Chased from Heaven or Escaping Tourist Hell? Venice's Graduate Students in Focus

Abstract

This work addresses a key question for the construction and evolution of university cities: their retentiveness of the student population once they complete their studies. It so does with a focus on a distinctively tourist city like Venice, highly attractive for young adults in education, yet at the same time subject to strong pressures for displacement of stable residents. The balance between these two forcefields seems to be on the losing side in recent years. In our research we trace this evolution, through the life histories of a sample of graduates at local universities that resided in Venice in different periods over the last 30 years. We therefore tackle the experiences, motivations and perceptions that have either favoured their integration in this ‘dream place’, or triggered an eventual decision to leave, framed by the irresistible expansion of the city's tourist dimension.