Place, nature and migration: Student's attachment to their rural home places

Abstract

Mobility and migration are central aspect of modern society and challenges rural areas both structurally and culturally and young people, in particular, are described as globally oriented and detached from tradition. Instead of arguing that places have less importance in modern society, the paper discusses how people's attachment to place must be considered as a multidimensional, dynamic and context related phenomenon by using regional university students' stories about their relationship to home place in rural as the empirical point of departure. In addition, migration does not imply local detachment. In their stories, geographical background is in different ways associated with gender, kinship, class and life style. The meaning they ascribe to their home place and how they describe their relationship to their home place can be considered as part of their formation and management of identity. © European Society for Rural Sociology.