Environment and Planning A 1999, volume 31, pages 1417-1431 Reciprocal link between exit from unemployment and geographical mobility C Detang-Dessendre Departement d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, 21036 Dijon, France; e-mail: detang@enesad.inra.fr Received 4 October 1997; in revised form 1 August 1998 Abstract. Is geographical migration a consequence of the end of unemployment or does it help in finding a job? This question is approached within the general framework of human capital theory. Two main categories of determinants may be distinguished. The first is termed the decisionmaking context and groups factors which are intrinsic to the individual (such as gender or age) and factors which are related to spatial issues (such as employment or economic conditions in an area). The second category is formed by the human capital available at the moment of the choice. The aim of this paper is to take past investment into consideration and incorporate the fact that some decisions may be joint ones. A model is introduced in the form of a system of two simultaneous equations with qualitative endogenous variables. The test is based on a 1993 survey of 1176 young rural people of seven areas of France. A main finding is that migrations of young rural people are essentially the result of professional preoccupations. However, migration is not a factor which always helps in finding a job, when people are unemployed. When a young person has a good initial training, he or she has to migrate (and leave a rural area) to get a job. Yet, migration does not seem to be necessary for less trained people. 1 Introduction Migration decisions and changes in employment status are often interconnected phenomena. People may migrate either to look for work or because they have found a job. Causal links work both ways: migration may affect occupational experience and a decision to build on occupational experience may induce a change in location. This issue is of special interest with regard to young people from rural areas of France. The development of increasingly long and difficult pre-employment periods is leading the authorities to question the inducements to be offered: should young people be encouraged to leave rural areas, or on the contrary should efforts be made to develop local forms of professional integration? The question is all the more pressing in that, when they are unemployed, more than 75% of young people live in their home districts. Against this backdrop, this paper is an inquiry into unemployment as a specific stage in people's working lives and into the interrelationship between migra- tion and entering employment. The question to be answered is whether there is a reciprocal relationship between the two phenomena? Does taking up employment lead people to migrate and does migrating make it easier to find a job? To approach this question I have attempted to construct an explanatory schema within the general framework of human capital theory (Becker, 1975), migration and career paths being two factors making up an individual's human capital. Picking up on one of Sjaastad's (1962) main ideas by which investments in different components of human capital cannot be analysed independently of each other, I seek to show on the one hand that acquired assets, and therefore the past, are involved in decisions at time t and that, on the other hand, there may be contemporary connections. Time must therefore be introduced at two levels. The empirical specification selected is presented in the form of a system of simultaneous equations which both explains the monthly changes in location and in employment status and takes into account the change in human capital over time.