Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling in Sparsely Populated Areas [1st ed.] 9789811566226, 9789811566233

Citation preview

Dipping in to the North Living, Working and Traveling in Sparsely Populated Areas Edited by  Linda Lundmark Dean B. Carson · Marco Eimermann

Dipping in to the North

Linda Lundmark  •  Dean B. Carson Marco Eimermann Editors

Dipping in to the North Living, Working and Traveling in Sparsely Populated Areas

Editors Linda Lundmark Department of Geography Umeå University Umeå, Sweden Marco Eimermann Department of Geography Umeå University Umeå, Sweden

Dean B. Carson Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities Central Queensland University Cairns, QLD, Australia

ISBN 978-981-15-6622-6    ISBN 978-981-15-6623-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Paul Breddels This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

1 Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling in Sparsely Populated Areas  1 Dean B. Carson, Marco Eimermann, and Linda Lundmark 2 Who Lives in the Inland North? Dynamic, Diverse, Fragile, Robust 15 Dean B. Carson and Neil Argent 3 Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource Peripheries: A View from Northern Sweden 27 Dean B. Carson, Doris A. Carson, Marco Eimermann, Michelle Thompson, and Matthew Hayes 4 The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages in Iceland 55 Þóroddur Bjarnason 5 The Changing Youth Population 71 Dean B. Carson, Þóroddur Bjarnason, and Olof Andreas Stjernström

v

vi Contents

6 Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 89 Linda Lundmark 7 Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication in Swedish Villages107 Marco Eimermann, Daniel Tomozeiu, and Doris A. Carson 8 Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities for Employment133 Marco Eimermann and Ingemar Elander 9 Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity, Past and Present151 Carina Green, Benedict E. Singleton, and Firouz Gaini 10 A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce in Northern Sweden: Who Should It Contain, Who Is It for and What Should It Do?175 Dean B. Carson and Frida Jonsson 11 Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group Visions on Individual Sustainability Transitions195 Marco Eimermann, Charlotta Hedberg, and Mari Nuga 12 Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming217 Alexandre Dubois and Michelle Thompson 13 Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices as a Means to Promoting Entrepreneurship in Rural Sweden241 Natasha A. Webster and Gunnel Forsberg

 Contents 

vii

14 Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities for Tourism265 Linda Lundmark and Doris A. Carson 15 Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional Markets for Hinterland Tourism Destinations?285 Doris A. Carson, Kajsa G. Åberg, and Bruce Prideaux 16 Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian Second-Home Ownership in Finland311 Olga Hannonen 17 Selling Greenness333 Jundan Jasmine Zhang and Linda Lundmark 18 Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely Populated Areas349 Linda Lundmark, Dieter K. Müller, and Dorothee Bohn 19 Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth373 Tara Duncan, Maria Thulemark, and Peter Möller 20 Epilogue: From Growth to Decline to Degrowth? The Future of Northern SPAs393 Dean B. Carson, Marco Eimermann, and Linda Lundmark Index403

Notes on Contributors

Kajsa G. Åberg  works as a tourism strategist at the regional development organization of Västerbotten (Region Västerbotten) in northern Sweden. She is engaged in national and international collaborations aimed at strengthening sustainable operations in tourism and the connections between academia, policy-makers and practitioners. Current and prior research endeavours address the view on knowledge in both operational and strategic spheres of tourism development. Håkan Appelblad  (PhD) is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography in the Department of Geography, Umeå University. Appelblad’s research interests relate to tourism, rural and arctic tourism as well as regional development. He teaches regularly on various subfields within geography like tourism, population geography, urban and regional planning and regional development. Neil  Argent  is Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of New England (UNE), Australia. His research focuses on the geography of rural economic, demographic and social change in developed world nations. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Rural Studies and the Journal of Community and Rural Development.

ix

x 

Notes on Contributors

Þóroddur  Bjarnason is Professor of Sociology at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. He holds an MA from the University of Essex and a PhD from the University of Notre Dame. His research interests include the regional impact of higher education, patterns of inclusion and exclusion, adolescent well-being and the causes and consequences of geographical mobility. Dorothee  Bohn  is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden. Her dissertation focuses on the nexus between political economy and tourism development in the European Arctic. She is a member of the Formas-funded research project ‘Climate Change and the Double Amplifications of Arctic Tourism: Challenges and Potential Solutions for Tourism and Sustainable Development in an Arctic Context’. In addition to issues of tourism policy and planning, she is interested in exploring labour relations in the service sector and the intersection of the economy and the environment. Marta Bystrowska  holds a doctorate degree in human geography from the Centre for Polar Studies, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Her research was focusing on the perspectives of Arctic cruise tourism development in the time of climate change. She holds a master’s degree in political sciences and spatial economy with specialization in regional and local development from Warsaw University, Poland. Dean B. Carson  is a research professor with the Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities at Central Queensland University in Australia, and a guest professor with the Arctic Research Centre at Umeå University. His interest is in who lives in, works in and visits sparsely populated areas in high-­income countries. He has a publication record covering topics such as migration, health, tourism, resource economies and policy. He has conducted research in Australia, Sweden, Canada and Scotland, and was the founder of the Free Range international student exchange programme designed to promote interest in rural research among graduate students in those and other countries. Doris  A.  Carson is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Umeå University in northern Sweden. Her research focuses on changing population mobilities and their contributions to new local

  Notes on Contributors 

xi

development paths in sparsely populated areas, particularly those found in Sweden and Australia. Her work examines the implications of urbanization for small ‘hinterland’ communities in sparsely populated areas. She has published widely on the topics of rural and remote area tourism, local innovation systems in peripheral areas, lifestyle migration and demographic change in remote resource peripheries. Robin Cranmer  was, until retirement, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Westminster, London. He gained his PhD at the University of Oxford. His research centres on language and intercultural education. He jointly co-ordinated an EU project ‘Promoting Intercultural Competence in Translators’ and worked with London museums on the intercultural challenges of translating for international visitors. His publications focus on intercultural aspects of Translation, translating Tourism Discourse and Intercultural Pragmatics. O. Cenk Demiroglu  is a researcher and a lecturer in the Department of Geography at Umeå University and Associate Professor of Tourism with the Turkish Interuniversity Council. His research is mainly focused on the interrelationships of climate change and ski tourism. Besides research, he has served as an expert to several destination development projects and teaches tourism and GIS-related courses. Alexandre  Dubois is a human geographer, a spatial planner and a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala (Sweden). His research has focused on the opportunities and challenges for regional development in sparsely populated areas of Europe addressing varied issues such as innovation, entrepreneurship, the bioeconomy or local food systems. He is leading a project on short food supply chains in remote rural communities of Sweden and Australia granted by FORMAS, the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, and participated as an expert in the pan-European ESPON BRIDGES project. He also contributes to another FORMAS project about ‘Innovation far from the core’. Tara Duncan  is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Tourism and Leisure Research (CeTLeR), Dalarna University, Sweden, and Chair of Association for Tourism and Leisure Education and Research (ATLAS).

xii 

Notes on Contributors

Duncan’s main area of research focuses on the intersections between tourism, work and mobilities with a focus on young budget travellers, academic mobility and sustainability within tourism and hospitality careers. Marco Eimermann  is research assistant professor in the Department of Geography, and affiliated with the Arctic Research Centre (ARCUM), Umeå University, Sweden. His research interests regard lifestyle migration, downshifting practices and sustainable entrepreneurship in rural, remote and northern sparsely populated areas. Eimermann works in several FORMAS research projects (being the project leader in one of them). He is involved in the Lifestyle Migration Hub, an expanding network of migration scholars studying social rather than economic reasons for voluntary mobility and migration across the globe. He has published peerreviewed articles (e.g. in the Journal of Rural Studies and in Population, Space and Place), book chapters and books about transient and strategically switching populations in Europe. Ingemar  Elander  is Senior Professor of Politics at Örebro University and Mälardalen University, Sweden. His research interests cover policy studies and urban governance in a broad sense as exemplified in several publications on cities and climate change; environment and planning; faith-based organizations and social exclusion in cities. His research has recently covered sustainable development and urban renewal in Swedish neighbourhoods and cities, with a special focus on social aspects as documented in several publications with geographer Eva Gustavsson. Elander is co-editor of Urban Governance in Europe (2009), and co-author of Faith-Based Organisations and Social Exclusion in Sweden (2011), an extensive report which has inspired several reviewed articles and book chapters authored with Charlotte Fridolfsson. Work in progress includes submitted, co-authored articles on securitization and counter-securitization related to politics and religion. Eléonore Fauré  holds a PhD in Planning and Decision Analysis specialized in Environmental Strategic Analysis and is a researcher and teacher in Strategic Sustainability Studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Her research interests are about sustainability and environmental justice related to planning, decision-making and future studies as well

  Notes on Contributors 

xiii

as about the importance of having a system perspective and of highlighting the values embedded in sustainability assessments. Gunnel  Forsberg is Professor of Human Geography at Stockholm University with a specialization in Urban and Regional Planning since 1998. During 1999–2005, she was visiting professor of Gender Studies at Karlstad University. Her research interests lie in the realm of regional planning and the social and demographic transformation of rural areas. She has a continued interest in gender research and the importance gender makes in understanding spatial outcomes. Firouz Gaini  is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of History and Social Sciences, University of the Faroe Islands. His interests revolve around youth, identity, gender and place, especially in small island contexts. He has conducted fieldwork in the Faroe Islands, Greenland, France and Japan (Okinoshima and Okinawa Islands). Among recent publications, he is the co-editor of Among the Islanders of the North (2011) and Gender and Island Communities (2020). Gaini has recently received a grant from the Research Council Faroe Islands for the project Faroese Fatherhood in Transition, which looks at two generations of fathers from rural and urban communities in present-day Faroe Islands. Carina  Green  holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Uppsala University. She is a researcher at the Swedish Biodiversity Centre (CBM), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). Her research interests revolve around environmental knowledge production, ethnic ­identity processes, eco-governance and local/indigenous participation in nature conservation management. She has conducted fieldwork in Sápmi (Northern Sweden), New Zealand and Australia. In recent years, the use of ‘Indigenous and Local Knowledge’ in global environmental fora has been the main focus of her research. Pernilla  Hagbert  holds a PhD in Architecture and is a researcher in Urban and Regional Studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Her research explores everyday practices, actor perspectives, the interpretations (and paradoxes) of sustainability in housing and urban development, and norm-critical, alternative ways of living and organizing society as part of transformations to a low-impact society.

xiv 

Notes on Contributors

Olga  Hannonen  (PhD), is a post-doctoral researcher at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. Her work focuses on trans-­ border tourism and mobilities, including Russian trans-border second-­ home ownership in Finland; intra-European residential tourism and digital nomadism on Gran Canaria, Spain; residential mobility in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and digital nomadic mobilities. Thematically, she works with the socio-political implications of international mobilities and property ownership, travel constraints and on bordering mobilities in various forms. Matthew Hayes  is Canada Research Chair in Global and International Studies and Associate Professor of Sociology at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, Canada. His research focuses on cultural interpretations of global inequality. He is the author of Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration Under Late Capitalism published by the University of Minnesota Press (2018). Charlotta Hedberg  is Associate Professor of Human Geography at the Department of Geography, Umeå University, Sweden. Her research focuses on migration and spatial mobility, particularly international labour migration, but also with an interest in internal and lifestyle-related mobilities and regional development. Hedberg is the author of 14 scientifically published papers, and a number of book chapters and policy reports. Grete  K.  Hovelsrud  is Professor of Environmental Sociology, Nord University, and at Nordland Research Institute, Bodø, Norway. She is an arctic anthropologist focusing on interdisciplinary studies of adaptation to changing climatic and societal conditions, on adaptive capacity of coupled social-ecological systems, and on the societal transformation to a low-emission society in the context of climatic and societal change. She focuses on perceptions of risk, cultural theory of risk, co-­production of knowledge, narratives and adaptive co-management of natural resources with respect to changing climatic, environmental and societal conditions. Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson  is a professor in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Iceland. His recent research has been on destination dynamics and place making with a focus on the

  Notes on Contributors 

xv

entanglement of nature and culture. This has involved studies on entrepreneurship, innovation and policy making. He has published his research in various books and journals. Most recently, he co-edited a volume titled ‘Tourism Employment in Nordic Countries  – Trends, Practices and Opportunities’, published with Palgrave in 2020. Frida Jonsson  holds a PhD in Public Health from the Department of Epidemiology and Global Health at Umeå University. She has a background in health-related project management and evaluation. Her research centres broadly on different forms of social inequalities in and determinants of health and health care. With a specific focus on health system access and strengthening, she is particularly interested in the challenges and strengths of marginalized populations in rural areas such as youth and elderly. Svante Karlsson  is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Karlstad University, Sweden. His PhD thesis (2007) focused on forestry and local development in Värmland. More recent publications include articles about post-productivism, international migration, self-employment and restructuring in sparsely populated areas. He contributed to PLURAL, a Formas strong research environment programme over six years, led by Carina Keskitalo. This focused on understanding the new—and increasingly urban and female—forest owners. The outcomes were useful for planning rural-urban dynamics, when people live and act at several places. Stefan Kordel  is a post-doctoral researcher in the Institute of Geography at Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. After his PhD in Geography in 2015, he has worked on various research projects in the field of migration and rural studies. His empirical research covers lifestyle and refugee migration in Europe (e.g. Germany, Spain) and beyond (Latin America). Traian Leu  holds a PhD in human geography from Umeå University, Sweden. He holds a master’s degree in natural resource management from University of Akureyri, Iceland, and a master’s in spatial planning and development from Umeå University. His research interests include tourism, planning and development in both urban and sparsely populated areas.

