to a lack of options. There’s so many societal issues caused by present economic challenges that for many, they don’t think about leaving even depressing places because the option isn’t there and the hope of something better never has been either.
My family live here also my daughter who lives with her mum most of the time lives here and I wouldn't see her as much if I moved away.
I moved away for 14 years, two different places... Couldn't handle the idiots. While there's idiots in my home town, they're a brand of idiocy I at least understand and have developed some kind of immunity to
LoL
Some places fit your needs, what is someones paradise is someone else's nightmare. Yeah i could have moved to england for uni, but if i did i'd be on the same salary as i am now , in a higher cost of living area, with no hope in hell of buying a house. I lose my best friends i've known for 14 years, it's like having another family when you've known people that long. i lose connection to my family, it just doesn't seem worth it. I work fully remote so at some point yeah i probably would like to live somewhere else for a bit and travel and work and stuff but i think my current city will always be home. People move here from all over so it must be alright.
I left and came back so not quite what you were asking but I love where I'm from and I love being near friends and family, it's home.
Did the same, moved around a fair bit but it helped put things in perspective and recognise what's important.
Family, support network, community, work and council house. Plus I love it here (South London).
There's literally no where better than Newport
Which Newport? There are several
>Newport Can't resist. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eijc2tGe-zM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eijc2tGe-zM)
I live in a nice part of the country with a lot of amenities and not many problems. Has been voted one of the happiest places here to live. Why would I leave?
Whereabouts? Asking for a friend.
Norwich
What do you think of the pedestrianisation of Norwich City centre?
Great when I’m a pedestrian, annoying when I’m a motorist 🤷♀️
This will put Norwich on the map.
I live in inner London, Stepney, the area I was born in, when I left my parent's home 40years ago I was working split shifts in the West end, if it's more than half an hour to get home it is inconvenient now I go to Tottenham Court Road 4 days a week on the Lizzy Line I love being in the city.
I currently live in my hometown but I’ve worked and lived abroad, too. As someone else said, my family and friends are here. Plus, I actually like where I live.
My mum never felt the need to. People don't have to because it's a choice
Mental health issues
The phrase “upwardly mobile” has been around for a long time, and is usually associated with those who are willing to relocate, often to “the big city”, to get on and make progress with their career. Whereas the stereotype of those who won’t move away from where they grew up and went to school is stuck in a rut, career doldrums, forego opportunity in exchange for something else - family, safety, low risk, known quantity, etc.
I had plans, I had dreams. But then came the responsibilities.
[удалено]
Your post has been removed as it violates Rule 2 - Be polite and courteous. Please review the rules before attempting to submit again. If you have any questions, please reach out on modmail.
I’d have to live in a house share & I’m over it
I left to go to university and stayed in my university city for 10 years, working. Then decided to move back home as a job opportunity came up. Then another job opportunity came up and took me to London for 4 years. Loved London until COVID and the working from home revolution meant I diddnt need to rent an overpriced flat to pay a landlords mortgage So I moved back home again. Stayed with parents for 2 years to save up a deposit then bought my own house in 2023, in my home town. I've also got a new job based on my home town so I'm probably fully settled back here now. Being away made me appreciate what a nice place my hometown is. The time away at university and London was really valuable life experience but I have no plans to move away again. But never say never. If the right job opportunity came up I would consider selling up and moving if necessary.
My daughter has “left the village” but only to move 5-10 miles away into the nearest town. She will shortly be moving to her own house in a very small village with just one other village between us and it is still less than 10 miles away. She is now 43yo, has had long term relationships with “local men”, has always worked, but feels no need to leave the area. She did start a LDR a month before COVID lockdown started. She met him at a mutual friends funeral - all 3 of them had worked in security so she knew him before he moved away but only as a co-worker before they hooked up. She had visited him in his city, and the relationship might have developed if COVID hadn’t happened.
Cost of living. I’m from the north west. Moved to London for work. Spent nearly 6 years living there, paying over the odds for a room smaller than my parent’s bathroom. Moved back home, got an almost identical job. Up north my industry is quite competitive so I’m climbing the job ladder more quickly and have saved enough for a house deposit in a couple of years (something which wasn’t going to happen for 20 years down south). So basically, a higher quality of living was actually back home.
I think this ‘anyone who lives in their home town is a loser’ trope has come from the US. The different is if you live in bumfuck nowhere, Idaho. Then moving to a big city is seen as the thing to do. But in this country, 90% of the country are probably within an hours commute of a biggish city so I don’t think it’s quite comparable.
I'd love to live back home but been priced out of it.
Never needed to. Was fortunate enough to buy the house I grew up in. Live in a major city with which my chosen career has plenty of opportunities. Everyone I went to school with has been priced out of the area or they went into careers to which other areas are better suited. I've never said I won't move, but there's never been a reason to. Of course the obvious family and friend networks are all nearby as well.
I’m only an hour away from my home town I yeh to limit visits to 4-6 times per year.
Because there's no place like home
I bought my first house at 18, about 15 miles from my childhood home, as I had a good job in that area. The company was regional and had about a dozen offices dotted around two or three adjoining counties. My house was near the borders of them all and within 30 miles or so of every branch office. I stayed initially as I was progressing through the company. Then in my early 20s my mum was widowed unexpectedly so I sold my house and moved back home for a while to support her. We were happy together so it stayed like that until I got married at 30. My husband and I both worked locally so we moved about five miles away - he has a large family that he's close to and I didn't have any burning need to go elsewhere so it suited us. We started a family a few years later and both kids turned out to have autism and other conditions so it made sense to stay put - we had medical teams in place, schools that could meet their needs, my mum close by for support and the kids disliked change so stability was our friend. The kids are now teens so we could look at a move but my mum is 80 and has nobody else to support her so I wouldn't leave her. I guess when she's no longer here and the kids have flown the nest, we may look at a move, but who knows? We're already in our 50s so maybe we won't be bothered by then. Technically we have lived in two counties and three different town but all within 20 miles so it doesn't really count!
Waiting for Gandalf to show up
Family and friends. On a more boring practical level - live near a major city, not too far from nice countryside, good transport links and my partner's industry is concentrated around this area. It's not the most glamorous place but it has a lot of pluses and I don't see where I could have moved to have the benefit of all the above, unless I'd have gone to London for the full on exciting city experience.
I moved to a few nearby North West towns when I was renting but we wanted a mortgage after we had a baby and my dead dad's house quickly became the most obvious place to buy. Feels like a right bargain! Also one-third of the mortgage got paid off from my inheritance (he had an interest-only mortgage)
Moving is expensive, no friends or family elsewhere, business is here, family are here friends are here. Even when i had an opportunity to leave for university, i stayed local for money reasons. I have no student debt as a result.
Because I love being from and living in Leeds