Seeking ‘home’ through counter-urban migration to coastal Australia

ABSTRACT

Many motives for undertaking a counter-urban move appear to be associated with a search for a sense of ‘home’, such as moving for a sense of community, for affordable or larger housing, perceptions of a ‘safer’ area for children, or moving to a childhood hometown. However, rarely is counter-urban migration directly linked to the concept of home. In this paper, I make the direct link between counter-urban moves and the search for a sense of home using biographies of four (4) counter-urban movers to the Sunshine Coast, Australia. The participants each moved to the area in a search for a sense of home related to four key themes: housing, family, stability and familiarity, however they varied in their pre-move experiences and expectations of how the Sunshine Coast would improve their sense of home. These differences impacted their post-move experiences, as those participants with prior familiarity with the Sunshine Coast felt a greater sense of home post-move. This paper provides an important conceptual link between the search for a sense of home and counterurbanisation, to add further critical insight into motivations and experiences of counter-urban migrants, and the perceptions of a sense of home being better achieved outside of major cities..

KEYWORDS:

• Home
• counterurbanisation
• Australia
• migration
• lifestyle
• seachange
• mobility

Acknowledgments:

I would like to thank the Cities Writing Group and the anonymous reviewers for their excellent advice throughout the drafting of this paper, and the participants for their invaluable contribution to this research. This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caitlin Buckle

Dr Caitlin Buckle is a Research Associate in Housing Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research follows the lived experience of different migration and housing trajectories, and incorporates creative digital methods. Her research interests lie in non-metropolitan housing, mobility and counter-urban migration studies.