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Symbolic mobility capital to fight the social stigma of staying
- Source :
- Journal of Youth Studies, 26(2), 153-169
- Publication Year :
- 2023
-
Abstract
- Although the outmigration choices of young adults from peripheral to urban regions to attend higher education have been researched extensively, young adults’ decisions to stay in, nearby, or return to, the peripheral home region have received less attention. This paper explores how young adults who are engaged in higher education re-imagine narratives related to notions of ‘leaving’ in their mobility biographies to justify their choice to stay in or return to their peripheral home region. We conducted in-depth interviews with postgraduate students in peripheral regions in Denmark and the Netherlands. Our findings confirm the existence of a mobility imperative for young adults in peripheral regions reproduced by both our participants and their social relations. However, we additionally find that young adults re-imagine narratives of ‘leaving’ which simultaneously correspond with contemporary discourses on place and residential mobility in the form of valuing (dis)connection to place, experiencing urban lifestyles, and life phase transitions, but which also open up possibilities for re-evaluating the attractiveness of often stigmatized peripheral regions. We suggest that narratives of ‘leaving’ during higher education help young adults to build what we call ‘symbolic mobility capital’ to mitigate the negative connotations related to living in a peripheral region.
- Subjects :
- staying
Sociology and Political Science
Student life
Social stigma
Higher education
business.industry
General Social Sciences
Identity (social science)
Gender studies
leaving
student life
Identity
Capital (economics)
Narrative
peripherality
Sociology
Young adult
Life-span and Life-course Studies
business
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 13676261
- Volume :
- 26
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Youth Studies
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....a12ac8283dd02db1b670af165b43721b