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- Convenors:
-
Lauri Turpeinen
(University of Helsinki)
Hanna Snellman (University of Helsinki)
Kjell Hansen (Urban and rural development)
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- Stream:
- Migration
- Location:
- ZHG 002
- Start time:
- 27 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The concept of Cultures of Migration tries to explain social climates in which it has become normative for young people to leave. They are often associated with rural spaces, but can affect urban regions as well. This panel collects papers engaging with various aspects of Cultures of Migration.
Long Abstract:
The concept of Cultures of Migration offers a perspective on out-migration both from rural regions and from shrinking cities. Its gaze goes beyond structural reasons in explaining population loss, as it rather tries to grasp the effects and the development of a social climate of hopelessness in which it becomes normative for the young to migrate. The expected life-path of a young person in a region with a Culture of Migration does include abandoning the region. At the same time, the ambitions of those staying behind and therefore deviating from this model are denigrated as illegitimate. Past research was amongst others conducted in Mexico (Kandel/Massey 2002), India (Ali 2007), and Morocco (Heering et al. 2004).
In this panel we want to gather contributions from researchers engaging with various phenomenons that can be understood through a lens sharpened by this concept. Topics may for instance include research on out-migration from rural spaces with a Culture of Migration, youth mobilities and Cultures of Migration, the effects of Cultures of Migration on shrinking cities, the experience of making a region with a Culture of Migration your home, the reception of refugees in rural regions with a Culture of Migration, being young in a Culture of Migration, indigenous youth in areas with a Culture of Migration, and moreover also papers on the theoretical difficulties of the concept, like the possible entanglements between it and the stigmatization of rural spaces.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
New trends of relativist turn disguise the fact that the traditional attachment to the place has not disappeared even today. My fieldwork in Siberian Estonian villages highlights rather traditional meanings of home. In paper I analyse the different levels of home of Siberian Estonians.
Paper long abstract:
Migration has been called a phenomenon of the post modern world and one has noted that the diaspora experience that one previously had described as rootlessness and alienation, has currently become a classical phenomenon. These new trends disguise the fact that the traditional attachment to the place has not disappeared even today. While conducting fieldwork, ethnologists and folklorists still experience classical manifestations of attachment to place, where home is perceived as the place of security and identification. My fieldwork in Siberian Estonian villages highlights rather traditional meanings of home: home as the orientated centre, the concentric structure of the perceived home territory and the positioning of social groups on the we vs others-axis as per this concentric structure.
The emigration from Estonia to Siberia took place in the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. The Estonian settlements in Siberia were formed on an ethnic basis and they were typical little communities. Village is the place where the settlers live and act. It is the place that affords identity. In my paper I analyse the different levels of territorial identity of Siberian Estonians: home, village, neighbourhood, Siberia as identificator.
Paper short abstract:
The presentation will look at both the theoretical and empirical challenges to the concept of the Culture of Migration.
Paper long abstract:
My presentation will be exploring the idea of the Culture of Migration in the context of taints that migration leaves on the migrant in regions where migration might be a practical reality but is by no means a culturally accepted act. I will consider this from both ends: on the one hand, the nationalist states of Eastern Europe, Estonia in particular, have been hostile to in-migration, which has rubbed off on migration more generally. This is in a strange contradiction with the politicoeconomic reality of neoliberalism that Estonians have supposedly accepted wholeheartedly since early 1990s, a discrepancy further complicated by the success story that Estonia is told to have been amongst the post-socialist states, and the status of rural regions from which migration has been the greatest. On the other hand, the destination countries provide a further taint that migrants, especially from Eastern Europe, have to face.
I will be considering these moral and cultural minefields that migrants face through data from my fieldwork in Estonian rural regions on the one hand, and amongst migrants in the UK on the other. Leaving behind even the most hopeless of environment triggers many moral challenges which need to be included if using the concept of Culture of Migration.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses past research using the concept of Cultures of Migration. It will assess, if the concept (1) stigmatizes rural spaces and (2) is built on a rural/urban dichotomy. Modifications of how to keep the concept usable in spite of theoretical challenges will be presented as well.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of Cultures of Migration has been used to explain the development of social climates in which the out-migration of the young becomes normative. Hence, in a Culture of Migration leaving a region is regarded to be the only route for the young to attain success in life, while the ambitions and dreams of those wishing to stay are simultaneously being devalued. In most cases, research projects employing the concept have been conducted in rural regions, even though exceptions like Ali (2007) have to be noted. The narrative of rural spaces with a Culture of Migration being declining regions unable to provide a future for the young is widespread. Yet, these sentiments may be unnecessarily stigmatizing rural spaces and if characterizations continue this way, they could even further reinforce deterioration in some regions. It would be distorting and a simplification to situate a future only in urban centers and to picture rural spaces with a Culture of Migration as lost causes inhabited only by those left behind by modern society. These assumptions would be reminiscent of the shunned rural/urban dichotomy. Therefore, I will be analyzing past research using the concept and also the idea of Cultures of Migration itself in this paper in order to establish how founded these accusations really are. Lastly, I will be sketching out ways of how to avoid pitfalls in building research designs based on the concept and how it can remain usable in spite of theoretical difficulties.
Paper short abstract:
My paper addresses the concept of Cultures of Migration in the context of rural areas in Finland. I challenge the idea of countryside being only a place where people flee from, and focus on in-migration by exploring the reasons why people return to areas they have once left behind.
Paper long abstract:
Rural areas in Finland are demarcated by out-migration especially when the life choices of rural youth and elders are studied. The young have to leave their homes in order to educate themselves and find jobs and the elderly move closer to daily needed services. On the other hand, recent research has shown how rural migration is becoming increasingly two-way process. Young couples and families moving from urban centers to countryside are changing the patterns of Cultures of Migration especially in rural areas near cities, but in-migration also takes place in more remote areas.
What allures people to migrate and dwell in areas with lack of jobs and no services? I will scrutinize this question by charting individual reasons why young people move from rural areas, and especially, why they come back. I use the concept of home as a starting point of my analysis, which illuminates the meanings attached to rural areas and rurality within the Cultures of Migration. My research is based on interview data I collected from people who reside in remote rural areas. The themes of the interviews encompassed informants' relation to their (rural) home regions and current place of residence, daily living in the country and meanings attached to place of home.