Escape to the countryside: Affects and rural eventful atmospheres

Abstract

For many years, researchers have focused on counterurbanisation, with a particular emphasis on the ‘representations of rural places’. They have frequently contended that this is a phenomenon mainly expressed by older adults or those from more privileged social backgrounds. However, attention has recently moved away from simply seeing pro-rural migrants as a calculating subject to considering them more as a contextual subject. Concerns have also shifted from ‘rural idyll’ migration to why migrants stay, despite a significant mismatch between representation and reality. While scholarly investigations on rural migration have drawn attention to how inertia is cumulative, insufficient attention has been paid to what newcomers encounter in their everyday lives and how nonhuman entities shape migrants' calculations and recalibrations. This paper draws on recent scholarship on a more-than-representational approach, developing the idea of rural as the site of eventful encounters, or rural eventful atmospheres, to bridge these conceptual and empirical gaps. Through semi-structured in-depth interviews with young pro-rural migrants, this paper suggests that rural places provide opportunities for young people to experience an eventful life where both humans and nonhumans play important roles. These affective experiences can be unexpected and even painful, challenging the romanticised portrayal of more-than-representational rurality. By focusing on the nonrepresentational dimensions of rural life, the paper emphasises the need to pay closer attention to young migrants' sensory and embodied encounters with the diverse rural environment rather than solely relying on their expressions of rurality from a distance.