Getting On, Getting Up and Getting Out? Broadening Perspectives on Rural Youth Migration

Bibliographic Data

ID5877240
AuthorsChris Gibson (0009-0007-6215-6579), Neil Argent (0000-0002-4005-5837, University of New England)
Year2008
Volume46
Issue2
Pages135-138
Publication date2008-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1745-5863 • E-ISSN: 1745-5871
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1745-5871.2008.00504.x
OpenAlexW2005444745
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited18

For the 2006 combined International Geographical Union, Institute of Australian Geographers Inc. (IAG) and New Zealand Geographical Society conference in Brisbane, the IAG Cultural Geography and Rural Geography Study Groups collaborated to offer a special themed session on ‘rural youth issues’. Our pre-conference blurb on the session invited papers on a range of issues facing young people in rural areas. Yet the eventuating session focussed almost entirely on the out-migration of youth from rural towns and regions. Some papers made observations on the causes and impacts of migration – for the migrants leaving as well as for the places left behind. Others discussed conceptual and policy issues related to youth out-migration. There was, as far as we are aware, no prior collusion between the various speakers to provide the session with a closer focus and an intellectual coherence that its advertised title may have suggested was lacking. We can only assume that the movement of young people out of virtually all non-metropolitan settlement zones (whether coastal, dry, remote or inland) signifies a central, if not the central, issue of contemporary research concern regarding young people in rural areas. In many ways, this construal of rural youth out-migration as ‘rural youth issues’ is a natural extension of rural and cultural geographers’ ongoing concern for the demographic, social and economic development of non-metropolitan towns and regions. For some time, research into what has been popularly known in Australia as the ‘plight of the bush’ or the ‘rural crisis’ has focussed on, inter alia, service declines and losses, erosion of political influence, growing income and general inequality of well-being as compared with the metropolitan areas, and the sustained population loss in many rural regions (e.g. Pritchard and McManus, 2000; Gray and Lawrence, 2001). More recently, though, and in the wake of the popularity of ‘social capital’ as an organising theme and heuristic framework, together with more post-structuralist critiques of capitalist approaches to regional development, focus has switched to more interpretative, culture-centred understandings of rural community change and of the centrality of social development in community sustainability (Abbott-Chapman, 2001; Tucker and Matthews, 2001; Tonts, 2005; Atherley, 2006; Brennan-Horley et al., 2007). Running parallel to this theme, but only occasionally intersecting with it, more sophisticated analyses of rural populations have revealed the deeper structures and trends shaping the medium- to long-term trajectories of rural populations. These include, for instance, the twin processes of accelerated ageing and sustained youth net migration loss in many rural zones (Hugo, 2005). Between 1996 and 2001, 85 871 15 to 24 year-olds moved from rural areas to capital cities within Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003). In some respects, this is not a surprising statistic given that teenagers and young adults are invariably the most mobile groups within a given population (Brown et al., 2006; Walmsley et al., 2006). However, rates of rural youth out-migration have increased in the past decade or so, as have rates of youth net migration loss from rural areas (Walmsley et al., 2006). Naturally, those directly observing, or living through, this outflow have raised concerns over the future viability and vitality of their communities. What is going on within rural towns and regions that is making so many young people ‘vote with their feet’ to seek their futures elsewhere? Have young rural people's perceptions of their current lives and their future aspirations changed such that so many of them now wish to leave their places of birth and childhood for larger, relatively unknown urban settings? These are important questions, for, as Stockdale (2006) has argued, the fashionable call for endogenous development or ‘locally-led economic development’ as the panacea for rural demographic and economic decline is simply incompatible with overall population decline and youth net migration loss. These rhetorical questions also underline some of the dilemmas within contemporary research in the field of rural youth migration. As noted above, we now generally understand the broad dimensions of youth out-migration trends (Gibbs and Cromartise, 1994; Garasky, 2002), and even some of the major motivations for them (Jamieson 2000; Kloep et al., 2003; Giddings and Yarwood, 2005), but to date we lack sophisticated analyses of the spatial and social complexity of this phenomenon. In part, this lacuna is a natural outcome of the primarily quantitative demographic approach to this topic by population geographers, rural geographers and others (Smith, 2007; Milbourne, 2007). Migration is an inherently complex spatial and social phenomenon, yet only a relatively small portion of that complexity is captured by census