xvi 

Notes on Contributors

Linda  Lundmark is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Umeå University, Sweden. She has published extensively on the topics of regional development and tourism in rural areas in the North. Her research interests also include climate change, natural resources and mobility as part of contemporary and future economic development prospects in sparsely populated nations like Sweden. Among the publications are an edited book on Polar tourism and a book on Tourism, mobilities and development in sparsely populated areas. She is the chair of the centre of regional science scientific advisory board and has received funding for several large research projects from Swedish research councils, and she is part of several research networks on tourism and tourism in polar areas. Roger Marjavaara  is Associate Professor of Human Geography with a specialization in tourism and GIS.  His primary research interest is in second-home tourism, shopping tourism, air transport and migration. Other areas of interest lie within mobility of individuals and places. Marjavaara is also a leader of the undergraduate programme in tourism geography at Umeå University. Ruth McAreavey  is a Reader in Sociology at Newcastle University. Her research focuses on migration, particularly to regional and rural areas and the inequalities faced by migrants in the labour market and in other parts of everyday life. She has published extensively on rural development, and she is an active member of various international research networks including the Trans-Atlantic Rural Research Network and the European Society for Rural Sociology (ESRS). She is co-editor of Sociologia Ruralis. Peter  Möller  is Lecturer in Human Geography at Dalarna University and an analyst in the Regional Development Department at Region Dalarna. Möller’s research focuses on regional development, and he has wide interests in rural, tourism, youth and adult transition research. As an analyst, he investigates subjects relevant to regional development including population change, integration and labour markets. Dieter K. Müller  is Professor of Human Geography, Umeå University. His research centres around second-home tourism and tourism in northern environments, respectively. Recently, he has developed a particular

  Notes on Contributors 

xvii

interest for the Arctification of northern tourism. Among his recent books are the (co)edited volumes Routledge Handbook of Second Home Tourism and Mobilities (2018), Tourism and Indigeneity in the Arctic (2018) and A Research Agenda for Tourism Geographies (2019). Between 2012 and 2020, he has been the chair of the International Geographical Union Commission for the Geography of Tourism, Leisure and Global Change. He is also a co-editor of the book series Geographies of Tourism and Global Change and a resource editor for Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism. Mari Nuga  holds a PhD in human geography and regional planning at Tartu University, Estonia. She is a post-doctoral researcher in the human geography department at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research focuses on downshifting, transitioning towards more sustainable l­ifestyles and voluntary simplicity. Her approach employs ethnographic interviews in the context of the FORMAS-financed project ‘Money makes the world go round? Geographical perspectives on downshifting and voluntary simplicity as sustainable ways of life.’ Her articles on summerhouse settlements and durable domestic dreams, for example, have appeared in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2016). Julia Olsen  is a researcher at Nord University and Nordland Research Institute, Bodø, Norway. Her primary research areas are local community’s vulnerability and socio-economic adaptation to multiple changes in the Arctic. Olsen is involved in a number of projects that examine the impacts of increased shipping and tourism activities in the Barents Sea on local coastal communities in order to understand what the implications are for local adaptation. Albina  Pashkevich is Associate Professor of Tourism Studies at the Centre for Tourism and Leisure Research (CeTLeR), Dalarna University, Sweden. Her research interests include a wide range of topics primarily connected to Arctic tourism development—representations of indigenous culture, tourism management, power relations and institutional structures impact on tourism development. She also works with issues connected to the sustainable use of mining heritage in the area of Bergslagen, Sweden, and remote Arctic mining communities.

xviii 

Notes on Contributors

Bruce  Prideaux  is director of the Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities at the Cairns campus of Central Queensland University and programme director of the Masters of Sustainable Tourism Management. He has a wide range of research interests including sustainability issues, climate change, coral reef tourism, protected area tourism, rural tourism, remote area tourism and crisis management. He has authored over 200 journal articles and book chapters on a range of tourism-­related issue. He has also authored or co-authored 11 books and is working on a new co-authored book that examines tourism in agricultural areas. Benedict  E.  Singleton  is a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, where he conducts research on the project Intersectionality and Climate Policy Making: ways forward to a socially inclusive and sustainable welfare state. His previous research has involved explorations of ‘nature-based integration’ projects aimed at migrants to central Sweden; investigations of Faroese whaling (grindadráp); research on carers of sick and disabled people in the UK; and HIV stigma and treatment in Jamaica. Olof Andreas Stjernström  is a professor in Human Geography at Nord University in Norway. He has a special interest in northern studies related to natural and human resources, planning and migration. His most recent studies focus multilevel planning and indigenous rights in northern Sweden and studies on mining and multilevel planning. Göran  Sundqvist  works as a full-time chairman in the Tavelsjö- and Rödåbygdens development (TuRe), with commitment also in village development throughout Umeå municipality. He participates in the non-­ profit sector’s involvement with Leader’s activities in the Umeå region, which includes Bjurholm, Nordmaling, Umeå, Robertsfors, Vindeln and Vännäs municipalities. Michelle  Thompson is Lecturer in Tourism at Central Queensland University, Cairns, Australia. She has a PhD from James Cook University (2015), which modelled the drivers and barriers to tourism development in agricultural regions. Her research interests include aspects of regional and remote area tourism development, and focus on the niche areas of food, wine and agri-tourism.

  Notes on Contributors 

xix

Maria  Thulemark  is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Tourism and Leisure Research (CeTLeR), Dalarna University, Sweden. She received her PhD in Human Geography from Örebro University, Sweden. Her research focuses on tourism-related mobility, migration and work-life within the tourism and hospitality industry. Daniel Tomozeiu  is Senior Lecturer in Intercultural Communication at the University of Westminster, London. He teaches intercultural and professional communication for undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses. He was co-coordinator for the EU-funded Promoting Intercultural Competence in Translators project (www.pictllp.eu). His research interests relate to intercultural communication and lifestyle migration, with particular emphasis on communication styles, social positioning, acculturation and identity. Seija Tuulentie  is a senior researcher in the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) and adjunct professor in environmental sociology at the University of Lapland. Her research fields include nature-based tourism, rural development, second homes and conflicting land use issues. She has concentrated especially in the Arctic and northern questions, and during the years 2016–2019, she has been leading the international BuSKproject on the use of local knowledge in land use planning. Natasha  A.  Webster is a researcher in the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University. She is interested in gender, entrepreneurship, migration and work-life practices. Webster’s research focuses on feminist economic geography by exploring the role of women-led entrepreneurship in migration and integration. Tobias  Weidinger is a PhD candidate in Cultural Geography at Friedrich-­Alexander-­University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts with distinction from the same university in 2013 and 2016, respectively. His research interests include diverse forms of immigration to rural areas and consequences for regional development. Methodologically, he is especially interested in participatory approaches. Johannes Welling  holds a PhD in Tourism Studies at the University of Iceland, with backgrounds Environment and Resource Management and

xx 

Notes on Contributors

Political Social Science. His main research fields concern the interaction of climate change adaptation and mitigation, ­sustainable tourism and protected area management. Furthermore, he is a part-time teacher at the University of Iceland and project manager of the NPA project SCITOUR (Scientific Tourism). Bettina Widell  is a doctoral student in Human Geography at Örebro University, Sweden. She is also a part of the multidisciplinary research school Successful ageing at Örebro University. Her primary research interests are rural geography, ageing and work. Her thesis subject is senior workforce in rural areas. Jundan  Jasmine  Zhang holds PhD in Tourism from University of Otago, New Zealand. In the past years she has worked as post-doc and research assistant within various projects in Umeå, Sweden. These include a project funded by Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (Formas) ‘Mobilizing the Rural’ on ecological entrepreneurship in rural areas of northern Sweden, and a multidisciplinary project ‘Future Forests’ funded by Swedish Government on multi-use of Swedish forests. She has published in journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Tourism Geographies, on subjects ranging from political ecology of tourism, to tourism methodologies. Her main research interest lies in understanding the relationships between human and ‘nature’ in the context of global tourism. A poststructuralist political ecology approach is generally adopted in her research, where binaries such as nature/culture, rural/urban, West/nonWest and modern/traditional are critically examined and discussed.

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 6.1

The Tavelsjö area. (Photo: Göran Sundqvist) 7 “May we live here?”. (Painting: Paul Breddels (A Dutch artist living in Sweden), 2012) 12 Dalhousie. (Photo: Matthew Hayes 2018) 33 ‘Settler’ and ‘industry’ villages in the inland north of Sweden 37 Differing views when entering Moskosel and Glommersträsk 45 Urban settlements in Iceland and villages under study (red dots) 58 Demographic development of villages in rural Iceland, 1880–201959 Proportion of residents in rural villages in Iceland that expect to leave within the next 2–3 years by gender, area of origin and age, 2019 61 The residential histories of all respondents in villages in rural Iceland 2019 62 The residential histories of respondents who grew up in villages in rural Iceland 2019 63 Net migration by age to region10, 2007 and 2017 73 Age and sex distribution of the Iceland population, 2009 76 Percentage change in the size of each birth cohort in rural Iceland, 2009–19 78 This house represents a common impression of housing in rural areas. (Photo: Linda Lundmark) 90 xxi

xxii 

Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 13.1 Fig. 13.2 Fig. 14.1

Fig. 14.2

Fig. 14.3 Fig. 14.4

List of Figures

(a and b) Pictures showing houses moving from Malmberget. (Photo: Linda Lundmark) 99 Map showing municipalities’ assessment of housing availability in Norrbotten and Västerbotten counties. The upper two maps show the assessment of currently available housing and the two bottom maps show the assessment of available housing in three years’ time. Assessment regarding central locations is to the left and rural areas to the right. (Source: Bostadsmarknadsanalys Norrbotten and Västerbotten counties 2019. Maps made by Linda Lundmark) 102 Country scores: Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and The Netherlands. (Source: Adapted from Hofstede 2019) 116 (a–d) National communication patterns. (Source: Adapted from Lewis 2000. See more diagrams in Lewis 2016) 119 Nuuk apartment blocks. (Photos: Firouz Gaini) 158 Nuuk apartment blocks. (Photos: Firouz Gaini) 159 Image used on the cover of the Faroese magazine Prei. (Photo: Benedict E Singleton) 168 Evolution of the number of farms, by farm size, in Southern Lapland from 1981 to 2016. (Source: Jordbruksverket) 222 Other gainful activities undertaken by Southern Lapland farmers (n = 399). (Source: Jordbruksverket) 225 Rural pizzeria in Northern Sweden. (Photo: Marco Eimermann)244 Local food festival in rural Sweden featuring food from many countries produced by local residents. (Photo: Natasha A. Webster)249 a and b Development of commercial overnight stays in Västerbotten and Norrbotten municipalities, 2009–2019 (including hotels, hostels, cabin parks and camping). (Source: Tourism in Skåne 2020) 268 Development of market composition in Västerbotten and Norrbotten (2009–2019), showing overnight stays by domestic, northern (Norway and Finland) and other ‘export’ markets. (Source: Tourism in Skåne 2020) 270 Interrelatedness of climate change and Arctic tourism 277 Snow and ice conditions at Umeå University campus on 17 February 2020. (Photo: O. Cenk Demiroglu) 279

  List of Figures 

xxiii

Fig. 16.1 Foreign property purchases in Finland. (Source: National Land Survey of Finland) 312 Fig. 16.2 Spatial diffusion of second homes in Sweden. (Cartography: Roger Marjavaara) 317 Fig. 17.1 Ecolodge Tjarn, November 2017. (Photo: Marco Eimermann) 337 Fig. 18.1 Icehotel 365 in September 2018. (Photo: D.K. Müller) 353 Fig. 18.2 (a and b) Number of passengers and ship calls for the period 2008–2016 in Solovetsky (left) and Longyearbyen (right) 356 Fig. 18.3 Mein Schiff  has more passengers and crew members on board than the whole Longyearbyen community. (Photo: Julia Olsen) 358 Fig. 19.1 Location of Sälen. (Source: Lantmäteriet, Map design: Peter Möller)379 Fig. 20.1 View over Tavelsjö in winter. (Photo: Marco Eimermann) 397 Fig. 20.2 The promise of new things to come. (Painting: Paul Breddels [A Dutch artist living in Sweden], 2019) 400

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 5.1 Table 6.1 Table 7.1 Table 7.2 Table 11.1 Table 12.1

Myths about ‘who lives’ in the north 21 A summary mobility profile of youth in region 10, 2015 79 Life course typology and housing needs 94 The six dimensions of national culture in brief 114 Four strategies of acculturation 122 Fact sheet of the focus group participants 205 Participation in off-farm work by members of farming households in Southern Lapland municipalities 224 Table 12.2 Summary table of main characteristics of local food initiatives227 Table 19.1 Population numbers for Sälen and surrounding villages 378

xxv

List of Boxes

Box 1.1 Municipalities in SPAs Under Pressure Box 1.2 Civil Society-Based Local Development in Rural Areas Box 2.1 Economy, Environment and Climate in Debates on the Liveability of Rural Australia Box 3.1 Dalhousie on a Saturday Night Box 3.2 Ghosting Towns in Far North Queensland Box 4.1 Demistifying the Gap Between Intentions and Actions Box 5.1 Youth Flight or the ‘Grim Reaper’: Iceland Box 5.2 The Youth ‘Left Behind’ Box 6.1 Gällivare, a Two-Town Merger Box 7.1 A Swedish Swirl (Discussion, More Discussion, Consensus) Box 7.2 Came to Stay? Refugees in Rural Germany. Insights into Implicit Place Marketing Box 7.3 Nature-Based Integration (NBI) in Sweden Box 7.4 Came to Stay? What Policymakers Need to Know About Lifestyle Migration, Fantasy and Reality Box 8.1 Modern People, Ancient Stereotypes. Using Tourism to Bring Perceptions Up to Date Box 8.2 Sorry We Missed You Box 8.3 The Senior Work Force Box 8.4 Downshifting Between Retrotopia and Utopia Box 9.1 ‘The sled has departed’. The City as Battlefield for Greenlandic Cultural Identities

3 6 16 32 35 64 76 82 98 117 124 126 128 136 138 140 144 157 xxvii

xxviii 

Box 9.2 Box 10.1 Box 10.2 Box 11.1 Box 11.2 Box 12.1 Box 12.2 Box 13.1 Box 13.2 Box 14.1 Box 14.2 Box 15.1 Box 15.2 Box 15.3 Box 16.1 Box 16.2 Box 17.1 Box 18.1 Box 18.2 Box 18.3 Box 19.1 Box 19.2 Box 20.1 Box 20.2

List of Boxes

“It’s Tradition, Jim, But Not As We Know It.”—The complicated cultures of Faroese Pilot Whaling 166 A Health and Care Workforce for Indigenous Populations 180 A Health and Care Workforce for Youth Populations 186 An Urban Bubble, a Country House and Place Attachment 197 A Future Society Beyond GDP Growth: What Would That Look Like? 198 Australian Perspectives on AFN 220 TNQ Regional Food Network and the RealFood Network 229 Rural Pizzeria Operators with Refugee Backgrounds 244 Recipe for Spicy Meatballs 259 Quality of Life Among Lifestyle Migrants in Rural Areas of Aragon, Spain 266 What Happens in the Arctic Does Not Stay in the Arctic 277 Daytrip Excursions and Satellite Resorts: The Challenges for Regional Tourism Spillover from Cairns to Tropical North Queensland 288 Reykjavík: A Gateway, Basecamp or Independent Destination? Changing Seasonality and Changing Destination Hierarchies in Iceland 290 Boomtown Darwin: A Competitor for Tourism in the Top End of the Northern Territory? 293 Second-Home Owners as a Strategic Asset for Rural Communities315 Snowmobiling Causes Cultural Clash in Kilpisjärvi 320 Ecolodge Tjarn 336 Melting Sea Ice: A Curse or Blessing for Arctic Tourism? 354 Cruise Development in European Arctic Communities 356 Enhancing Interregional Cooperation and Competitiveness Through Diverting Tourists on ‘The Arctic Route’ 364 When Magic Begins to Fade. Seasonal Workers and the Makings of the Christmas 383 The Vibrancy of a Ski Resort: Attracting Young People to Whistler, BC 385 Window of Opportunity or “Here We Go Again”? 394 Post-productivism in Tavelsjö 396

1 Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling in Sparsely Populated Areas Dean B. Carson, Marco Eimermann, and Linda Lundmark

If you have picked up this book, you are probably one of many people who are interested in ‘the north’. You may be a ‘northern development’ practitioner, you may be working in a community project, or at a local, regional, national or other level of government or you may be an industry stakeholder. Maybe you are part of a group of students or academics who shape and contribute to the various debates around northern development in Sweden or beyond. If you are interested in demography, economics, geography, history or political science, you will find that these topics are central themes in this volume.

