Making sense of rural identities in future horizons of Dutch and German students living in rural areas

This paper presents insight into how rural young adults in the rural areas of Oost-Groningen, The Netherlands, and Südharz, Germany, deal with their rural identity with regard to different future horizons. This paper applies future horizons instead of intended future plans to emphasize the open and uncertain nature of young adults' aspired future. Based on 15 biographical interviews and a survey to geographically contextualize these interviews , the results show how rural young adults can have parallel future horizons to maintain several options open in which they all aim to preserve a rural i... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Hofstede, Henk
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
Reihe/Periodikum: Hofstede , H 2024 , ' Making sense of rural identities in future horizons of Dutch and German students living in rural areas ' , Journal of Rural Studies , vol. 107 , pp. 103-219 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103219
Schlagwörter: Rural areas / Adulthood / Residential choices / Rural identity / Study and work choices / Biographies
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29028251
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://hdl.handle.net/11370/8a07fc5b-620e-4593-bdae-61e4bcd5d22d

This paper presents insight into how rural young adults in the rural areas of Oost-Groningen, The Netherlands, and Südharz, Germany, deal with their rural identity with regard to different future horizons. This paper applies future horizons instead of intended future plans to emphasize the open and uncertain nature of young adults' aspired future. Based on 15 biographical interviews and a survey to geographically contextualize these interviews , the results show how rural young adults can have parallel future horizons to maintain several options open in which they all aim to preserve a rural identity. This paper illustrates how rural young adults compromise a rural identity with aspirations elsewhere in a staying or rural horizon elsewhere. In addition, the results show how they deal with rural identities by further internalizing and externalizing their rural identities with variations of embracing aspects of a rural identity with regard to different future horizons. The paper concludes that young adults can be considered, however also out of uncertainty about the future, as active participants of their future who apply parallel and temporal horizons and still preserve a rural identity.