Urban Flight and Rural Rights in a Pandemic: Exploring Narratives of Place, Displacement, and “the Right to Be Rural” in the Context of COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many preexisting challenges facing rural communities and brought tensions in rural–urban relations closer to the surface. This article offers an explorative contribution to discussions in critical geography by comparing media narratives surrounding urban flight to rural places during the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparing field sites in rural Michigan (United States), Ontario (Canada), and the “Atlantic bubble” (Canada), we use an emerging theorization of the “right to be rural” to explore how urban flight and rural displacement are tied to concepts of community, identity, and safety. This approach is grounded in the political economy of rurality and emphasizes the power relations, inequalities, and historical contingencies that structure the experiences of full-time and part-time rural residents during the pandemic. Our exploratory discussion surfaces critical tensions in the geographically and socioeconomically uneven implications of the pandemic, including the “anxious economic acquiescence” experienced in many tourism-dependent rural regions and both the “hard” and “soft” ways in which rural regions responded to increased demands for access. We argue that the political economy of rural–urban relations is critical to understanding the social processes that will shape the “right to be rural” during and after COVID-19.

新冠病毒流行加剧了农村社区的许多既有挑战, 也揭开了城乡的紧张关系。本文比较了新冠病毒流行期间乘飞机从城市到农村的媒体报道, 对批判地理学进行有益的探讨。我们利用“选择农村的权利”的新理论, 比较了密歇根州（美国）、安大略省（加拿大）和“大西洋泡沫”（Atlantic Bubble, 加拿大）的农村地区, 探索了城市飞行和农村迁移与社区、身份和安全的关系。基于农村政治经济学, 强调了塑造全职和兼职农民疫情经历的权力关系、不平等和历史偶然性。我们的探索性讨论, 揭示了疫情导致地理和社会经济不均衡影响的紧张局面--许多依赖旅游业的农村地区经历的“焦虑的经济承受”、农村地区应对准入需求增长的“硬”和“软”方式。我们认为, 为了理解疫情期间和之后塑造“选择农村的权利”的社会过程, 城乡关系政治经济学能起到关键的作用。

La pandemia del COVI-19 ha exacerbado muchos de los retos preexistentes que enfrentan las comunidades rurales, al tiempo que generó tensiones en las relaciones rural-urbano más cercanas a lo visible. Este artículo ofrece una contribución exploratoria a las discusiones de la geografía crítica, comparando las narrativas de los medios de comunicación en torno a la fuga urbana hacia los lugares rurales durante la pandemia del COVID-19. Comparando lugares del campo de las zonas rurales de Michigan (Estados Unidos), Ontario (Canadá) y la Burbuja atlántica (Canadá), usamos una surgente teorización del “derecho a ser rural”, para explorar cómo la fuga urbana y el desplazamiento rural van atados a los conceptos de comunidad, identidad y seguridad. Este enfoque se fundamenta en la economía política de la ruralidad y enfatiza las relaciones de poder, las desigualdades y las contingencias históricas que estructuran las experiencias de los residentes rurales de tiempo completo y de tiempo parcial, durante la pandemia. Nuestra discusión exploratoria pone de manifiesto tensiones críticas en las implicaciones geográfica y socioeconómicamente desiguales de la pandemia, incluyendo la “ansiosa aquiescencia económica” experimentada en numerosas regiones rurales que dependen del turismo, y las formas “duras” y “blandas” como las regiones rurales respondieron a las crecientes demandas de acceso.

Key Words:

• Canada
• COVID-19
• displacement
• rural
• rights

关键词:

• 加拿大
• 新冠病毒疾病
• 迁移
• 农村
• 权利。

Palabras clave:

• Canadá
• COVID-19
• derechos
• desplazamiento
• rural

Notes

1 Northern Michigan is generally used to refer to the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan (see Figure 1).

2 Provincial stay-at-home orders that barred people from interregional travel, except for essential reasons, were enacted periodically throughout the pandemic but only marginally enforced.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

S. Ashleigh Weeden

S. ASHLEIGH WEEDEN is a Research Associate with the Ontario Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and a PhD Candidate in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development in the Ontario Agricultural College at the University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada. E-mail: [email protected] Her research is primarily focused on place-based approaches to rural policy and development, with a particular emphasis on comparative policy, innovation, and rural futures.

Jean Hardy

JEAN HARDY is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media & Information at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824. E-mail: [email protected]. His primary research focus is on the role of high-tech entrepreneurship and technological innovation in rural economic and community development. He also does community-based participatory design research with rural LGBTQ people to understand technology use in low-resource settings.

Karen Foster

KAREN FOSTER is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University and the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Rural Future for Atlantic Canada, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. She directs the Rural Futures Research Centre. Her latest work on topics such as rural economic development and occupational succession in rural family businesses, can be found on www.rfrc.ca.