Sports and mobile imperatives in the lives of rural youths

Abstract

This paper explores the mobility processes of rural youths in relation to sports. The mobility imperative has its basis in the fact that rural youths must be mobile to gain access to the resources they need to shape their lives and create their own identities. The mobility imperative is analysed as a constellation of interrelated processes in which material inequalities, symbolic hierarchies and entanglements between bodies and places interact in a process that constitutes the mobility of young rural dwellers. This study is based on research conducted in a rural community in Sweden. We conducted interviews with eight individuals and one focus group. The analysis, inspired by biographical interviews framed according to a critical realist perspective, focused on the interviewees’ subjective experiences and how broader social structures affected these experiences. The results of the analysis indicate that mobility is an inevitable necessity for sports participation during childhood. The rural sport mobility imperative is an interaction of related processes, such as a limited supply of sports clubs and facilities, limited access to sports activities that are highly valued in contemporary youth culture and an affective conflict in establishing a connection to urban places for sport interactions.