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Abstract
This article explores how migration to rural areas might be a life phase strategy, especially when families are in the expanding phase. Rural life may be experienced as qualitatively better that urban living, as safer and more relaxing. At the same time, rural life is not as exclusive choice but a part of the individual complementarity in rural–urban orientation throughout the life course. The study is based on 48 life story interviews with men and women in rural communities of central Norway. Because informants represent various age groups, the article also examines changes in rural living during the last several decades.
Acknowledgements
This article developed from an ongoing study of rural households and life modes in central Norway. The project was funded by the Norwegian Research Council from 1994 to 1998, and is Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of Sociology and Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. The present article is based on a paper written for the Oslo Summer School in Comparative Social Science Studies, “The Historical Sociology of the Family and the Life Course in Comparative Perspective,” Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo. The author is grateful to professors Tamara Hareven and Andrejs Plakans for their valuable advice and comments on an earlier version of the article, and to professors Reidar Almås and Barbro Vartdal for their continuous interest and knowledgeable suggestions on the topic.
Notes
1 Southern Europe.
2 Here the holiday houses are central. Those owned by the rural population are often cottages in the mountain areas. In Norway in 1990, 30 percent out of a sampled 3,311 people owned or disposed of holiday houses/cottages (Statistics Norway, The Time Budget Survey 1990–1991).
3 Sanitetsforening (Norwegian Women's Public Health Association.) Women volunteer workers who provide non-professional care and services for the sick and convalescing.