Paper short abstract:

This contribution will focus on different migration and mobility patterns in two Swiss mountain regions, including lifestyle mobilities and (“low skilled”) labor migrations, and their implications on local identities and imaginaries about the “local” and the “global”.

Paper long abstract:

With the revalorization of mountainous and rural regions and socio-economic transformations such as urbanization and rural gentrification, recent studies on migration and mobilities in the mountains mostly focused on amenity migration, lifestyle mobilities and multilocal residentialities (e.g. Benson & Osbaldiston 2014, Perlik 2011, Moss&Glorioso 2014). However, in many mountain regions we can observe a “touristic urbanization” (Stock/Lucas 2012) with a subsequent growth of e.g. the hospitality industry and corresponding migrations and mobilities of “low skilled workers” (often labelled as “saisonniers”). Thus, migration patterns in such regions are very diverse and we find not only (former) tourists, second-home owners and “expats” who move, stay and settle in mountain areas, but also (former) working tourists, labor migrants and seasonal workers. With their different cultural and social backgrounds these new inhabitants can be said to find themselves in different “regimes of mobility” (Glick Schiller/Salazar 2014) leading to different positions in global and local social hierarchies (Salazar 2020).

This contribution aims at shedding light on identity strategies and social practices of new mountain inhabitants in two Swiss ski resorts dealing with their mobilities and place attachments in the framework of their respective “regimes of mobility” and the “local” narratives of migration and “integration”. Doing this, I will tackle questions such as: How do (labor) “migrants” in comparison to “cosmopolitan expats” shape their strategies of “being mobile” and “becoming local” in mountain regions? And what kinds of imaginaries about the “local” (and the “global”) are mobilized by these new mountain inhabitants?