D. B. Carson Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities, Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M. Eimermann (*) • L. Lundmark Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_1

1

2 

D. B. Carson et al.

Rather than solely indicating an area on a map, we use ‘the north’ for communities, places and regions that others would define as peripheral or remote in surroundings characterized by infrastructural and demographic challenges. However, we contest the idea that the scattered populations living there are disconnected from each other and the world, and reactive instead of proactive, for example because they live in timeless tranquillity amidst abundant nature or ‘wilderness’. Although we focus on northern Sweden, we also present similarities and differences with cases in the Nordic countries, northern Australia, Canada and beyond. The chapters thus position northern Sweden within a global context. Dipping in to the North describes and explains how changing (im)mobility and migration is affecting the social, economic, cultural and environmental characteristics of various northern communities, villages, towns and cities. The volume is a collection of chapters structured around three themes: (i) who lives, (ii) who works and (iii) who travels in the sparsely populated north. Within each themed section, the chapters focus on different forms of mobility, migration and immobility, placing people who live, travel and work there at the centre of the issues at hand and within their historical and contemporary contexts. Together, these sections nuance the popular overall myths that portray SPAs either as perpetually struggling with a series of challenges or as timeless rural idylls.

Myths Portraying SPAs as Dull and Struggling When people think about northern rural development, they tend to think of social conflicts and problems (exemplified in Box 1.1, from a broad perspective). We do not deny that some rural areas (like urban areas) are facing socio-economic challenges, but we do argue that the complexity of these challenges has often been reduced for certain groups of people, for example indicating a ‘rural dull’ for youngsters to make migration decisions or other (political) solutions seem more straightforward (Forsberg et al. 2012). For instance, many media coverages and migration studies in SPAs highlight outmigration, at times due to the downsizing of extractive industries. This leads to a situation in which the idea of rural exodus

1  Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling… 

3

Box 1.1  Municipalities in SPAs Under Pressure Ingemar Elander Regional and local policies in Sweden are strongly adapted to a social-­ liberal ideological framework stating that capitalist economic development is closely connected with a spatial concentration of population. Provided regional policy follows the perceived economic growth logic, technology and competition will prepare the ground for a higher living standard, and through redistribution result in more equal individual and collective consumption in terms of education, health care, social care and culture. Symbolized by the Swedish parliament’s adoption of the ‘Sweden Plan’ (Swedish Government bill 1972:111), regional policies were then adapted to an ideological framework allowing for a more precise and flexible set of measures, including a classification of municipalities according to perceived welfare society needs. According to the official policy this way of constructing the regional question made it possible to handle the tension between ‘the necessary and the desirable’ in regional development, thus manifesting Social Democratic ‘consumption socialism’ (Elander 1978; Elander and Montin 1994). In line with this logic the meaning of life boils down to something like “work harder and more efficiently, to be able to consume more and better goods and services”. Following a huge increase of refugees in 2015 and subsequent additions, many small and financially poor municipalities with declining population (not only in the north) took the opportunity to welcome groups of immigrants as potential resources in terms of future work force, social and cultural life, while other better off cities refused, instead arguing that these newcomers would only become a burden and a threat to ‘Swedish values’. However, for a poor municipality to provide basic social care for many newcomers lacking jobs and financial means may be difficult in the long run, especially with initial central government support fading. Consequently, and accelerating over the last few years, regional differences between stagnating, small, rural municipalities and bigger urban agglomerations have grown significantly and at the time of writing emergency plans and actions are demanded by many local governments and the Swedish Association of Local and Regional Authorities (Dagens Samhälle 2019). Meanwhile, protracted investigations and debates considering a radical regionalization reform are still far from a political solution (Johansson et al. 2015). In February 2020, launching the result of a parliamentary investigation the chairman stated: In our opinion, polarisation between Sweden’s municipalities is increasing, and it becomes ever harder for many of them to accomplish their welfare assignments since their economic conditions and labour force are ever more strained. Efforts are needed soon, but most of all we (continued)

4 

D. B. Carson et al.

Box 1.1  (continued) need efforts to strengthen the municipalities’ capacity to combat the challenges to guarantee equal elderly care, schools and other municipal services for all citizens in Sweden in the long run. (Karlsson 2020: my translation) The population in Sweden’s 290 municipalities varies between less than 2500 in Bjurholm (northern Sweden) and almost one million in Stockholm. Together, half of all municipalities in Sweden comprise only 14% of the population. Calculations made in neighbouring Nordic countries estimate that there should be at least 20,000–30,000 inhabitants in a municipality to be able to deliver financially stable welfare output to their inhabitants (Karlsson 2020). Although the report suggests a number of reforms to improve the capacity of the municipalities to accomplish this, there is of course no quick fix in sight and the political preconditions for solutions are scant. Since the 2018 elections the Swedish Government is based on a parliamentary coalition including Social Democrats, the Green Party and the Centre Party, the latter being the most market-liberal party of all in the Swedish political landscape. Paradoxically, an ‘unholy’ coalition consisting of the Left Party, the Conservative Party (Moderaterna), the conservative Christian Democrats and the retrotopian Sweden Democrats in early spring 2020 demanded financial boosts to the local and regional government sector. However, the suggested financial additions to the sector were modest, and they have to be related to substantial taxation cuts decided and implemented by the conservative-liberal government 2011–2014. As I will address in Box 20.1 the corona virus haunting most countries in Europe and the rest of the world since March 2020 added still more financial and political pressure on Swedish municipalities.

obscures all other mobility and migration flows (Carson et al. 2019). This idea is also guiding much practical work and rural development policies in rural municipalities. However, when researching this issue it becomes evident that other flows are also developing. There are many mobilities: from long-distance commuting, tourism such as second-home tourism and resort-based tourism (in the mountains or at the coast) to domestic and international in-migration to escape from hectic lives, oppression, starvation or war. This book addresses questions regarding who these migrants are, why and how they come to the north, where they settle and

1  Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling… 

5

what the consequences and impacts of such migration flows can be. As such, we challenge the idea of rural exodus as the only discourse on population development in SPAs. We rather view rural villages and areas as complex and heterogeneous spaces, often with their own unique challenges and opportunities. To address changes and developments in how (im)mobility and migration affect SPAs, we need to consider historical processes regarding population development, economic, agricultural and industrial diversity and natural resource use including production, recreation, consumption and nature protection. Considering the multifaceted realities of rural areas and where all activities are seen as complementary, the importance of diversity in how we portray rural areas becomes highly motivated and evident.

Myths Portraying SPAs as Rural Idylls British rural geographers have described a typical rural idyll as “physically consisting of small villages joined by narrow lanes and nestling amongst a patchwork of small fields […]. Socially, this is a tranquil landscape of timeless stability and community, where people know not just their next door neighbours but everyone else in the village” (Boyle and Halfacree 1998: 9–10). This sounds like an adequate description of Swedish rural idylls as well. This concept was regarded as passé for a while, but it has emerged again over the past decade, often related to perceived possibilities for sustainable living (e.g. in contrast to polluting and crowded cities). Tavelsjö and Rödåsel are thriving places (Box 1.2, with a local perspective). Yet their location in the periphery of Umeå municipality brings challenges. They struggle with decisions made around population, migration, housing, entrepreneurship and commuting, decisions made from urban viewpoints. The problem here is that urban populations may find it difficult to imagine the possibilities for development in a transforming rural space. A rural that is no longer synonymous with agriculture, forestry or manufacturing and where the possibilities are changing. The municipal planners and politicians are often living and working in central places like Umeå (in this case). Since the 1960s, this booming town

6 

D. B. Carson et al.

has been attracting more and more people who find work in  local or regional public administration, at one of the universities, or in forestry, the car industries, construction or elsewhere. The goal is to grow from its current 125,000 to 200,000 inhabitants in 2050. However, affordable housing is hard to find in central Umeå, so some new inhabitants purchase property in the surrounding villages like Tavelsjö.

Box 1.2  Civil Society-Based Local Development in Rural Areas Håkan Appelblad, Marco Eimermann and Göran Sundqvist The dependence of rural development (as a policy field) on local and civil support from the people living in the affected rural areas is increasingly recognized. The Swedish Government bill A coherent policy for Sweden’s rural areas (2017/18:179) suggests that rural development should be framed within a multi-level model where national, regional and local actors and sectors are coordinated and cooperate. As exemplified by the active locally based rural development association TuRe (In Swedish: ‘Tavelsjö- och Rödåbygdens utveckling, ekonomisk förening’), cooperation on the local level relies heavily on the existing civil society. TuRe covers a geographical area consisting of various villages and settlements such as Tavelsjö (450 inh.), Rödåsel and Rödånäs (about 100 inh. each), located at a 20–40 minutes’ bus or car drive from Umeå (Northern Sweden). The area is traditionally characterized by agriculture and forestry (Fig. 1.1), and it has no formal border since it consists of the locals’ common interpretations. Many locals have a background in farming, but new generations are working with IT or as tourism entrepreneurs as they rent out parts of their houses, run restaurants or organize outdoor activities. The landscape is characterized by the so-called Norrland terrain, a hilly and mountainous land covered by boreal forests, including many lakes and a Biosphere reserve along the Vindel river. The starting point for a more comprehensive and joint development work was the investment in the broadband net that started in 2002 through the NGO Tavelsjö Byanät. The experiences from the cooperation to complete the net linking the villages revealed the advantages of collaboration. By working together, the villages received a stronger position in development issues. A spin off from the positive experiences of working together was the association TuRe (Tavelsjö- och Rödåbygdens utveckling, ekonomisk förening) that was formed in 2010, with the overall aim to make the area attractive by developing local businesses, public transport and the hospitality industry while respecting environmental issues and other local stakeholders. This added value in terms of new jobs and increased (continued)

1  Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling… 

Box 1.2  (continued)

Fig. 1.1  The Tavelsjö area. (Photo: Göran Sundqvist) attractiveness can later mean that visitors become part of the area as they move in or start to work there. Sundqvist: Since its start in 2010, we have learned that this can only be achieved through collaboration with many different interests. Politically, publicly and locally in various areas such as work, leisure, service, communication, infrastructure and ownership. An important part is spreading awareness through public media, social media and the internet. TuRe is intended to work as an umbrella for the non-profit activities occurring in the area, without replacing any of the existing associations there. As such, TuRe has formalized a unity connecting people inhabiting single villages and settlements with attachment to the area. A bachelor thesis on the topic (Weinehall 2018) argued that there is a need for devoted volunteers who invest their time and efforts to uphold non-profit activities that stimulate local rural development. People engaged in TuRe are often also involved in other local associations. However, although TuRe is well manned with active, talented, skilled and motivated people, there is room for a wider demographic spectrum than the current overrepresentation of older age groups. It is a challenge to engage newcomers and young people to take part in local rural development issues.

7

8 

D. B. Carson et al.

These uneven spatial developments in northern central and peripheral places and unbalances in political power are two reasons why locals collaborate in TuRe. Apart from working for a vital community by organizing information meetings, seminars and sports events, TuRe representatives write opinionating newspaper articles (e.g. Wennebro et al. 2018). They draw our attention to their struggles, for example to be granted municipal permission for apartment construction, for an elderly care centre or for better bus connections to and from Umeå and between the villages. In the end, this is about urban planning and the ideology that most services and facilities should be concentrated in central Umeå—leaving less central places like Tavelsjö and Rödåsel with fewer resources. Similar dynamics occur in inland municipalities, for example between central Åsele and the ‘peripheral’ village of Gafsele.

