A Sustainable Everyday Life for Counterurbanising Swedish Families

Abstract

Even though urbanisation is the prevailing trend in modern societies, the net migration balance of Sweden’s largest cities has been negative for the past few years, and overrepresented among these migrants are families with young children. The stories of counterurbanisation have often relied on rather stereotypical representations of unsustainable city life versus sustainable rural life, thus strengthening the much criticised rural–urban binary. The aim of this article is to explore how the counterurbanising families’ ideas of “a sustainable everyday life” developed during and after the migration event. We uncover the needs, ideological foundations, practices, capacities, social atmosphere, temporality, and place-based understanding of one’s own role and responsibilities in society by studying what the families do in their everyday lives, what they are striving to achieve, and how they understand sustainability. Counterurbanising families represent a driven group that are not primarily guided by economic wants—as many of their active choices are lifestyle-driven. Our theoretical foundation highlights the structures and dimensions of social sustainability, relational place, and learning, contrasted with the subjectivity of everyday life in the urban–rural transition. Forty-five in-depth interviews (1–2 h) were conducted via video conference software, and the material was analysed using thematic analysis. The findings indicate that the views and understandings of social sustainability among counterurbanising young families highlight place-based needs and conditions, with implications for sustainability and mobility research, individuals, and contemporary society as a whole in navigating the somewhat diminishing rural–urban dichotomy.