‘I Love this Place, but I Won’t Stay’: Identification with Place and Imagined Spatial Futures Among Youth Living in Rural Areas in Sweden

Abstract

This study contributes to a body of literature that addresses relationships between space, place and identity, and their effects on young people’s ‘spatial horizons’. Drawing on ethnographic data from Sweden, it analyses youths’ identification with home place and how it relates to their imagined spatial futures in terms of staying ‘local’ or migrating. The findings indicate that locality strongly influenced the identity-processing of youths, but there was no straightforward relationship between identification with home place and willingness to stay in that place. Rather the home place’s perceived and narrated relation to other places, as well as its material conditions, social relationships and practices, contributed to the youths’ articulated views of their spatial futures.