HEADING FOR THE CITIES? GENDER AND LIFESTYLE PATTERNS IN RURAL YOUTHS’ RESIDENTIAL PREFERENCES

Abstract

The Norwegian settlement pattern has been characterized by centralization over recent decades, in particular due to many young people leaving the countryside. In contemporary rural migration research their rural-to-urban migration has been interpreted as reflections of strong urban residential preferences; rural youths want to seek out the cities and their manifold educational, occupational and cultural offers. Special attention has been given to gender- and lifestyle-related differences; rural girls are assumed less localistic in their mindsets than boys and there are similar differences between groups of rural youths leading different lifestyles. The article critically assesses these propositions by use of survey data gathered among rural youths in the Mountain Region (Fjellregionen) of mid-eastern Norway. Employing a life phase approach, the article concludes that rural youths may have strong urban residential preferences for their ‘young adult’ phase; however, for other phases of life rural youths are less likely to hold urban preferences. Further, the analysis confirms gender and lifestyle differences in rural youth's residential preferences, though these nevertheless seem to be over-emphasized in contemporary rural migration research.

Keywords:

• gender
• lifestyle
• residential preferences
• rural out-migration
• rural youths

Acknowledgments

Thanks are given to two anonymous referees, and to colleagues at the Centre for Rural Research and at Agder Research for their helpful comments. The research has been funded by the Research Council of Norway.

Notes

1. A few teenagers who grew up in the Mountain Region may have enrolled at schools located outside the region. Also, some of those interviewed may have migrated into the region in order to enrol at one of the three schools located there. By and large, however, the pupils enrolled in the three Mountain Region upper secondary schools correspond to the 1985 to 1987 birth cohorts that have grown up in the region.

2. Norwegian: et sted på bygda, i et tettsted, i en småby, i utkanten av en storby, and midt i en storby, respectively.

3. Norwegian: Bygdeungdomslaget.

4. The soundness of the present article's methodological design is also improved, though complicated, as the survey was conducted among students in one specific study area, namely the Mountain Region. Consequently, the material does not represent a statistically representative sample of all rural youths in Norway. It is not possible to employ statistical theory of inference to generate valid knowledge about the latter group. The next step of generalization, from the population of teenagers in the Mountain Region to teenagers elsewhere in Norway, needs to be grounded in analytical generalization. The question is how far (due to non-statistical factors) results can be expected to be transferable to similar contexts (Lincoln & Guba 1985). This is a question of judgement and degrees, and not of statistical certainty. My claim, however, is that the findings presented here are transferable to many other rural areas in Norway, as the Mountain Region is very typical of remote rural regions in the country.