Local Ambivalence to Diverse Mobilities – The Case of a Norwegian Rural Village

Abstract

In Norway, immigration and tourism have become important drivers of diversity in rural communities. While rural migration mostly has been studied from the migrants’ perspective, this article examines how long‐term residents in a Norwegian rural mountain resort characterised by seasonal tourism and labour immigration experience the flux of diverse migrants and how this affects them and the local community. The article is based on 12 interviews with men and women who are long‐term community residents. A major narrative of the locals is that of the village and its inhabitants as accustomed to mobility, a local knowledge acquired through decades of tourism and in‐migration. But there are also narratives of ambivalence and contradictions and of the place as saturated by mobilities. The article explores how locals adjust to and avoid these mobilities.

«Vi er jo et mangfoldssamfunn.» Mangfold som offentlig integreringsfortelling: (re)produksjon av likhet og ulikhet?

“…Det er også i lokalsamfunnets interesse at flest mulig kjenner til hverandre og tar del i aktiviteter, noe som kan utlegges som nødvendig for å skape fellesskap, tilhørighet og robusthet for lokal utvikling (Søholt mfl. 2018;Villa 2019). Samtidig kan det argumenteres for at disse aktivitetene produserer en forståelse av at innvandrede kvinner har større interesse av å vaere sammen med andre innvandrede kvinner, fordi de underforstått har sammenfallende situasjoner og interesser.…”

“…Det er klare forventninger til innvandrerne om å laere det norske språket, komme i jobb og ta del i lokalsamfunnets aktiviteter, som for eksempel dugnad i grenda eller idrettslaget (Søholt mfl. 2018;Villa 2019;Penner 2021). De som ikke gjør dette, blir omtalt som ikke-integrerte eller uvillige (Kontos 2014), og det blir saerlig koblet til spesifikke grupper og ikke til individer.…”

Rural youth and their lack of mobility

“…A rurális települések lakosságcsökkenése, egyes területeken az elnéptelenedés veszélye folyamatosan a kutatások, a fejlesztéspolitika, az uniós tervezés napirendjén tartja a migráció kérdéskörét (Schmied 2002, Solana -Solana 2010. Ahogy Marian Villa (2019) is kiemeli, a városok és falvak közötti népességmozgásban a fiatalok elvándorlása a legfőbb hajtóerő a turizmus, az új életformát kereső városiak, a nyaraló-és hétvégiház-tulajdonosok tömeges megjelenése és a városi munkahelyekről kiszorulók mellett. A települések közötti mobilitás és a stabilitás, valamint a befogadás és elutasítás egy adott helyen, egymás kölcsönhatásai miatt váltak kutatási témává (Milbourne -Kitchen 2014).…”

Mobilities, locality and place-making: understanding categories of (non-)membership in a peripheral valley

“…Instead, the existing literature on human mobilities in villages has mostly documented specific types of (im)mobility, such as the mobilities of youth (Farrugia 2016), the mobilities of homeless people (Cloke, Milbourne, and Widdowfield 2003), contemporary rural in-migration (Stockdale 2016) and processes of staying (Erickson, Sanders, and Cope 2018). While a few studies have worked on the emplaced construction of difference and membership through a migration or mobility lens (Schech 2014;Villa 2019), scholars have rarely addressed the entanglement of (im)mobilities and their relationship with local processes of community formation (as an exception we can point to the work of Olwig (2003)). Our study contributes to these questions by combining dynamics of mobility and locality while analysing how they partake in the evolving and shifting contours of the imagined community of fate.…”