‘I Love this Place, but I Won’t Stay’: Identification with Place and Imagined Spatial Futures Among Youth Living in Rural Areas in Sweden

Abstract

This study contributes to a body of literature that addresses relationships between space, place and identity, and their effects on young people’s ‘spatial horizons’. Drawing on ethnographic data from Sweden, it analyses youths’ identification with home place and how it relates to their imagined spatial futures in terms of staying ‘local’ or migrating. The findings indicate that locality strongly influenced the identity-processing of youths, but there was no straightforward relationship between identification with home place and willingness to stay in that place. Rather the home place’s perceived and narrated relation to other places, as well as its material conditions, social relationships and practices, contributed to the youths’ articulated views of their spatial futures.

Counselling to stay or to leave? - Comparing career counselling of young people in rural and urban areas

“…This reportedly affects young people's 'horizons of action' (Hodkinson and Sparkes 1997), a concept largely based on Bourdieu's ideas of habitus and capital, describing people's perceived possibilities. Habitus, various forms of capital and (thus) horizons of action may be shaped by numerous factors, including characteristics of places (Plant et al 2003;Rönnlund 2020;Shucksmith 2012). Thus, they clearly warrant attention in analyses of relations between rurality and educational or career transitions.…”

“…For young people living in rural areas of several countries, transitions from lower to higher stages of education have been described as necessitating movement from their residential area or a choice between staying in a place offering few opportunities and leaving to widen options (Bjarnason and Thorlindsson 2006;Forsey 2015;Rönnlund 2020;Thissen et al 2010). Gray, Shaw, and Farrington (2006) have described this as 'poverty of access ' and Corbett (2007) uses the concept 'learning to leave'.…”

“…In previous research, most interviewed Swedish youths (15-16 year olds) have described themselves as strongly related to the place they live and the individuals they socialise with there (Rönnlund 2020). However, individual choice and independence of place may seem crucial in their transitions to upper secondary or further education, simply because of a lack of appropriate educational facilities within their region.…”

Precarious leisure in a teenage wasteland? Intertwining discourses on responsibility and girls’ place-making in rural Northern Sweden

“…For young people, the rural place is beautiful and peaceful, yet simultaneously boring and isolated. It represents freedom and independence (within adult regulation), but also dependency, for example, due to being reliant on adults for transportation (Woods 2005;Leyshon 2008;Powell, Taylor, and Smith 2013;Rönnlund 2019). As Leyshon (Leyshon 2008, p. 2) writes, young people's attachments to the countryside are 'characterized by conflicting feelings of belonging, longing, ambivalence and abhorrence'.…”

Landscapes of care and despair for rural youth – a qualitative study in the northern Swedish ‘periphery’

“…One of the growing challenges in the rural north is the depletion of welfare resources from peripheral communities [11,12], where shrinking and ageing populations place increased pressure on systems that, for example, continue to find it difficult to recruit and retain skilled and professional workers [13]. However, with notable exceptions of (contested) expectations about youth mobility and migration [14][15][16][17], research striving to improve our understanding about what is happening to, and going on in, rural areas has so far been both adult-and elderly-centric, thus largely failing to account for the diverse perspectives of youth [18,19]. To help bridge this knowledge gap, the purpose of this research was to situate young people at the centre of debates about access to and experiences of rural health and social services, while adding to the literature by allowing rurality to 'stand apart' from urban comparison, and by considering a more holistic view on the issue than is typically depicted.…”