Recent surveys of high school students in Alaska's Northwest Arctic and Bristol Bay regions reflect the social changes taking place in rural Native communities. Significant differences exist between the aspirations of young people in small villages and those in the larger towns that constitute regional hubs (Kotzebue and Dillingham). Town students, who attend more complete and varied high schools, express greater confidence in their educations and more interest in attending college. Jobs at Red Dog Mine, recently opened in the Northwest Arctic, appeal particularly to young males with strong ties to village life. This labor pool presents special challenges for the mine's goal of 100% Native employment, however. A majority of town students and about half of the village students expect to migrate permanently away from their home region. The likelihood of expecting migration increases curvilinearly with community size. Young women and collegeaspiring students disproportionately expect outmigration. Differential migration affects the acculturation and life prospects of individuals and shapes the demographic profile of Alaskan villages, towns, and cities.
Rural communities in Iceland have been profoundly affected by natural resource management policies. As part of a regional development strategy, a 322,000 ton aluminium smelter and 650 megawatt hydroelectric power plant were built in the sparsely populated Eastfjords region. This project was aimed at revitalizing the region and creating employment, enabling youth to stay in home communities. Using surveys from 1992-2007, changes in migration expectations are compared between Eastfjords and equally rural Westfjords far from the project. The majority of rural youth want to outmigrate and the project had no discernable effect on such intentions. Regardless of employment opportunities rural youth increasingly want to move to urban areas or abroad. Gender differences disappeared over time as "female flight" became "youth flight". The findings suggest large-scale natural resource projects alone are not sufficient and that more comprehensive rural development policies are needed to stem the tide of rural youth out-migration.
The villages of rural Alaska comprise one of the most exceptional, yet least visible, sociocultural environments in the United States They are geographically remote, and set off from the mainstream also by their unique Eskimo, Indian or Aleut cultures. At the same time many economic, legal and cultural connections pull these villages toward the dominant U.S. society, impelling continual and rapid social change. Our research focuses on adolescents growing up in this culturally complex and changing environment. We employ survey data from adolescents in 19 rural schools to explore relationships between ethnic identity and students' expectations about moving away or attending college. Many students describe their ethnic identity as mixed, both Native and non-Native. On some key variables, the responses of mixed-identity students fall between those of Natives and non-Natives, supporting a theoretical conception of ethnicity as a matter of degree rather than category. Migration and college expectations vary with ethnic identity, but the college expectations/identity relationship fades when we adjust for other variables. Ethnicity affects expectations for the most part indirectly, through “cultural tool kit” variables including family role models and support. Gender differences in expectations, on the other hand, remain substantial even after adjusting for other variables.
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