Explaining Decision-Making on Multilocal Living: Bridging Rationality, Practice, and Networks

The proposed article concerns the possibilities of using the three theoretical approaches to capture the various aspects that influence Polish specialists’ decision-making on multilocal living. Multilocality is usually assumed to be ‘vita activa in various places’, that is, everyday life distributed across several places of stay which are visited for longer periods and used with more or less extensive functional division. When attempting to fit multilocality into the various forms of mobility, it is a type of activity that falls between relocation (migration) and everyday mobility (shuttle or circulation). Three theoretical approaches are used to discuss decision-making to become a multilocal resident, namely: rational choice theory, sociology of everyday life, and actor-network theory. The selected approaches allow for the analysis of multilocality both as a practice and as a process, and consent for capturing the spatial aspects of decision-making. The aim is to show how the interpretation of decision-making can change with the adopted approach. The results from qualitative research conducted in 2020–2024 on a group of 20 multilocal specialists from Poland provide background and exemplify the use of the described theoretical approaches. The author intends to check whether the modelling of multilocality decision-making pursued by these three approaches is productive if the results are compared and interpreted as a coexisting version of reality, differently shaped, and what the limitations are.