statistics. Therefore, shedding light on the complexity of the migration process itself (e.g. how many moves over what distances, and to what places over what period of time) as well as the motives for, and personal experiences of, moving involves a commitment to more qualitative methods and techniques (as used by Gibson (this volume) and Easthope and Gabriel (this volume)), as well as to longitudinal analyses. The meshing, in this themed collection, of cultural and demographic approaches to the phenomenon of youth migration raises new kinds of questions about what has been assumed in the media, in policy and in prior research (Gabriel, 2002). Most simply, to what extent is rural youth out-migration a problem? This is both a statistical and semiotic concern. Clearly, youth out-migration has accelerated (Argent and Walmsley, this issue). It contributes to local skills shortages and reduces the pool of potential future partners for young people. It can also contribute to the set of wider discourses of ‘decline’ in rural places and thus feed into and perpetuate ‘doom and gloom’ predictions. But there are some potential benefits of youth out-migration, contingent on who is doing the moving, and why, and on what they gain from the experience. Mobile young people experience the diversity of other places, learn to live in big cities, and sometimes return with new skills, insights, and a wider sense of the world (though, as Davies shows in this issue, the intentions by some to return may evaporate once the move away has been made). Much of the public debate about the problems of youth exodus from rural areas may well ‘ring true’, but the assumptions being made in these wider arenas require constant critical assessment, lest researchers become ‘blind’ to alternative explanations and interpretations. This can have important policy implications. For instance, at a recent Victorian State parliamentary inquiry into the retention of youth in rural communities, rural leaders admitted that casting youth out-migration as a problem alongside other negative media images (of drought, withdrawal of services, ageing, etc.) only hastened the impulse of young people to leave: why would they stay in places with such hardships? Beyond structural economic reform, it was argued that a reversal in image was most needed, and that youth who had already left should be seen not as a loss, but as a group to encourage and to maintain positive connections with – as potential returnees (see Brown, 2006; Parliament of Victoria, 2006). Insights from cultural geography are important here – particularly the understanding of personal and social identities as being multiple and fluid, rather than singular or fixed (Valentine, 2003). Young people leaving rural areas are not a homogenous or passive group merely submerging themselves within a wider structural flow of population movement (Panelli, 2002). Young people have multiple aspects to their lives and diverse, sometimes competing, desires for their future (in a career, or within a family or social setting). Expectations placed on young people can be overlysimplistic, ascribing truncated identities to young people when, in reality, their social and psychological outlooks, and positions within their communities and in relation to their home towns are far more complex (see Easthope and Gabriel, this issue). Academically-gifted children or those of ambitious, socially mobile parents may be automatically sent off to city universities or boarding schools, while seemingly less academic kids might be expected to stay in town and get a job. Many of those young people expected by their parents to stay on family farms simply may not see much of a future in doing so after leaving school, but then some might return later in their working lives when their priorities change (Stockdale, 2002). Young people might also feel that they do or do not belong in rural places, for any number of reasons connected to how people perceive them, or due to their conceptions of their identities (see Kraack and Kenway, 2002; Gibson, this issue). Research on rural youth migration would benefit from remaining sensitive to how people imagine themselves, how they see their identities as belonging or being constrained in particular places, or as capable of transformation through moving to other places (see Gabriel, 2006; Gorman-Murray, 2007). The agency of young people thus needs to be acknowledged in the research process (Panelli, 2002), and in the interpretations of how decisions are made about their lives (see Drozdzewski, this issue). With this increasing breadth of perspectives being brought to bear on the contemporary rural problematic, this small collection of papers on rural youth migration is a timely contribution to the ongoing discussion and debate over the future shape and nature of Australian rural society. We do not necessarily intend this special part edition of Geographical Research to be seen as an agenda-setting collection of papers. Nevertheless, as a set they highlight, we believe, fruitful grounds for future collaboration and cross-fertilisation amongst rural, cultural and population geographers in the study of cultures of rural youth migration and transitions throughout the life-course more generally. The papers in this collection reflect on aspects of the ‘getting on, getting up and getting out’ of rural youth migration trends and processes. Argent and Walmsley shed light on the