 PAs Today: (Post-)Productivist, S Multi-­Functional or Something Else? We want to problematize how such challenges and opportunities often are framed from the outside, by people in central places such as Umeå or Stockholm (in Sweden), Brussels or London (in Europe), New York (in North America) or Sydney (in Australia). Defining typical challenges for SPAs is not the purpose of this book, because they are complex and difficult to grasp. Instead, this book actively analyses diversity and change, which are at the core of rural development (Andersson 2007). We relate these issues to a study by Swedish human geography professor Klas Sandell who proposed a set of metaphors to understand how people with different backgrounds can view rural areas differently (Riksantikvarieämbetet 2006: 13). Sandell described these perceptions through the metaphors of the ‘factory’ (in which people work hard), the ‘museum’ (which functions to conserve local heritage) and the ‘hembygd’ (which indicates historical bonds between long-rooted locals and a place, e.g. through kinship). These metaphors provide insights into clashes

1  Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling… 

9

between different people’s perceptions of villages and rural areas. For instance, locals could view their surroundings as a factory in which they work, or a hembygd with which they feel strong social ties. On the other hand, newcomers may view the wonderful area of Tavelsjö and Rödå rather as a museum, a place that should stay the same to relax at after hard work in town, without investing too much time and effort in it. From a land-use perspective, farming and forestry are still important. Although the dependence on labour has decreased, the production is still high in traditional sectors and in certain geographical areas. Almstedt et al. (2014) have studied this referring to ‘post-productivism’, indicating that arable land no longer only serves the purpose of producing the highest possible yields. Rather, other industries, services and knowledge development are complementing hyper-productive, large-scale and efficient extractive industries. For instance, small-scale tourism businesses (run by locals, lifestyle migrants from Europe or people with an Asian or refugee background) producing and selling local food in co-creation with tourists are highlighted as important for the diversity in rural areas. This process has changed and will continue to change the conditions for economic activity in the north but can however only in part solve the structural issues such as ageing population and low education levels in some sparsely populated areas. We question how the political efforts to follow this as a road to recovery or as a tool to achieve desired rural development will succeed: How many downshifters, goat cheese producers or B&Bs can SPAs accommodate, and how can we expect to secure rural futures based on volatile tourism markets not least in the light of the ongoing pandemic of the Coronavirus? In the best of scenarios, different resources can complement instead of compete with each other. We could call this a multi-functional perspective (Brouder et al. 2015), which highlights the capacity of sparsely populated and rural areas to produce and include various goods and services. This type of approach also requires that politicians take into consideration all sorts of values and understand the complexity that emerges when production, recreation and nature protection have to coexist.

10 

D. B. Carson et al.

 he Purposes of This Book: Beyond Dull T and Idyll This book examines who lives and works in the north, the impacts and consequences of those visiting the north, how and why this has changed over time and what those changes mean for how the north might develop in the future. The various chapters in this volume show that similar developments are going on in the north as elsewhere, but at times with different outcomes. Together, they identify novel challenges and opportunities for northern areas, while presenting views and voices from within instead of from the outside. We problematize centre-periphery dualisms that portray rural areas as dull and homogenous countrysides surrounding vibrant cities with heterogeneous populations. As such we adhere to geographic perspectives that have approached people’s practices through relational theories of space and place. For instance, Granås (2018) connects mobilities, working and place making in northern Scandinavia with a view on space as relational since it exists, evolves and is at work within relations among humans and between humans and their environment. Such relations are thus spatial relations (Massey 1995: 264–65, 2005: 101) and space is socially produced as a result of people’s daily lives (Simonsen 1996). Geographic perspectives view society as a complex dynamic fabric of many coexisting spatial relational processes. The concept of ‘place’ denotes where spatial relational processes are ‘thrown together’ (Massey 1995, 2005). Place can both be an open meeting place and an ambiguous and heterogeneous concept (Eimermann and Trumberg 2015). Different conceptualizations of place thus provide platforms to understand, develop and negotiate questions such as what and who is a region like northern Sweden for (Granås 2018: 49). Rather than studying rural and urban spaces per se, we approach them as interlinked entities. Some study functional and human urban-rural structural practices in housing, employment, education, transport, tourism and resource use (e.g. Zonneveld and Stead 2007; Dubois and Carson 2017). This includes social transactions, administrative and service provisions and the movement of people, goods and capital (Preston 1975;

1  Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling… 

11

Stead 2002). Such relational approaches to space and place can shed lights on the irregular expansion and acceleration of local, regional and transnational place-to-place connections on a daily basis and over the life course (Hedberg and Do Carmo 2012; Eimermann and Karlsson 2018). The themes in this book all relate with Agenda 2030 and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in general, for example goal nr. 11 (sustainable cities and communities). For instance, although TuRe representatives are working for a good cause, most of them seem to be middle-aged or older men. But how do women and youngsters engage in the future of their villages? Throughout the remainder of this book, we and our colleagues connect these issues with considerations of class, gender and power. We have reflected on what different people and places can contribute with in times of turbulence, insecurities and change due to global political struggles, climate change and pandemics such as the 2020 worldwide Corona outbreak. Reading the chapters, you will see how the north of Sweden and similar areas are characterized by heterogeneity instead of homogeneity (as the artist’s impression in Fig. 1.2 illustrates). In other words, different people in such areas experience various opportunities and threats, while at the same time (in)directly enabling or hindering developments in other parts of the world. If we take specific parts of the SDGs as a point of departure they are also highly relevant for this book, for example through concretized target goals such as nr. 11.B “By 2020, substantially increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies and plans towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, and develop and implement […] holistic disaster risk management at all levels”. We invite you to take the 2020 worldwide Corona pandemic as a concrete example, and to rethink what you think you know about northern sparsely populated areas. We are happy and grateful that Ingemar Elander was willing to make such an attempt at the very last moment before submitting this book’s manuscript. For inspiration and a way to put the book’s chapters into perspective, you could turn to Box 20.1 in the final chapter addressing growth paradigms and degrowth possibilities, before reading the rest of the book.

12 

D. B. Carson et al.

Fig. 1.2  “May we live here?”. (Painting: Paul Breddels (A Dutch artist living in Sweden), 2012)

Acknowledgements  Our research would not have been possible without all the interviewees and participants spending time and sharing their thoughts with us. The travel award for Early Career Researchers to attend the Arctic-FROST network meeting in 2017 has inspired us in our subsequent work. The Swedish research council for sustainable development FORMAS funded the research projects “Mobilising the rural: Post-productivism and the new economy” (#2011-72), “Mobilities, micro-urbanisation and changing settlement patterns in the sparsely populated North” (#2016-344) and “Money makes the world go round? Geographical perspectives on downshifting and voluntary simplicity as sustainable ways of life” (#2018-547). RJ, or Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, has contributed by funding a research initiation project on transient populations in changing countrysides (2017) and parts of the 2019 Lifestyle Migration Hub meeting in Umeå. The Arctic Research Centre at Umeå University (ARCUM) has contributed with strategic funding for keynotes and research seminars. We owe you all a big thank you!

1  Dipping in to the North: Living, Working and Traveling… 

13

References Almstedt, Å., Brouder, P., Karlsson, S., & Lundmark, L. (2014). Beyond post-­ productivism: From rural policy discourse to rural diversity. European Countryside, 4, 297–306. Andersson, K. (2007). New rural goods and services – The foundation of the new countryside? (Doctoral thesis). Helsinki: University Press. Boyle, P., & Halfacree, K. (1998). Migration into rural areas. Chichester: John Wiley. Brouder, P., Karlsson, S., & Lundmark, L. (2015). Hyper-production: A new metric of multifunctionality. European Countryside, 3, 134–143. Carson, D. B., Lundmark, L., & Carson, D. A. (2019). The continuing advance and retreat of rural settlement in the northern inland of Sweden. Journal of Northern Studies, 13, 7–33. Dagens Samhälle. (2019). Allvarligt läge  – SKL kräver att regeringen agerar [Serious situation – SKL demands action by Government]. www.dagenssamhalle.se/nyhet/skl-varnar-lagkonjunktur-29717. Accessed 16 Oct 2019. Dubois, A., & Carson, D. B. (2017). The Relational Geography of Post-Staples Development—a Case in Malå, north Sweden. Journal of Rural and Community Development, 12(2–3), 23–40. Eimermann, M., & Karlsson, S. (2018). Globalising Swedish countrysides? A relational approach to rural immigrant restaurateurs with refugee backgrounds. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography, 72(2), 82–96. Eimermann, M., & Trumberg, A. (2015) (eds.). Place and Identity – A new landscape of social and political change in Sweden. Stockholm: Santérus Academic Press. Elander, I. (1978). Det nödvändiga och det önskvärda. En studie av socialdemokratisk ideologi och regionalpolitik 1940–72 [The necessary and the desirable. A study of social democratic ideology and regional policy]. Lund: Arkiv för studier i arbetarrörelsens historia. Elander, I., & Montin, S. (1994). European integration, regionalism and local self-government in Sweden. In U.  Bullman (Ed.), Die Politik der dritten Ebene. Regionen in Europa der Union (pp. 281–309). Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. Forsberg, G., Lundmark, M., & Stenbacka, S. (2012). Föreställningar om landsbygden – mer myter än faktiska fakta. Stockholm: PWC Sverige. Granås, B. (2018). ‘Destinizing Finnmark: Place making through dogsledding’. Annals of Tourism Research, 72, 48–57.

14 

D. B. Carson et al.

Hedberg, C., & Do Carmo, R. M. (2012) (eds.). Translocal Ruralism - Mobility and Connectivity in European Rural Spaces. Dordrecht: Springer. Johansson, J., Niklasson, L., & Persson, B. (2015). The role of municipalities in the bottom-up formation of a meta-region in Sweden: Drivers and barriers. Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, 19, 71–88. Karlsson, N. (2020, February 19). Ge ekonomiskt stöd till kommuner som vill gå ihop [Give financial support to municipalities that will merge]. Dagens Nyheter, Debatt, p. 5. Massey, D. (1995). The conceptualisation of place. In D.  Massey & P.  Jess (Eds.), A place in the world? (pp. 46–79). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage. Preston, D. A. (1975). Rural-urban and inter-settlement interaction: Theory and analytical structure. Area, 7, 171–174. Riksantikvarieämbetet. (2006). Landskap - hälsa, friluftsliv och turism. Dokumentation från seminarium 2006-10-03. Simonsen, K. (1996). What kind of space in what kind of social theory? Progress in Human Geography, 20(4), 494–512. Stead, D. 2002. Urban-rural relationships in the west of England. Built Environment, 28, 299–310. Swedish Government bill 1972:111. Regional development and management of land and water [Kungl. Maj:ts proposition angående regional utveckling och hushållning med mark och vatten]. Stockholm: Sweden’s Government. Swedish Government bill 2017/18:179. A coherent policy for Sweden’s rural areas. Stockholm: Sweden’s Government. TuRe (Tavelsjö- och Rödåbygdens utveckling, ekonomisk förening). http:// www.bygdeportalen.se/bo-i-bygden/ture. Accessed 21 Feb 2020. Weinehall, A. (2018). “Går det inte här så går det ingenstans”: Ideellt driven utveckling i stadsnära landsbygd (Bachelor thesis). Umeå: Department of Geography, Umeå University. Wennebro, T., Sundqvist, G., & Söderlund, A. (2018, January 25). Nya översiktsplanen leder till extrem tärortssatsning. Västerbottens Kuriren, p. 6. Zonneveld, W., & Stead, D. (2007). European territorial cooperation and the concept of urban-rural relationships. Planning, Practice & Research, 22, 439–453.

2 Who Lives in the Inland North? Dynamic, Diverse, Fragile, Robust Dean B. Carson and Neil Argent

Introduction The Australian summer of 2019/20 was dominated by bushfires, drought, cyclones and floods impacting almost the entire country and raising once again questions of the viability of living in small rural communities (see Box 2.1) which have limited infrastructure with which to manage these impacts of climate change. The Australian story in Box 2.1, coupled with the observations of American geographer Kirk Stone (below), provides a fitting introduction to this section of Dipping in to the North which is concerned with “Who lives in the north…”. The two vignettes reveal the persistent myth that some parts of these ‘peripheral’ countries may just be

D. B. Carson (*) Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities, Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] N. Argent University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_2

15

16 

D. B. Carson and N. Argent

too difficult (read—expensive) to permanently occupy. As Professor Argent notes in Box 2.1, this is not just about harsh climates and unforgiving environments, but the very industrial processes that have enabled these places to be exploited for national (and international) economic gain despite their inherent marginality. The Australian case is largely about agriculture, but that experience parallels, for example, the forestry sector in northern Sweden (see Chap. 4), or mining or even tourism. As fewer people are needed in the north to serve the economic imperatives, societies like Australia and Sweden begin to question whether there should be people there at all, or, perhaps more realistically, how human settlement may best be organised to manage the risks and reduce the expense.

Box 2.1  Economy, Environment and Climate in Debates on the Liveability of Rural Australia It is a truism to state that human settlement systems have co-evolved with the physical environmental, economic and social systems and settings within which they are located. For some societies, evolution has eventually led to extinction, as in the case of Rapa Nui/Easter Island (Hunt and Lipo 2009). Today, the globe’s population is predominantly domiciled in urban settings, a situation that is projected to further increase over coming decades. The majority of us live less ‘cheek by jowl’ with the biophysical world than in the past and is perhaps less actively aware of the opportunities and constraints that nature both offers and imposes. For the zone of settlement covered by this volume, though, the physical environment has been and continues to be a major if not the primary limiting (and enabling) factor underpinning settlement and economy. The historical geography of many rural and remote areas across the globe is testament to the evolutionary changes that people, individually and collectively, have had to make in the face of parametric shifts and shocks in the economic climate and the natural environment. From across the diverse farming landscapes of the world come familiar stories of how technological (e.g. advent of chemical fertilisers and fossil-­ fuel powered farm equipment) regulatory change (e.g. removal of agricultural subsidies) disrupted the economics of farming, rendering a large and growing portion of the local agricultural workforce redundant and precipitating a process of highly age-selective out-migration that, in turn, undercut the economic, demographic and socio-cultural bases of many a rural service centre. In many broadacre farming belts of Australia and North (continued )

