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This research illustrates the importance of moving beyond an economic focus, and towards an emotional one, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of why farmers can be reluctant to retire and/or pass their farm onto the next generation. We report on a two-phase qualitative study of family farm decision-making processes in Northern Ireland, drawing on 62 in-depth oral life history interviews with farmers, farmers' spouses, and farm successors. In an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the emotional aspects of retirement and succession decision-making processes, and their relationship with place belonging, in the first phase of this research we employed an innovative 'Work and Talk' method, whereby interviews were conducted while shadowing, or in some cases, co-working, with farmers on their land. The second phase of this research responded to restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, and involved remote telephone or online interviews with family farm members. This research revealed the complex relationships between a 'longing for belonging' and emotional attachment to the family farm, and the challenges associated with patrilineal farming structures, expectations and identities, in planning for succession. The emotional impacts of strained relationships with policy makers around support for retirement emerged as a surprisingly dominant theme throughout the interview process, suggesting the need for greater emphasis on the emotional aspects of farming retirement and succession planning to inform future rural development policies targeted towards the sustainability of family farms.

This research seeks to address the issues of spatial structure and counter intuitive findings in modelling population movements. Previous research based on interaction data for census administrative boundaries indicates urban – rural patterns in the propensity to travel which are exasperated in peripheral areas. These findings are considered to be an effect of the spatial structure of zonings and thus an unsuitability of the census geography in reflecting the phenomena of movement. This research, through the example of the case study of Northern Ireland, aims to create a geography through regionalization which is better suited to the geography of commuting and to apply such functional fit regions to spatial interaction modelling to better understand and evaluate regional and local commuter patterns with respect to key demographic variables. A five stage open approach is proposed with geovisualization, demographic data linkage, regionalization, spatial interaction modelling, and factor analysis to produce robust results which draw out the underlying tendencies of journey to work movements using fit for purpose zones. Based on functional fit regions, findings indicate a number of key demographic tendencies in the propensity to travel. These include the effect of affluence on the willingness to travel further; the effect of urban dwelling as a deterrent to travel further for work; the influence of rurality on the propensity to travel greater distances; the impact of a stronger employment market area on the reluctance to travel and finally the effect of increased religious differences between home and workplace on a reduced willingness to travel further. The spatial structure of the geography of modelling has a profound influence on the modelled outputs. This research demonstrates that functional fit for purpose regions created through regionalization provide a superior fit for modelling the phenomena of commuting or wider movements. The methodological framework for this research is to provide an open source, transparent and reproducible approach to geovisualization, region building and modelling through Python notably using PySAL library and Max-p regionalization and R scripting through the Factanal package. An open approach allows for applicability and development in wider fields such as transport planning, demographic policy and mobile data intelligence.