complex spatial dimensions of recent rural youth out-, in- and net migration flows across inland Australia during the 1990s and the first decade of the new century. They emphasise that increasingly large numbers of young adults have been ‘getting out’ of both inland and coastal non-metropolitan regions. However, in spite of the orthodoxy of the ‘bright lights, big city’ rationale for much rural youth migration behaviour, Argent and Walmsley reveal that the destinations for many young people are actually within the same broad region as their childhood homes. Whether these more localised migration patterns are merely the first steps in a longer journey to the cities is a hypothesis to be tested in future census analyses. Danielle Drozdzewski's paper follows with an account of some of the reasons that young people give when they are asked why they might ‘get up’ and leave rural areas after finishing school. The irony here is that Drozdzewski's case study is of a growing coastal resort/service centre town – not the stereotypical ‘dying’ or shrinking inland town. And yet it mirrors the results of previous studies of youth out-migration from declining regions, namely that educational opportunities, socio-economic background and familial experiences all modify migration intentions. Amanda Davies then reverses the analytical telescope in her investigation of the migration intentions of university students in Perth, Western Australia, upon the completion of their studies. Davies found that most students had few plans to move to rural Western Australia to embark on a career. However, the results varied considerably depending on whether or not a student had grown up in or had some other experience of inland regions such as the central Wheatbelt. Hazel Easthope and Michelle Gabriel by contrast offer a more qualitative perspective on what it is like to grow up in a migration culture where leaving is a standard expectation, and on what it feels like to return. Youth out-migration raises questions not just about who leaves, and why, but deeper questions about how the migration experience may shape one's identity and concepts of one's ‘home’. They also point to the importance of thinking critically about how the youth migration issue is framed in media and policy discourse. Chris Gibson's paper continues the qualitative theme, rounding off the collection by asking questions about what can or cannot be done about rural youth out-migration. In at least one region, creative industries are seen as a new option for jobs growth, providing alternative career paths for young people uninspired by agriculture, tourism or regional service industries. The manner in which rural out-migration has been depicted in much recent research gives the impression that this is an insurmountable problem, especially in the midst of global restructuring and widespread generational change. Is this necessarily the case? Gibson analyses a case study from northern New South Wales where attempts have been made to promote new industries to young people in efforts to retain them. Predictions of jobs growth may be overstated, but new creative industries offer some hope as a means of encouraging a sense of belonging amongst young people in rural areas. Overall, the papers represent a range of methodological and philosophical approaches to the topic, from the more orthodox quantitative analysis of population geography (Argent and Walmsley) to more deeply qualitative and critically oriented work (Easthope and Gabriel). Collectively, they highlight the interplay of structural factors and more slippery cultural perceptions and discourses in shaping the youth migration phenomenon. It is abundantly clear that context matters and that individuals shape their own mobilities – but also that there are commonalities between places, and similarities in the ways in which stories of in and out-migration are told (Panelli, 2002). As a final comment, we note that almost all these papers focus primarily upon youth themselves, as individual agents or as categories, but that they say rather little about space and place. Although most of the papers discuss the particular economic and social characteristics of their case study regions and/or towns, there is little in-depth exploration of place. Here we are referring to the locational and historical forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, in a mutually constitutive way, the rural centres and broader zones that are losing ‘their’ children and young adults. In what ways have the social, cultural and economic evolution of these communities affected contemporary young peoples’ senses of opportunity and belonging so that many of them actively wish to and, in fact, do leave? To what extent can rural communities control or, at least, manage the forces driving this desire? To some extent, this lack of treatment can be attributed to the stipulated brevity of the papers. Future research could certainly pursue these dimensions of the rural youth migration phenomenon in more depth, exploring not just demographic trends or young people's migratory intentions from particular places, but focus more specifically on the mutual co-constitution of place and mobile social identities

Economic growth · Geography · Metropolitan area · Political science · Rural area · Education Systems and Policy · Rural development and sustainability · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics