Understanding aspirations to stay: Relative endowment within a time–space perspective

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the factors and mechanisms that underpin aspirations to stay in situations where migration could be beneficial. To do so, this article proposes a spatial–temporal comparative framework and explains aspirations to stay through the notion of relative endowment, which reveals a positive assessment of what people have, despite the awareness of social inequalities. Empirically, the article focuses on a rural town in northern Brazil that has experienced a stagnating economy since the 1990s, where young adults express aspirations to stay. Non-economic factors such as closeness to nature, family, and friends not only encourage staying, but make young people feel endowed in relation to a perceived stressful work-centered urban life. The proposed framework reveals that the overall negative perspectives on the town’s present are congruous with aspirations to stay because of young people’s positive feelings about the town’s past and future. In fact, hope plays an important role in shaping aspirations to stay. This article shows the value of considering people’s perceptions of past, present, and future and how they influence aspirations to stay, and migrate.