Youth, mobilities and multicultures in the rural Anglosphere: positioning a research agenda

Abstract

Rural mobilities have transformed the social composition of rural places across the Global North. Young people are central to these changes and their role in rural livelihoods is crucial to rural futures. Yet little is known about how youth are negotiating today’s rural multicultures in an era of accelerated mobilities and on the back of decades of neoliberal restructuring. This article reviews scholarship on young people’s social relationships across ethnic and racial differences in rural Australia, the US, Canada and England, and excavates three trends within this literature. These are analyses of white and rural identity construction, policy and programme responses to rural youth “mixing”, and strategies by racialized youth to manage racisms. The paper signposts areas for prospective research at the intersection of rural studies, youth multicultures and race, and shows how this may contribute to understandings of identity and social relations for young people in the geopolitical present.