‘The Summers Were Getting Hotter’: exploring motivations for migration to Tasmania away from mainland Australia.

ABSTRACT

In recent times there has been a population turnaround in the island state of Tasmania sparked by an increase in in-migration of mainland urban dwellers. This paper argues that one of the major driving factors of this change is the quest for a new lifestyle in regional/rural life, that incorporates a desire for a temperate climate. As literature in lifestyle migration shows, this quest for a new life does not end once migration is over. Rather, the migration experience continues well after the move. In this paper, it will be shown how weather not only attracts migrants into Tasmania, but then encourages/discourages certain activities allowing the individual to engage in new ways of living. The paper suggests that while we need to be careful about romanticising this, we can potentially view this shift as emblematic of people’s relationship to climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Tasmania
• lifestyle migration
• amenity migration
• weather
• climate change
• counter-urbanisation

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Numbering of participants occurs randomly to ensure privacy of participants as much as possible.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nick Osbaldiston

Nick Osbaldiston is a sociologist at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. He is the author of several publications on migration including Understanding Lifestyle Migration (with Michaela Benson, Palgrave, 2014) and Seeking Authenticity in Place, Culture and Self (Palgrave, 2012). He continues to research in the area of lifestyle and amenity migration with emphasis on internal movements within Australia.