2  Who Lives in the Inland North? Dynamic, Diverse, Fragile… 

17

Box 2.1  (continued) America, if not elsewhere, this dynamic continues in a largely episodic manner to drive the fortunes of these ‘breadbaskets to the world’. As is implied above, the geography of this dynamic and highly interrelated adjustment process between people, firms and the economic and ecological landscape is fundamental and not a simple by-product or externality. During the 1990s and early 2000s Australian rural regions faced a series of crises. The nature of the crisis varied somewhat according to broad regional type but there was a certain commonality in the broad causes and local experiences of what came to be known in academic circles as ‘rural restructuring’. The nation’s drive to embrace, or at least not be left behind by, globalisation saw State and Federal Governments corporatise, privatise or simply dismantle a host of institutions (e.g. statutory marketing authorities, rural financial institutions) that supported and at least partially protected the farming and rural sector. The subsequent de(re)-regulation of previously public service authorities, covering telecommunications, energy supply rail and postal services, to name a few, saw the gradual removal of cross-subsidies that ameliorated some of the cost disadvantages of rural life for rural residents. While these ‘reforms’ were applied in a spatially blind fashion, they had differential effects on regions, depending on relative location and nature of industry dependence. More remote regions, with typically lower density populations and more sparse settlement networks, and with an economic dependence on broadacre farming, probably suffered disproportionately. What few and often infrequent services these areas had access to were pared back at the same time as farm amalgamations accelerated due to the tightening grip of the cost/price squeeze. This vicious spiral of decline exacerbated out-migration currents, themselves driving down the regional base population. The small inland service centre, once a characteristic feature of Australian rural life, came under severe pressure as bank branches, post offices and train lines closed. Many commentators began to talk of the death of the Australian small country town. Simultaneously, others pointed to the emergence of so-called sponge cities; regional centres that arguably flourished at the expense of the small towns in their hinterlands (Salt 2001; Argent et  al. 2008; Alexander and Mercer 2007). And at times acrimonious public and policy debate subsequently erupted over the future of country towns and the extent to which public funds should be directed to protecting and preserving this strata of the rural settlement system. Media reportage was replete with tales of passionate campaigns and protests by rural residents in defence of ‘their’ community. Some sections of the media and political class supported the protection of the institute of the country town against the tyranny of globalisation and (continued )

18 

D. B. Carson and N. Argent

Box 2.1  (continued) neoliberal ideology (see Pritchard and McManus (2000) and Gray and Lawrence (2001) for a sample of these debates). However, others argued that scarce public monies should not be wasted on preserving some relic of good days bygone by maintaining commercially unviable services in shrinking (and ageing) populations. Instead of allocating resources in an attempt to hold people within struggling service centres and the surrounding hinterlands this group suggested that providing incentive payment to those businesses and residents that wanted to move to a larger centre would entail a far more cost-effective and equitable use of public resources (e.g. Forth and Howell 2002). While an ideologically ‘pure’ and economically rational argument it tended to overlook the fact that: (a) not all small rural towns are declining; (b) not all residents of such towns are socio-spatially disadvantaged, though some are; and (c) there does not appear to be a single ‘magic’ threshold population level that indicates current and future non-viability as a service centre. Of course, as the relatively recent literature on amenity-led migration and the consumptionist countryside have shown (see Holmes 2006, 2010), not all rural regions and small towns are indeed the same, and neither do they face the same futures. Across Australia and North America, at least, many small towns thrive, with growing populations and buoyant business sectors. Nonetheless, such towns tend to be located within more environmentally and locationally favoured regions, featuring close proximity to inspiring and varied natural landscapes (e.g. mountain and/or riverine or coastal views), comfortable climatic conditions and good access to abundant employment and retail opportunities. The current situation is, however, more complex than a stark binary ‘high amenity region equals growth and prosperity/low amenity region equals decline and poverty’. Regions with predominantly Indigenous populations and/or with mining or energy extraction activities concentrated within them are also generally associated with higher than average population growth. Presently, we are being forcibly reminded of the environmental basis of rural settlement because of the increasingly obvious impacts of climate change. Although the science behind climate change and the modelling of the global and spatially specific effects of global warming have been with us for some decades, it is only more recently that research and policy effort has made the transition to examining its likely manifestations at sub-­ national, regional scales. Some recent research (Beer et al. 2013; NSW Office of Environment and Heritage 2014a, b) highlights that the more remote, drier inland regions of Australia will likely experience, on average, hotter and drier conditions over the coming decades, threatening the viability of (continued )

2  Who Lives in the Inland North? Dynamic, Diverse, Fragile… 

19

Box 2.1  (continued) agriculture (at least as currently practiced) and testing the capacity of already disadvantaged and shrinking populations to adjust to the new reality of an increased frequency of heatwaves and bushfires. These zones already experience relatively high levels of net migration loss and population decline, and have for some decades. A growing proportion of the residents of these areas are the ‘left behind’, financially unable to leave due to the lack of a functioning local or regional real estate market (see Chap. 5). Without the ability to liquidate their housing assets willing sellers are effectively trapped in a town with declining services. Potentially, a major social and spatial justice issue is emerging in Australia’s dry inland zones in relation to their sheer liveability let alone business and employment creation, inter alia. In these circumstances, debates over whether residents in the most negatively affected sub-regions should be encouraged to re-locate to safer areas, or whether more adaptable service solutions that enable rural residents to maintain their connection to their town and community need to be developed, may well re-emerge.

Further inland and northward is the outer fringe-of-settlement zone… [P]opulation is sparse and the isolation of individuals is considerably greater… There is already considerable local isolation… and even a few cases of abandonment may… lead to more abandonment, at an accelerating rate… Because of the isolation of the outer fringe and its parts, it appears to be generally unwise to consider introducing new settlement there… In general, the chances of real permanence of new settlement are slight or it would be excessively expensive… In fact, the problem at the present time is not the consideration of new settlement… Rather it is to determine whether or not the present settlers should even be encouraged to stay, for any reason. (Stone 1962, pp. 388–392)

At the time that Kirk Stone was doing his research in northern Sweden (the late 1950s), the region was occupied primarily by semi-nomadic Sami reindeer herders and had largely failed to attract more permanent settlement through agriculture, forestry, mining or energy capture (principally hydro-power). The quotes from Stone actually refer to two parts of the inland north. The outer-fringe is broadly that region at the base of the main westerly mountain ranges where there is good forest cover but

20 

D. B. Carson and N. Argent

poor soil for other purposes, and difficult climatic and environmental conditions. The mountains themselves are the subject of the final paragraph in the citation, and it is interesting that it is in this outermost zone that the only substantial population growth has occurred since the 1950s—linked to tourism development in the Tärnaby-Hemavan region (see Chap. 4). Otherwise, the people who remain in the inland north chiefly live in the towns and villages that Stone would have visited more than 60 years ago. In addition, Sami occupation persists, despite substantial changes to the practices of reindeer husbandry and a consistent out-­ migration of Sami people. This section of the book is concerned with how and why settlement has persisted, and also draws on experiences in similarly challenging environments in Iceland (which was also a Stone case study (Stone 1971)), Spain, Australia and Canada. The sites examined share a recent history of de-population and have been subject to concerns similar to Stone’s of abandonment and the expense of facilitating continued habitation, and Argent’s recognition of the decreasing value of (resident) people in the economic systems of the north. De-population has been largely driven by these economic forces, with the decline of particular industries (especially agriculture), the increasing labour efficiency of others and the dislocation between places of work and places of residents for people employed in mining, forestry, energy production and even tourism.

Summary of the Section The contributions to this part of the book make it clear that not only does habitation persist in the north, but it is dynamic and diverse (Carson et  al. 2019a). While people move away, new people are continuously arriving, and these new people are often very different in demography, culture and social organisation to those who have left. This dynamism and diversity is reflected in this section of the book with investigations into lives in small villages (Chaps. 1 and 4 and this chapter), the old and the young (Chap. 3 and this chapter), different types of international migrants (Chaps. 1 and 6) and those who may have left but find it difficult to completely abandon their ties to the region (Chap. 5).

2  Who Lives in the Inland North? Dynamic, Diverse, Fragile… 

21

The best summary of the content of this section is the articulation of the ‘myths’ that the contributors have examined, and the broad conclusions which they reach about the validity of those myths (Table 2.1). Of course, the section does not cover all the important aspects of ‘who lives’ in the inland north, and there are links to other parts of the book. In particular, Sami people continue to be central to the cultural geography of the north, and the diversity of Sami populations, identity and experiences is discussed in Singleton, Green and Gaini’s chapter in the ‘who works’ section. ‘Who works’ also includes insights into some of the new migrant populations that have tremendously changed the social, cultural and economic landscape of the north, particularly in this century. Table 2.1  Myths about ‘who lives’ in the north Chapter Myth

Broad conclusion

3.

Northern settlement revolves around ‘single industry’ towns and villages which have been particularly vulnerable to de-population

4.

Older people have been ‘stuck’ in these villages for their whole lives

5.

Youth are people who move away from the north

6.

Much of northern settlement has not been around single industry or company towns, but relatively diverse ‘settler’ villages. There is no particular evidence of greater de-population in industry villages compared to these settler villages The vast majority of residents of these villages are likely to have lived elsewhere during their lives— including in urban places Recent times have seen massive youth in-migration, and even without that, about half of all youth stay in the region throughout the youth ages A changing population (even if smaller in size) demands different forms of housing, and a dynamic population uses different houses in different ways

De-population means houses are abandoned and new housing is not needed outside the municipal centres ‘Lifestyle’ migrants are more There are substantial cultural differences between even lifestyle likely than other migrants from nearby European international migrants to countries and the Swedish-born integrate readily into population in the north that mean Swedish society that integration remains a challenge

7.

22 

D. B. Carson and N. Argent

On the (primarily) domestic front, there has also been a large growth in the population of people employed in the public service sectors (health, education, administration) which assume a large part of the financial burden of sustaining life in the north, but which also underpin new economies and new ways of living here. Carson and Jonsson discuss these workers in their chapter in ‘who works’. In this ‘who lives’ section, Linda Lundmark touches on the mobile nature of many northern lives, a theme which permeates the ‘who visits’ section. The lines between ‘who lives’ and ‘who visits’ are often blurry. The contributions to this section are much more concerned with the smaller towns and villages than with the municipal centres which have increasing attracted to themselves the key elements of health, education and other public infrastructure designed to support living well in the north. In part this is because much of the existing research into the process of centralisation of population and services within the north has tended to marginalise the smaller settlements (Carson et al. 2019b). This section instead shows that there are population developments that focus on the central places (youth, refugees) and developments that are more associated with smaller villages (elderly, lifestyle migrants). For the latter, Stone’s perceived threat of isolation may actually be a principal attraction of this place.

Encouraging and Discouraging Settlement It is not the intent of this introductory chapter to provide a comprehensive overview of policy responses to continued residential occupation of the north, but the chapters in this section, and other contemporary academic literature identify some of the measures which intentionally or unintentionally have come to encourage or discourage particular people to settle in particular places. Kirk Stone was most concerned about transport and accessibility, and this is a persistent issue. There is an argument that the region is highly accessible, with very well maintained (although geographically limited) road networks, and five or six regularly serviced airports each of which is rarely more than a couple of hours’ drive from the next. This may, however, be an optimistic insider’s view, with recent

2  Who Lives in the Inland North? Dynamic, Diverse, Fragile… 

23

commentary from the Nordic Council of Ministers’ institute for regional development and planning, Nordregio (Löfving et al. 2019), lamenting that the north is a challenging ‘one hour by plane’ from Stockholm. Distance and accessibility may encourage settlement for some, and discourage settlement for others, but there is also a range of on-the-ground policies and practices which make it increasingly difficult for people to reside here. These range from the somewhat contradictory housing policies described in Chap. 5 (where the need for new housing is subsumed under policies which prevent new houses being built in certain places), to the centralisation of services to a few larger towns as described above, to municipal governments choosing not to provide the funds for street lighting or snow clearing in even the larger of the outer towns and villages. Closing schools and health centres (and shops) has been a common practice in the public and private sector over the past 50  years, but researchers such as Amcoff (2012; Amcoff et al. 2011) question whether the demographic impacts of these closures has been as dramatic as often perceived. While the weight of pressure appears to be to discourage settlement (except for within the municipal centres), there are also initiatives which seek to make even the most remote places increasingly liveable. These include world leading advances in the use of digital technologies to support health, education and other service delivery (Löfving et  al. 2019; Näverlo et  al. 2016; Norberg 2017). Researchers note, however, that there is a persistent tension between those who want to promote such technologies and those who want to limit their use because of a perception that increasingly dispersed systems will also threaten the viability of central places (Kolehmainen et al. 2016). There is, therefore, no clear policy pathway that is being pursued, even if the weight of initiatives appear to be discouraging for permanent settlement. Those who do live in the inland north retain some power to manage their own lives, reflected in local initiatives to re-open shops and to re-organise public services (see Chap. 4), adoption of digital services even when they are not ‘government approved’ (Norberg 2017) and adapting lives spatially and temporally to make the best of the best conditions and avoid or temper the more challenging economic and climatic times of the year (as emphasised throughout this book). The principal contribution of

24 

D. B. Carson and N. Argent

this section of the book (and a major contribution of the book as a whole) is to emphasise that the evolving conditions of the north suit some people and not others, suit some modes of occupation and not others, and are not the precursor to some inevitable ‘decline to nothing’ even for the apparently most marginal settlements (Peters et  al. 2018). Kirk Stone may be surprised at the persistence of northern settlement, even as he would have his predictions vindicated by the (general) lack of settlement expansion. The Australian policy debates might learn from the Swedish experience that changing climate and changing economy do not necessarily spell ‘the end’ for even the most marginal of environments, but are likely to be precursors to dramatic and fundamental changes in who can and does live in the north.

References Alexander, S., & Mercer, D. (2007). Internal migration in Victoria, Australia— Testing the ‘sponge city’ model. Urban Policy and Research, 25(2), 229–255. Amcoff, J. (2012). Do Rural Districts Die When Their Schools Close? Evidence from Sweden around 2000. Educational Planning, 20(3), 47–60. Amcoff, J., Möller, P., & Westholm, E. (2011). The (un) importance of the closure of village shops to rural migration patterns. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 21(2), 129–143. Argent, N., Rolley, F., & Walmsley, J. (2008). The sponge city hypothesis: Does it hold water? Australian Geographer, 39(2), 109–130. Beer, A., Tually, S., & Kroehn, M. (2013). Australia’s country towns 2050: What will a climate adapted settlement pattern look like? Brisbane: National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility. Carson, D. B., Lundmark, L., & Carson, D. A. (2019a). The continuing advance and retreat of rural settlement in the northern inland of Sweden. Journal of Northern Studies, 13(1), 7–34. Carson, D. B., Solbär, L., & Stjernström, O. (2019b). Hot-spots and spaces in-­ between: Development and settlement in the “old north”. In The politics of Arctic resources (pp. 18–37). London, UK: Routledge. Forth, G., & Howell, K. (2002). Don’t cry for me, upper wombat: The realities of regional/small town decline in non-coastal Australia. Sustaining Regions, 2(2), 4–11.

