This literature review focuses on summarising research findings in order to help inform our understanding of why students within the UK cross internal borders for the purpose of higher education study. As a working paper that is the first phase of a longer project, it is limited to summarising existing research.

It complements the detailed analysis of 2011-12 and 2012-13 student data being carried out by David Raffe and Linda Croxford in the context of the ESRC Fellowship Higher education in Scotland, the devolution settlement and the referendum on independence held by the Centre for Research in Education Inclusion and Diversity (CREID) – the first of their companion working papers analyses 2011 entrants (Croxford and Raffe, 2014b). It also complements their earlier project within the Centre for Education Sociology on Changing transitions to a differentiated higher education system funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which included examination of cross-border flows for the period 1996 to 2010. Publications from this latter project can be found at: http://www.ces.ed.ac.uk/research/DIFFHE/publications.html