Young People's Place-Making in a Regional Australian Town

Abstract

The intensification of globalising flows associated with the current condition of globalisation has had a significant impact on the ways that people relate to, talk about, and construct place. In the context of non-urban places, impacts of globalisation are felt by young people who are uniquely ‘embedded’ in local places. However, the ways that young people construct place under these conditions is opaque and complex. This article addresses Farrugia, D. (). Journal of Youth Studies 17 (3) pp. 293–307 call for greater focus on the experiences of young rural people constructing place under the conditions of globalisation. A recent focus group study in regional Australian with 16-28 year-old people builds on the work of rural sociologists investigating this area. Place-making is demonstrated for analysis in this article through young people's discursive narratives combined with verbal expressions of a more experiential and embodied place-making practice. This article illustrates that young people's place-making ‘beyond the metropole’ endures in robust and unique ways.