2  Who Lives in the Inland North? Dynamic, Diverse, Fragile… 

25

Gray, I., & Lawrence, G. (2001). A future for regional Australia: Escaping global misfortune. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holmes, J. (2006). Impulses towards a multifunctional transition in rural Australia: Gaps in the research agenda. Journal of Rural Studies, 22, 142–160. Holmes, J. (2010). Divergent regional trajectories in Australia’s tropical savannas: Indicators of a multifunctional rural transition. Geographical Research, 48, 342–358. Hunt, T. L., & Lipo, C. P. (2009). Revisiting Rapa Nui (Easter Island)“Ecocide” 1. Pacific Science, 63(4), 601–616. Kolehmainen, J., Irvine, J., Stewart, L., Karacsonyi, Z., Szabó, T., Alarinta, J., & Norberg, A. (2016). Quadruple helix, innovation and the knowledge-based development: Lessons from remote, rural and less-favoured regions. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 7(1), 23–42. Löfving, L., Norlén, G., & Heleniak, T. (2019). Digital Västerbotten. Promoting equal standards of living for inland municipalities through digital technologies, Sweden. RELOCAL case study N° 29/33. Joensuu: University of Eastern Finland. Available at relocal.eu. Accessed 12 July 2019. Näverlo, S., Carson, D., Edin-Liljegren, A., & Ekstedt, M. (2016). Patient perceptions of a virtual health room installation in rural Sweden. New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage. (2014a). New England north west climate change snapshot. Sydney: Office of Environment and Heritage. New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage. (2014b). Far west climate change snapshot. Sydney: Office of Environment and Heritage. Norberg, A. (2017). From blended learning to learning onlife: ICTs, time and access in higher education (Doctoral dissertation, Umeå University). Peters, P., Carson, D., Porter, R., Vuin, A., Carson, D., & Ensign, P. (2018). My village is dying? Integrating methods from the inside out. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 55(3), 451–475. Pritchard, W., & McManus, P. (Eds.). (2000). Land of discontent: The dynamics of change in rural and regional Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Salt, B. (2001). The big shift: Welcome to the third Australian culture—The Bernard Salt report. Melbourne: Hardie Grant. Stone, K. H. (1962). Swedish fringes of settlement. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 52(4), 373–393. Stone, K.  H. (1971). Isolations and retreat of settlement in Iceland. Scottish Geographical Magazine, 87(1), 3–13.

3 Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource Peripheries: A View from Northern Sweden Dean B. Carson, Doris A. Carson, Marco Eimermann, Michelle Thompson, and Matthew Hayes

 he Myth: Resource Peripheries, T Single-­Industry Settlements, and Socio-Economic Vulnerability There has been concern about the future of smaller towns and villages in the inland north of Sweden since at least the 1950s (Bylund 1960; Enequist 1960). At that time, a substantial period of development in the north was beginning to draw to a close, with the industrialization of forestry and mining in particular centralizing workforces (often away from

D. B. Carson (*) Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities, Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] D. A. Carson Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_3

27

28 

D. B. Carson et al.

the inland north altogether), and major infrastructure projects in transport and energy provision are either coming to an end, or being undertaken by much smaller and temporary workforces. The vulnerability of smaller towns and villages was seen to be linked to the withdrawal of the industries which had once sustained them. Since the 1950s, the population living outside the municipal administrative centres has steadily declined, although the nature of population loss has varied even between relatively proximate towns and villages (Carson et al. 2016a). The extent to which this diversity can be explained by the links between settlements and specific industries is only just beginning to be explored in the Swedish literature. Globally, however, and led by research in Canada in particular, there is a substantial literature on the evolution of small towns in resource peripheries like the inland north of Sweden. Settlement in northern Canada (see Box 3.1), and ‘Outback’ Australia (see Box 3.2), largely followed the demands of resource extractive industries. Towns and villages emerged primarily to support export-oriented extraction and basic processing of natural resources. At the ‘centre’ of the town was the mine, timber mill, railway works, power plant, fish factory or similar, which was often owned and operated by a single large company (Lucas 1971; Bradbury and St. Martin 1983). This dependence on a single industry (and even a single company) has been cited as a major reason for the demographic and economic fragility of settlements in resource peripheries, as mines and mills close and workforces become more global and transient (Storey 2018; Barnes et al. 2001). A more robust system of settlement, it is claimed, might have been possible with more diverse local economies, and less dependence on a M. Eimermann Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] M. Thompson Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia M. Hayes St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

29

single company. Such a system might be achieved even now through economic diversification and particularly the embracing of ‘post-­productivist’ economic activities and mobilities, through for example tourism and lifestyle-related development, e-commuting, employment in service, knowledge and cultural industries, and forms of resource extraction that exploit local and niche markets (Dubois and Carson 2017; Carson and Carson 2014; Petrov 2016). This chapter compares the settlement experiences of the inland north of Sweden to those recorded in Canada and Australia. It illustrates the extent and type of single-industry settlements in northern Sweden and compares their recent economic and demographic pathways with those of more diversified settlement. The aim is to see if the ‘myth’ of single-industry settlements as being more vulnerable than other villages in the region applies in the Swedish context. In commenting on the future prospects for small towns and villages, this chapter illustrates how contemporary economic change may be presenting different opportunities for different settlements.

 lobal Perspectives: Single-Industry Towns G and ‘Post-Staples’ Development The economic histories and settlement geographies of sparsely populated peripheries, such as northern Canada and the ‘Outback’ of Australia, have been fundamentally shaped by the export of raw or semi-processed natural resources (also known as the ‘staples’), including minerals, timber, pulp/paper, oil/gas, fish, grain, and even energy. A relatively large body of literature has emerged since the 1960s examining the nature of settlements established around these staples activities. The dominant form of settlement is widely assumed to be the ‘single-industry town’, at times also referred to as ‘resource-dependent communities’, ‘company towns’, ‘mono-industrial towns’, ‘instant towns’ or ‘special purpose towns’ (Randall and Ironside 1996; Hayter 2000). While there are differences of degree in the relationship between these towns and the resource industries (discussed below), they are linked by a perceived vulnerability to ‘boom and bust’ development patterns as they lack economic and

30 

D. B. Carson et al.

demographic diversity, struggle to attract and retain skilled workers, face socio-demographic imbalances and social problems, and struggle to respond to economic downturns or plant closures (Storey 2018; Barnes 2005; Hayter 2000). Up until the 1970s, and particularly during the post-World War II resources boom, the construction of ‘instant towns’ was the standard model for accommodating the large workforces associated with mining, forestry, energy production and railway infrastructure projects (Storey 2018). They were usually planned as large and permanent population centres, often housing tens of thousands of residents (workers and their families) at peak production (Hayter 2000). These instant towns typically evolved along a number of distinct phases (Lucas 1971): from a construction-­intensive early period (characterized by high population turnover), to a more mature operational phase (characterized by stable populations, the emergence of local economic linkages, and increasing local ownership and responsibilities for community infrastructure and services), before eventually winding down or a transitioning to alternative futures (again triggering a period of high population mobility) (Bradbury and St. Martin 1983; Halseth 1999). Randall and Ironside (1996), however, have pointed out that there has been considerable diversity in the experiences of these towns, depending on the particular resource sector, the size of the community, and the degree of spatial isolation. Communities dependent on fishing as their single industry, for example, were found to have different labour structures than mining and mill towns, including more female employment, as well as a reliance on smaller firms (Randall and Ironside 1996). Instead of being purpose-built by a single company, they often evolved more slowly and ‘organically’ than mining or mill towns focusing on one main employer. Fishing and forestry towns typically pre-dated ‘the company’, and had strong links to surrounding settlements and service centres. Forestry labour may have been deployed seasonally in other industries (as noted in Sweden by Aldskogius (Aldskogius 1960)) and in other locations. In contrast, instant towns were often set up as self-contained service centres with limited interaction with other settlements, thus offering diversified employment (including in public services) but within the structure of ‘the company’ (Randall and Ironside 1996; Dignard 2004).

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

31

In more recent times, the idea of town building specifically for a single company or project has lost favour. Demands for smaller, but more specialized, workforces that can be mobilized across multiple projects have ushered in the end of an era when many industry towns provided stable employment that was often handed down through generations of long-­ term resident families. The distinctions between different industries have somewhat disappeared, with Storey (2018) noting an increasing dislocation of labour from place (through fly-in/fly-out workforce models, for example). Whether historical differences linked to industrial dependence or different experiences of the transition away from instant towns have impacted contemporary capacities for economic diversification and demographic sustainability is not clear (see Box 3.1). The common argument is that diversification away from exclusive resource dependence is the only way forward towards a more robust future if communities are to avoid the impacts of recurring cycles of boom and bust—and that such diversification needs to be planned for in advance rather than as a response to economic crises (Hayter 2000; Clemenson 1992; Halseth et al. 2014). Diversification is commonly discussed in relation to a shift from ‘staples’ to ‘post-staples’ industries (which can be built around the research, technology, and service aspects of particular resource industries) or a shift from ‘extractive to attractive’ industries (e.g. development around tourism, leisure services, nature or heritage conservation, or services for amenity and retirement migrants). Knowledge and cultural industries have also been identified as potential directions for future development (Petrov 2016). Such diversification appears more challenging in instant or company towns which are highly susceptible to boom and bust economic cycles. In these, rapid decline in the resource industry results in substantial job losses, outmigration, and closure of businesses, services, and infrastructure within a short period of time (Barnes et al. 2001). While complete town closures are rare (though they exist, as discussed by Bradbury and St. Martin 1983), the common story is that economic diversification and renewed population growth are difficult, particularly for more isolated places with limited access to alternative markets and sources of labour and in-migrants (Hayter 2000). The institutional and infrastructure

32 

D. B. Carson et al.

legacies of single-industry (and single-company) dependence can have additional detrimental effects on new development efforts. For example, tourism development or establishment retirement villages and similar have often been hampered by the relatively homogenous housing infrastructure, persistent land use restrictions, as well as a lack of transport alternatives, hospitality and support services, and local service mentalities (Carson and Carson 2014; Ryser and Halseth 2013). Negative images of empty shop fronts, derelict infrastructure, and the social stigma resulting from large-scale decline may further reduce the attractiveness of such towns to new migrants, including amenity migrants (Carson et al. 2019). Success stories in attractive industry development are typically limited to communities located in higher amenity areas (e.g. near the coast or the mountains) and which are within relatively easy access from large urban source markets nearby (Hayter 2000; Gill and Williams 2011; Koster and Carson 2019). The examples of smaller fishing communities (e.g. dotted along the coasts of eastern Canada), as well as agricultural towns (e.g. in rural Australia), have shown that overall population decline has often continued despite considerable investment in tourism and heritage-­ related development and effort to attract amenity migrants (Butters et al. 2017; Vuin et  al. 2016). Local diversification outcomes in terms of employment and population numbers may therefore be similar, even if these communities have had a longer history and more locally rooted populations and community identities than the more remote and purpose-­built mining or mill towns.

Box 3.1  Dalhousie on a Saturday Night Matthew Hayes A Saturday night in the town in Dalhousie is not what it used to be. Situated at the most northern point of Canada’s eastern province of New Brunswick, the town’s population has dropped from a peak of almost 6000 in the late 1970s to 2350 according to the 2016 census. Of those, 900 were over age 65, and the community’s median age was almost 59. In the 1820s, the northern part of New Brunswick began to attract ‘lumbermen’ who began to exploit the tall pine stands on the traditional territory of the Gespege’wa’gi Mi’gmaq. The pine was valuable to the British Navy and (continued)

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

33

Box 3.1  (continued) merchant shipping. In the age of sail, the thin red line of empire was stitched together by the labour of the lumber camps. Yet many of the towns that provided the essential resources of the British Empire have long since fallen into decline. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, it helped spell the end of the age of sail, and along with it, demand for New Brunswick shipbuilding. Towns like Dalhousie, which had drawn hundreds of Scottish and French-Acadian workers away from peasant agriculture into a new form of wilderness industrialism, had to find new industries. The expansion of the newspaper and book publishing industries would provide the impetus for the twentieth century’s diversification into pulp and paper production, which provided plentiful employment in the region at union wages for generations. The paper mill dominated the town and its economy from 1930 to 2008. But in many respects, it remained a resource outpost of the great North American commercial empires of the period. As the demand for pulp and paper stabilized, and as larger mills closer to big markets became the industry norm, towns like Dalhousie, Bathurst, Atholville, Newcastle, and Chatham—all important pulp and paper towns in the twentieth century—began to wind down. Today, part of its workforce survives on other resource outposts, as a casualized, mobile labour force in the mines and tar sands of Western Canada. The result is a space in search of a new identity. The mill was torn down shortly after it closed, leaving a gaping hole on the town’s main street, which used to bustle between shift changes at the mill. Most of the downtown businesses are now closed and the NBIP Employee’s Club (see Fig. 3.1)

Fig. 3.1  Dalhousie. (Photo: Matthew Hayes 2018) (continued)

34 

D. B. Carson et al.

Box 3.1  (continued) is a museum of late twentieth century modernism. On a Saturday night in early November 2017, its only patron was the bartender’s friend. Jeopardy played on a corner television set. The town’s main street was eerily silent. Towns like Dalhousie still attract new residents, though far fewer than before. Provincial and municipal leadership often long for the good old days of resource exploitation and industrial jobs. But perhaps the Baie des Chaleurs and the rolling ridge lines of the end of the Appalachian chain might yet foster new activities and draw a more mobile global workforce to new forms of remote living. A new optimism pervades younger residents, many of whom have returned to Dalhousie from larger centres, or who chose to settle there because it gave them the chance to pursue more meaningful activities. The accelerating costs of housing in larger Canadian centres make lower local housing costs increasingly attractive for people drawn to alternatives at the margins of an increasingly competitive, mobile, and precarious global labour force. There are those who long for a return of industry. Shale gas fracking has its local exponents. But a growing number also see that non-industrial activities may enable its natural surroundings to be more fully appreciated.

