Youth “Settled” by Mobility: Ethnography of a Portuguese Village

Abstract

This chapter is the product of ethnographic research conducted in a village located in lower Alentejo, Portugal, on the border with Spain. It studies how diverse social participants organise their daily lives in their multiple circulations throughout varied contexts such as the home, outdoors, public and private, moving from rural to urban or urban to rural, and both locally and nationally. The focus is on young population groups. The location of the village in a border zone is emphasised, as it directly or indirectly may be advantageous to the residents in terms of exploring and moving to other spaces, and it is part of the ebb and flow of their experiences. The qualitative methodology combines multiple sources and testimonies based on 3 years of fieldwork in the analysis of how different representations and practices of mobility influence life and permanence in the village. The chapter contains points about the different scales of mobilities, i.e. the international, the national, the regional and cyberspace.