Residential mobility, housing tenure changes, and life course dynamics among immigrants and their descendants in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The share of immigrants and their descendants have grown over the last few decades. Hence, their integration patterns and life course trajectories are highly relevant for policy, academia, and society at large. This thesis investigates residential mobility and housing tenure changes among immigrants and their descendants in the UK. It examines residential and housing changes across migrant generations and origin groups, and their relationship to other life course processes, namely partnership, fertility, and employment. This thesis utilises a variety of administrative and survey datasets and applies repeated cross-sectional, and longitudinal methodologies to identify differences between immigrants and their descendants compared to the native population across the largest UK migrant origin groups.

The findings highlight the importance of socio-economic status and accumulated wealth for upward housing tenure moves. However, wealth alone does not explain housing disparities. It is likely that cultural norms and the variation in housing preferences and needs across origin groups and generations play a role. For example, groups that place greater emphasis on marriage and childbearing are more likely to move, especially into homeownership, when partnered and during childbirth, especially at later births. These differences reflect the extent of integration and (intergenerational) socio-economic resources, especially among groups with culturally dissimilar norms compared to the native population. Additionally, across time, immigrants and their descendants exhibit improvements in educational attainment and employment. However, I also observe limited career progression which has implications on residential and housing improvements. The findings highlight diverging integration pathways across life course domains. I posit that a variety of opportunities and barriers in the host country as well as variation in cultural understanding and emphases shapes these pathways.

Date of Award	1 Dec 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Hill Kulu (Supervisor), Julia Mikolai (Supervisor) & Chia Liu (Supervisor)