Residential Mobility In The 21st Century

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What it means to have an occupation in the United States over the past century has undergone multiple evolutions that are examinable through their effect on how people live, interact, and earn a living. Focusing on residential mobility, or the opportunity to easily switch living space based on the satisfaction of an individual and how it has expanded from an inherently American tradition to one more globally popular, it becomes clearer how the human race’s advancement in technology has created a new meaning for just how mobile the world can be, as well as revolutionizing what occupational work means. This transition ushers in various ways of thinking, from the economical to the psychologist, and has advantages and disadvantages from each view …show more content…

Through Shigehiro Oishi’s “The Psychology of Residential Mobility: Implications for the Self, Social Relationships” an understanding on the greater effects of residential mobility becomes apparent. Defining residential mobility as “the frequency with which individuals change their residence,” Oishi explains the how frequent moving is interconnected with the formation of social networks and relationships. In this fashion it becomes a vessel to study its connection to social capital, as I would suggest that as mobility has increased throughout an increasingly globalizing world, social capital has been reduced in communities because of constant relocation. Additionally, what remains fascinating about this is Oishi’s assertion that while the USA has always been a highly mobile society, just as observers such as Tocqueville suggested in their writings, it is only as the world has become more technologically interconnected that this lifestyle has been adopted by other cultures. This could suggest that there is a direct correlation between a country’s stage of demographic transition and residential mobility and thus the notion that as countries advance, their social capital will eventually begin …show more content…

This means that a person who has a job done on the internet doesn’t have to worry about the location they are doing the work in and are free to live where they want. I argue that this idea brought forth in Daniel Pink’s book “Free Agent Nation” has created a new meaning for residential mobility. Previously, people were moving for things such as better job opportunities, but now with the transition from the stereotypical desk-job worker to the “free agent,” this function is being entirely removed from the equation. This could suggest that people are being afforded more opportunity to connect with their communities because they aren’t necessarily tied into commuting daily and they can also form relationships online, an entirely different form of social capital. Technological advancement is unequivocally beneficial to the modern world as it allows greater choice in mobility if we choose to participate, and it allows groups to potentially mend the separation that occurred in the previously traditional way of operating in the job market during the 20th

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