Similar lessons may be drawn for other popular post-staples development endeavours, including in the knowledge and cultural sectors (Petrov 2016). There have been various efforts at establishing knowledge clusters in former resource towns (Dubois and Carson 2017), including specialized research centres (e.g. geoscience, mining rehabilitation, climate and environmental change, palaeontology, etc.), regional education and university campuses (Hodge et al. 2016), and training facilities for Indigenous people from the surrounding region (Pearson and Liu 2016). This represents a move towards ‘placeless’ industries which are less affected by remoteness due to improved Internet and communication technologies, but which simultaneously capitalize on ‘place-based’ (historic, environmental, cultural) assets and knowledge. Again, the extent to which such developments contribute to economic and demographic renewal is not clear. Jobs in the knowledge and cultural industries may in fact be concentrating in the larger administrative centres rather than the smaller resource communities, thus reinforcing general (micro-)urbanization dynamics in the periphery (Bjarnason and Edvardsson 2017; Carson et  al. 2016a). While the few larger regional centres thrive, the smaller

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

35

towns and villages may actually share similar experiences of continued economic and demographic decline, irrespective of their historic resource-­ dependence, their infrastructure legacies, their demographic and labour characteristics, or their attempts at diversifying local industries.

Box 3.2  Ghosting Towns in Far North Queensland Michelle Thompson The far north of Queensland, Australia, has a history of small settlements based around mining, in which the towns experience a surge in population growth to capitalize on the precious minerals found, including gold and tin, and then a significant decline once this resource has been exhausted. But the future of these small towns after their initial ‘boom’ is diverse. Some towns experience decline and collapse, reflecting the perceived vulnerability of single-industry towns. However, some towns are more resilient and continue to exist today, albeit in different (and smaller) forms. Three examples demonstrate this diversity. The Death of Thornborough Thornborough was once a bustling gold mining town, established in 1877 along with the township of Kingsborough as a result of gold mining on the Hodgkinson River. The two towns experienced rapid growth, with an estimated population of over 1000 in each, and a combined 20 hotels, 13 general stores and four butchers. However, once the gold was exhausted, the miners left to seek their fortunes elsewhere and the town went into decline. Today, the town has a population of one and presents as the prototypical ‘ghost town’ emerging from single industry dependence. The Decline of Irvinebank Irvinebank is a small mining town that was founded in 1884 and quickly developed infrastructure such as a mill, dam, and smelters to support tin mining, milling, and smelting. However, this was relatively short lived due to the impacts of World War I on the mine’s operation and the enlisting of men many of whom never returned. Demonstrating the town’s ‘boom and bust’, in the ten years to 1911, the population grew from 610 to 1264, and then experienced a similar decline in the following decade as the population fell to 607. This decline has continued with the 2011 census reporting the population at 311. Today, the town’s tin mining heritage provides the resource base for a new industry—tourism. Visitors to the historic town of Irvinebank are able to step back in time, and appreciate its mining and social history and heritage buildings. Whether tourism will replicate the boom and bust cycles of tin mining or create a more stable economic and demographic base for the town is yet to be seen. (continued)

36 

D. B. Carson et al.

Box 3.2  (continued) The Persistence of Ravenswood With a population of 255 at the 2016 census, Ravenwood continues its origins as a gold mining town. Similar to other gold rush towns of the late nineteenth century, Ravenswood prospered with a population of almost 5000. At its peak, the town had 48 hotels, convent school, a school of arts, and a hospital. Mining fell into decline due to an industrial strike in 1912 and the impacts of World War I. The 2006 census showed the population at 191, which increased to 349 in the 2011 census, but declined again in 2016. Ravenswood’s current economic drivers are gold mining and tourism, demonstrating the importance of the main economic resource (gold) in the cessation of the town’s decline. The tourism attraction of the town comes from its heritage values, including the survival of several historic buildings from the gold rush era, popular with drive tourists taking a detour to the town. The case/story of Ravenswood demonstrates how the town’s main economic resource (gold) has contributed to the town’s longevity. This has occurred in conjunction with the diversification of its mining base to include tourism. Rather than replacing mining, tourism has supplemented the town’s income and created opportunities for employment/business through the provision of facilities such as a general store and post office, a primary school and pubs.

 he Inland North: Experiences of Industry T and Settler Villages Much of the inland north in Sweden has been termed a resource periphery (Hedlund 2017), dependent to a large extent on forestry (and related manufacturing) and mining. This is complemented by a few settlements and municipalities where hydro-power and transport industries (i.e. railway) have historically played an important role (Carson et al. 2016b), as well as a small number of ‘attractive’ anomalies, such as tourism resorts and retirement areas, located in the more accessible and amenity-rich parts of the Swedish mountains (Hedlund 2017). Despite the acknowledged prominence of resource industries in northern Sweden, the literature on single-industry settlements is rather thin, particularly in areas outside the prominent mining municipalities of the far north (Kiruna and Gällivare) and the larger processing and manufacturing sites along

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

37

the coast. The focus of this chapter is, thus, on settlements in the inland municipalities of Västerbotten and Norrbotten, stretching from Dorotea and Åsele in the south to Jokkmokk in the north (Fig. 3.2), and more specifically on the smaller towns and villages outside the main municipal centres There is no straight-forward definition of what exactly constitutes a single-industry settlement in the context of northern Sweden. Some villages were purpose-built by a single company to service an industrial activity (a mine, a factory or mill, a power plant, a railway yard, a tourism resort, etc.), and these are relatively easily identified. Some other settlements were not built by a single company, but nonetheless owe their

Fig. 3.2  ‘Settler’ and ‘industry’ villages in the inland north of Sweden

38 

D. B. Carson et al.

existence to specific industrial activities (perhaps conducted by a number of companies). Many of these pre-existed the industrial activity, but it is that activity which was responsible for economic and demographic growth and, often, decline. Other villages may have had periods of strong linkages to particular industrial activities, and perhaps different activities over time, but owe their existence to more general processes of colonization and settlement in the north. One illustrative case of such a ‘settler’ village is that of Adak in Malå municipality (Carson, Nilsson & Carson, 2020). Adak was originally settled as a village (containing shops and schools and other communal services) by small land-holders as part of the colonization process in the nineteenth century. Its population grew rapidly early in the twentieth century as a result of increasing demand for timber resources (provided by a multitude of companies and family operations). In 1940, a relatively large mining operation began nearby, and Adak became home to a substantial number of mine workers. However, the mining company built another village (Adakgruvan) at the mine site itself, and that village and the mine were closed down in the late 1970s. The village of Adak, in contrast, continues to exist to this day. In this context, it is difficult to classify Adak as a ‘mining’ village, since its initial growth was not related to mining, and since it did not have a continuing dependence on mining. It was also not specifically a ‘forestry’ village, since most early land-­holders engaged in agriculture as well as timber cutting, and there was limited industrial infrastructure (in the form of a large timber mill, for example) for forestry in or near the village. This sort of village profile—settlement by people engaged effectively in subsistence farming and timber cutting, growth of a village out of that, followed by periods when the economy and demography were influenced by various industries—is common across the inland north of Sweden. About half of the villages included in this chapter (Fig. 3.2) fit this broader ‘settler’ profile, being influenced at various times by agriculture, forestry, mining, energy production (hydropower), and, in rarer cases, the railway industry, manufacturing, and tourism. The remaining villages appeared more dependent on a single industry or employer, with the activities of that industry defining more directly where the village would be located, and how its infrastructure, workforce,

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

39

and population would develop over time. Some industry villages in this region were planned as temporary settlements which have now been completely abandoned (such as Adakgruvan, but also for the construction of hydropower plants, such as Messaure in Jokkmokk municipality). Others were built by a company but have continued to exist after the company has left or reduced its presence in the village (e.g. the mining village of Kristineberg in Lycksele municipality or the villages of Porjus (Jokkmokk municipality) and Ajaureforsen (Storuman municipality) built around hydropower). Again others were built around existing settlements that were absorbed by the dominant resource activity (e.g. hydropower in Vuollerim, Jokkmokk municipality, or forestry/manufacturing in Glommersträsk, Arvidsjaur municipality). Figure 3.2 only includes villages (tätorter) which have had populations in excess of 200 residents at some point since 1950. It is important to note that there have been smaller industry and settler villages in this region, but there is much less statistical information available about them. An initial list of villages was constructed from the published reports of the 1950, 1960, and 1965 censuses.1 Only four villages in the region grew to have populations in excess of 200 people after 1965, and these were also included in the analysis. Figure 3.2 shows the distribution of villages across the study region, with some clear spatial clustering—hydropower villages in the north and the south-west, forestry villages in the east, mining villages in the Malå district and in some western (mountain) areas. The central corridor of the region is dominated by settler villages. Two ‘tourism’ villages are identified to the north-west of Storuman. Hemavan is clearly a tourism resort town, specifically identified and planned for this purpose by the municipal government (Müller 2019). Tärnaby pre-existed tourism development primarily as a church and administrative centre servicing mostly local Sami populations, but the impetus for its population development in the 1950s was tourism investment (again with a large role played by government). The mountain areas also include other villages initially established by the state and the Swedish church to service mobile Sami  https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/aldre-statistik/innehall/sveriges-officiella-statistik-sos/folk-och-­ bostadsrakningarna/folkrakningen-19101960/

1

40 

D. B. Carson et al.

populations (e.g. Kvikkjokk in Jokkmokk municipality and Ammarnäs in Sorsele), but these have never officially had more than 200 residents. In most other cases, Sami people settled in the broad range of towns and villages across the region, even leading the establishment of some ‘settler’ villages to access incentives from the Swedish government (Sköld and Axelsson 2008). Likewise, there are several smaller tourism-­dominated villages (like Ammarnäs, Kittelfjäll in Vilhelmina municipality, or Borgafjäll in Dorotea municipality), and some villages where tourism is now the most important economic activity were established for other purposes (e.g. mining in Klimpfjäll and hydropower in Marsfjäll/Saxnäs, both in Vilhelmina municipality). Modelling demographic change at such small scales as these villages is highly problematic (Peters et al. 2016). While some detailed village data are available from the 1950s and 1960s, more recent data at this scale do not include information about employment and industry. As a result, we have used ‘tätort’ data from Statistics Sweden to describe gross population change between 1950 and 2016, and postcode level data drawn from the Astrid population database at Umeå University to analyse changes in employment between 1990 and 2015. Using postcodes brings its own problems, not the least that there has been a general trend of ‘emptying out’ of population from rural areas and a concentration of population in villages and towns. It may well be, for example, that the village population has grown, but the postcode population has declined. Thirty-seven of the 41 villages (located in 34 postcodes) considered in this chapter had their largest recorded populations in either 1950, 1960, or 1965. Just six of these had populations in excess of 200 people in 2016, and only 12 had populations greater than 200 residents even by 1990. Four villages had fewer than 200 residents in the 1950s and 1960s, with two of these (Tärnaby and Klimpfjäll) peaking in 1980, and three (Tärnaby and Hemavan, and Hedlunda near Lycksele) having more than 200 residents in 2016. While Tärnaby, Hemavan, and Klimpfjäll are today mountain villages with a strong tourism presence, mining was the driver of the brief population boom in the 1970s and early 1980s in Klimpfjäll, and recent mountain tourism development in Tärnaby has not had a population stimulus there to match that created by a mix of early tourism development and the presence of local government

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

41

administration in the 1970s and 1980s. Since 1980, Tärnaby’s population has declined from about 650 residents to about 450 residents. Only Hemavan has had recent population growth, reaching 200 residents at the start of this century, and appearing to stabilize at about 250 residents in the past decade. Data about village populations prior to 1950 are more difficult to access and assess, but the evidence is that few of these villages had populations in excess of 200 residents before the 1940s. The larger villages during the boom time of the 1950s–1960s (Harsprånget, Porjus, Vuollerim, Kristineberg, and Messaure) had more than 1000 residents and (with the exception of Vuollerim) were primarily built ‘from the ground up’ as instant towns during the 1940s. Only three of the 34 postcode areas (those for Hemavan, Marsfjäll, and Knaften near Lycksele) experienced population growth (and each less than 5%) between 1985 and 2015, and only two additional postcodes (Nästansjö and Skansholm in Vilhelmina) experienced less than 10% population loss over the period. Otherwise, population loss averaged about 40%, and this was similar for ‘settler’ villages and ‘single-industry’ villages, although the three mining villages (Klimpfjäll, Kristineberg, Laisvall) had cumulative losses of 66%. There was also very little overall difference between ‘mountain’ and ‘forest’ villages, despite two of the former gaining population. In most of the literature, population loss is linked directly to a decrease in employment opportunities and an ageing population. While there is evidence of an ageing population in the set of postcodes examined here (with 24% aged 65 years or over in 1990, and 27% in 2015), there was actually a higher proportion of the adult population working in 2015 (53% of those aged over 18  years) than in 1990 (48%). This may be explained by the ageing of children into working age as part of the population ageing process, and an increase in employment for women, but it also must reflect increased employment opportunities. Those opportunities have emerged for residents of both ‘settler’ and ‘industry’ villages. Hedlund (2017) claimed that economic development in rural Sweden has, at least since the 1970s, been dependent on the transition from manufacturing to services employment. Those regions which have maintained manufacturing jobs while building a services workforce have experienced employment growth, while those with a continuing dependence on

42 

D. B. Carson et al.

agriculture and pre-manufacturing aspects of extractive industries like forestry and mining have found it more difficult to create new employment. In this study region, there has been an overall decline in manufacturing employment (from 16% of all employment in 1990 to 12% in 2015), but an increase in employment in manufacturing within the forestry sector (from 1% to 7%). Manufacturing decreases have largely occurred in mining (which as a sector has gone from providing 7% of jobs to 3%) and the energy sector (from 6% to 2%). There has been no change in either agricultural employment or employment in the hospitality sector (both around 4%). Rather, employment growth has been concentrated in public services such as government administration, education, and health. Many of these jobs are located outside of the village (as these services have become concentrated in the municipal centres), reflecting an increasing disconnect between where people live and where they work. The employment profiles of ‘settler’ and ‘industry’ villages have converged around this growth in public services employment. However, industrial legacies remain important in some places. For example, while employment in the energy sector has declined from 30% to 40% (in 1990) in villages established around hydropower, that sector remains a more important employer (around 10% of employment) in those villages than in others (less than 2%). Likewise, employment in the forestry sector remains higher (around 15%) in villages which grew around timber mills than even in ‘settler’ villages (around 10%) where forestry was nonetheless an important activity. Within this ‘big picture’, however, the stories of individual villages differ substantially. This is true both of changes in employment structures and of more recent population development. Previous research (Carson et al. 2020) has discussed this in relation to the relatively proximate villages of Adak and Kristineberg. The two villages experienced similar population growth linked to the local mining boom in the 1940s and 1950s, but had very different experiences of demographic change associated with the loss of population since then, with Kristineberg experiencing more sustained population loss, greater population ageing, and a male bias in the population. Interestingly, these differences occurred despite both villages having similar experiences of economic development post-mining boom (which has included some ongoing mining, small-scale tourism,

