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Place Utility

  • Living reference work entry
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Encyclopedia of Migration

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Definition

The concept of place utility was introduced in a pair of articles published in the mid-1960s by Princeton geographer Julian Wolpert. In the first (1965), he coined the term “place utility” to describe “the net composite of utilities which are derived from the individual’s integration at some position in space.” Based on past experiences, both positive and negative, the individual measures the utility of the place in which he/she presently resides. According to Wolpert, place utility is operationalized by migrants or potential migrants who assess the outstanding attributes of their current place of residence relative to those same aggregate characteristics of a potential place of migration destination. Traditionally, most migrants have little or no personal experience in the potential destination. They make a judgment based on information they hear or read about, rather than from personal experience. In sum, Wolpert theorized that people will base their migration decisions...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93104-4060, USA

    David López-Carr & Daniel Phillips

Authors
  1. David López-Carr
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  2. Daniel Phillips
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Correspondence to David López-Carr .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Research on Immigration Population and Public Policy, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA

    Frank D. Bean

  2. School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA

    Susan K. Brown

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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López-Carr, D., Phillips, D. (2015). Place Utility. In: Bean, F., Brown, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Migration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6179-7_42-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6179-7_42-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6179-7

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