"At Risk" of Being Rural? The Experience of Rural Youth in a Risk Society

Abstract

This paper uses data from a researcher-designed longitudinal survey of youth to examine factors associated with whether rural youth return to or stay in their home communities or a similar rural community. It discusses the effects of this decision to be a young adult in a rural community. A qualitative analysis expands the more quantitative one in order to document how rural youth articulate what it means to be rural in relation to educational and/or career choices. Drawing on risk-society discourse and study, the paper argues that what remains largely hidden to date is that the features of the risk society, including greater uncertainty, fragmentation of and increasingly individualized life-course transition processes, have mostly ignored the fact that rural youth remain at greater comparative risk than their urban counterparts. Our analysis suggests that, despite feeling satisfied with their personal and family life and despite seeing home and family as important, many rural youth now frame their rurality and their choice to live in their home communities as failures, either in relation to education and/or to occupation and career. In the absence of systemic solutions to mitigate and address the risks of staying home for rural youth, many individuals, we find, embody socioeconomic problems as an inability to “get very far.” They often see themselves as having few options. Our findings suggest that more attention is needed on what it is about our ideas of modernity and urban mobility, evidenced in notions of the risk society, which leads so many rural youth to leave their home communities, or to be dissatisfied with their opportunities if they opt to stay. Key words: rural youth, risk, life-course transitions, education, mobility