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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to problematize and discuss how lifestyle migration dwellings incorporate both living spaces, and surrounding areas in the rural regions. This paper will examine the possibilities to expand the meanings of rural dwelling through exploring lifestyle migration to rural areas.

Paper long abstract:

Present Swedish rurality faces great socio-economic struggles due to depopulation and post-industrialization processes. An effect of this is a decline in employment possibilities, which might lead rural people to move or commute to urban areas. Simultaneously, rural areas are targets for privileged lifestyle migration and second home ownership by people from urban areas, as well as nationals from other European countries, for instance Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands etc. They might either dwell temporarily or seasonally, or come to settle in the rural regions, on both a long-term and a short-term basis. This could lead to transient and mobile populations in Swedish rural areas, which have different effects on the local communities, and individual lives. This paper aims to problematize and discuss how migrant rural dwellings incorporate both living spaces, and surrounding areas. More specifically, the rural will be examined as a combined site for dwelling, recreation, and desired lifestyles. When studying this, we will highlight how this phenomenon may be initiated both by the lifestyle migrants themselves, and by initiatives and marketing strategies from regional and local authorities and private enterprises. In a practical everyday life of being a migrant in a rural setting, the expected possibilities might be limited by local conditions, such as power orders, and difficulties in co-existence with local inhabitants. Drawing from ethnological knowledge production of rural studies and lifestyle migration studies, this paper will explore the possibilities to expand the meanings of rural dwelling among lifestyle migrants.