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

43

local light manufacturing, and short-term housing of temporary population groups such as refugees, construction workers, or berry pickers), and both having been subject to school closures, shop closures (and re-openings, and re-closures), and a loss of transport services. Some possible explanations for the different experiences include: • The origins of the village (Adak was a well-established settler village before mining, while Kristineberg was purpose-built by the mining company); • The impact of mining on the local environment (there have been fewer environmental issues associated with the Adak mine); • The nature of ‘dis-investment’ (surplus infrastructure was gradually removed from Adak as the population declined, while Kristineberg retains a range of outdated and over-sized infrastructure); and • Luck—partly reflected in the decisions by many absentee home owners in Adak to invest in house and property maintenance, with fewer doing so in Kristineberg. In other comparisons, the tourism resort of Hemavan has experienced (modest) population growth this century on the back of substantial government investment in new housing infrastructure, and related private sector investment in tourism, retail, and hospitality operations. Nearby tourism villages of Tärnaby and Kittelfjäll (which has never had a population in excess of 200 residents) have not had the same demographic or economic experiences despite also having substantial (winter) tourism development which, in the case of Tärnaby, pre-dates Hemavan. Hemavan’s comparative ‘success’ may be explained by several factors, including a more fortunate location (closer to the main market in Norway), a more concentrated cluster of housing and businesses that is within easy reach of the popular skiing infrastructure, stronger investment and leadership by the dominant skiing/resort company (which divested itself of skiing assets in Tärnaby to concentrate more on Hemavan), and the prospects of a major international airport opening up nearby across the border in Mo I Rana (Müller 2019). Tärnaby, on the other hand, has lacked the same level of infrastructure investment and rejuvenation, with many of its skiing, hospitality, and housing assets

44 

D. B. Carson et al.

being relatively outdated and dispersed. It has also struggled to encourage the same level of entrepreneurial spirit and activity, partly because of the ‘stigma’ of losing its role and identity as a service and local government hub (Arell 2000). In other cases, explanations for differing experiences of apparently similar villages are less readily apparent, but may have local legends attached. For example, the villages of Moskosel and Glommersträsk in Arvidsjaur municipality appear to be on different development paths (with Moskosel experiencing continuing population loss, but Glommersträsk somewhat stabilizing) despite very similar economic histories of dependence on the forestry industry and contemporary experiences of loss of public services. The view ‘on the ground’ conveys a much more depressed picture of Moskosel, where empty shop fronts and abandoned houses are a prominent sight. Glommersträsk has maintained a visually more appealing and vibrant village centre, including a shop, petrol station, and a restaurant/accommodation facility, along with the presence of major timber processing companies. While there is also evidence of some business activity, tourism and community-run services in Moskosel, these signs of ‘community vibrancy’ are less visible, less concentrated, and less permanent than in Glommersträsk. Local explanations for these differences point to a stronger historic entrepreneurial culture in Glommersträsk credited to its forestry industry having a high involvement of multiple private sector actors in the 1950s and 1960s. The Moskosel mill, on the other hand, was publicly owned and operated, leading, so local commentary has it, to lower levels of entrepreneurship and higher reliance on government intervention. Differing experiences also exist for ‘hydro villages’ in Jokkmokk municipality. The village of Porjus, built for the construction of a hydropower station in the 1950s, has recently experienced small population growth linked to various forms of international migration, while Vuollerim, which also had population growth during the hydropower construction era but was a well-established village prior to that boom, has lost considerable population in this century. Similarly, the settler village of Gunnarn in Storuman municipality continues to ‘do well’ and maintains its shop and school (and other community infrastructure such as a golf club), while the settler village of Björksele in Lycksele municipality

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

Commercial and community services have been gradually removed from the Moskosel ‘welcome’ sign…

45

…whereas they remain clearly visible in Glommersträsk.

Fig. 3.3  Differing views when entering Moskosel and Glommersträsk

has struggled, despite an apparently more scenic location (along the Vindeln river) and a more pressing need for local services (being more distant from other service centres) (Fig. 3.3).

What Might the Future Hold? Despite well over half a century of population loss, it is difficult to claim that villages such as these are ‘dying’ (Peters et al. 2018) or that many, if any, will become completely depopulated (Carson et al. 2016a). Even if the permanent resident population continues to decline, the villages are occupied seasonally both by people with long-term attachment (through family connections, for example) and by newcomers, often visiting from outside of Sweden. These seasonal injections of population (which may be in summer, or winter, or the autumn hunting season) also attract seasonal businesses, particularly in tourism and hospitality, but also in agriculture and food production. This chapter reveals how a relatively uniform pattern of depopulation up until the turn of this century has been followed in more recent times by a divergence of experiences that are only loosely linked to the origins of individual villages and the nature of employment in villages themselves. This mirrors the experiences of other

46 

D. B. Carson et al.

resource peripheries, such as those found in Canada and Australia, where closures of failed industry towns (e.g. as reported by Bradbury and St. Martin 1983) have become increasingly rare. The prominent ruins of ‘ghost towns’ scattered across remote Australia also remind us that, while these are largely a relic of failed settlement expansion of the past, closures have not just affected industry towns but also more diversified settlements, including those with a mix of resource, agriculture, transport, and service activities (Prideaux and Timothy 2010). As Thompson (Box 3.2) illustrates, even towns that have suffered substantial population loss might still exist as support for other villages by attracting tourists and temporary ‘buzz’ (Robertsson and Marjavaara 2015) around heritage revival, volunteering, and events. As shown in this chapter, there is no substantial evidence that ‘settler’ villages have been more able to retain population than ‘industry’ villages, or that particular types of industry villages have been more resistant to population loss in the past ten or fifteen years. Instead, a range of factors—some readily identifiable, some more deeply hidden, and a dose of luck—have enabled some villages to support residents working locally in traditional and new industries (particularly tourism), and to have large proportions of residents working outside of the village, particularly in service sectors such as public administration, health, and education. This externalization of employment, and the increasing significance of seasonal habitation and economic activities, reflects an increasing mobility of village residents which at once can give the (statistical) impression of continuing population loss (as people who spend part of the year in the village register as ‘residents’ elsewhere) and ‘on the ground’ of revitalization (Peters et al. 2018). There are some parallels between the Swedish experience and experiences in places like Australia and Canada. However, there are some important differences which need to be considered in constructing a ‘Swedish model’ of village transformations. The preponderance of what we have termed ‘settler villages’ is just one of these differences, although it is not clear whether the absence of such villages from the international literature represents an actual absence from the landscape or a lack of attention from scholars. It is also possible that the settlement of Indigenous people occurred within the broader process of settlement making in

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

47

Sweden, whereas in other countries there were often attempts to exclude Indigenous people from access to new settlements (O’Faircheallaigh 2013). This particular aspect of settlement history warrants specific attention by scholars qualified to do so. It seems, however, that the models we have drawn from the international literature fail to account for the broader range of development experiences in Sweden. Swedish villages are also typically less isolated than those in the Canadian and Australian resource peripheries (although a case for similar degrees of remoteness may be made for Swedish mountain villages), meaning that links between settlements are likely to be stronger. Most critical in this is the relatively lower degree of ‘hyper-localism’ of economic development in Sweden. As we have seen with public sector employment, jobs do not have to be physically located in the village to be available to village residents. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, even industry villages in Sweden tended to be very small at peak population when compared to those in Canada (and to a lesser extent in Australia). This both introduces a vulnerability in Sweden that might not be present in these other places (in Sweden, changed circumstances of just a handful of people might impact the entire village), and perhaps offers some protection against the wild swings of boom and bust (which has mobilized thousands of people in individual towns in Canada, for example). Despite these differences, a similar process of increasing disconnection between local demography and local employment recognized by researchers such as Storey (2018) in Canada and Australia has been described in Sweden by Carson et al. (2016b) as part of a ‘settlement cycle’. The cycle proceeds from establishment of ‘permanent’ towns (usually by the company) that were intended to outlive the resource project, to towns intended to be abandoned when the project ended, to temporary accommodation facilities for workers only, to the use of ‘fly-in/fly-out’ and other non-resident labour often staying in commercial accommodation. Our study area includes examples of the first two—Porjus and Kritineberg as permanent villages, Messaure and Adakgruvan as temporary towns. No worker accommodation villages have had sufficient footprint in the region to qualify for inclusion in the present analysis. However, echoes of this model exist in the mountain tourism villages, where substantial proportions of the labour force, which is only seasonally in demand, are

48 

D. B. Carson et al.

housed in company owned and operated accommodation, and are not expected to become year-round residents (Lundmark 2006). Nonresident labour has also become common in this region. Certainly, the construction of Europe’s largest land-based wind farm at Blaiken, just north-west of Storuman, has occurred over the past decade with no notable impact on local populations. The research in this chapter adds some nuance to this idea of the settlement cycle. Firstly, it should not be viewed as a ‘cycle’, since there is limited evidence that these industries will return to models of village building (and substantial evidence that they will not, as discussed by Storey 2018). Secondly, the cycle should not be seen as a linear progression of settlement types when viewed across the multitude of industries that operate in northern Sweden. As the hydropower industry in Jokkmokk was moving to temporary worker camps, the mining industry in Malå was building permanent settlements. As timber mills were closing and forestry workers were increasingly coming to the region for days and weeks only, tourism operators and government investors were trying to attract entrepreneurs and labour to make predominantly winter tourism villages like Hemavan year-round destinations. Even now, there are differences in how various industries are proposing to manage labour needs for new projects. The wind-power sector emphasizes its use of temporary and non-resident labour (in some cases making a virtue of its limited impact on local communities), while a number of new mining proposals anticipate at least some of the labour force (voluntarily) choosing to relocate permanently to the region. The likely absence of new ‘instant towns’ draws attention to the experiences of what we have termed here ‘settler villages’. These too have experienced the impacts of changing labour management practices in resource industries, being at various times ‘adopted’ and ‘abandoned’ by workers attached to particular projects in mining, energy production, forestry, and even tourism. This is a pattern that is likely to persist, particularly if the mining proposals flagged above come to fruition. In essence, the set of villages that remain in the inland north of Sweden can be viewed as having ‘reset’ as pre-existing settlements which may service new (temporary) resource projects or may even serve as the ‘home base’ for people whose work may take them to many and dispersed locations over even a

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

49

relatively short period of time. That specific industrial legacies will position some villages (Glommersträsk compared to Moskosel) more favourably than others, or hinder some villages (Kristineberg compared to Adak) is suggested by this research, but requires further analysis. Our current understanding of village dynamics also downplays consideration of those who live and work seasonally or temporarily in the region as contributors to village sustainability. Some villages appear to harness the ‘bursts of activity’ (Vuin 2019) that accompany non-resident populations, with pop-up businesses, community-run flea markets, seasonal tourism attractions, and well-attended festivals and events dominating summer (or winter) life, while other villages show little evidence of their seasonal populations (or perhaps are not able to attract them). Given the dynamic nature of these populations, however, it should not be expected that the villages that appear most vibrant right now will continue with that status into the future. Across the region we see these activities opening and closing, sometimes lasting for many years (like the Saga theatre in Adak which has been running an annual film festival since the early 1990s), and sometimes appearing briefly (such as the Åskilje café which operated around 2014/2015) before changing form (the café began as a restaurant for evening meals, transitioned to a lunch café, then to a catered venue hired out for functions and events), and/or disappearing altogether (the café building is now an apartment rented out during the summer months). Some activities even disappear from one place and reappear in another, as in the case of lifestyle migrants moving their seasonal dogsledding tourism business from a remote place near Moskosel to a similar place near Dorotea due to better housing and access to services. In short, the future is unlikely to see any substantial population increase even in villages which coincidentally become proximate to new industrial activity. It is possible that one or two ‘new’ tourism villages may emerge (or expand from existing ones), considering growing interest in Arctic and winter-related tourism, particularly among international markets (Rantala et al. 2019). However, the experiences of locations which have tried to become ‘the next Hemavan’ in recent years make this only a modest possibility. There is a chance, however, that some villages will not continue to lose ‘resident’ populations, as they replace aging or departing residents with new mobile ones, and that many villages will become

50 

D. B. Carson et al.

increasingly engaged in non-local and seasonal employment systems. Traditional approaches to village planning, which have relied on tax income drawn from resident populations, will need to adapt to these increasingly temporary and multi-locale living and working dynamics (Müller and Hall 2003) if these settlements are to remain an important and attractive feature of the northern landscape.

References Aldskogius, H. (1960). Changing land use and settlement development in the Siljan region. Geografiska Annaler, 42(4), 250–261. Arell, N. (2000). The evolution of tourism in the Tärna Mountains: Arena and actors in a periphery. In F. Brown & D. Hall (Eds.), Tourism in peripheral areas: Case studies (pp. 114–132). Clevedon: Channel View. Barnes, T. J. (2005). Borderline communities: Canadian single industry towns, Staples, and Harold Innis. In V. H. Houtum, O. Kramsch, & W. Zierhofer (Eds.), Bordering space. Aldershot: Ashgate. Barnes, T. J., Hayter, R., & Hay, E. (2001). Stormy weather: Cyclones, Harold Innis and Port Alberni, BC. Environment and Planning A, 33, 2127–2147. Bjarnason, T., & Edvardsson, I. R. (2017). University pathways of urban and rural migration in Iceland. Journal of Rural Studies, 54, 244–254. Bradbury, J. H., & St. Martin, I. (1983). Winding down in a Quebec mining town: A case study of Schefferville. The Canadian Geographer, 27(2), 128–144. Butters, L., Okusipe, O. M., Eledi, S. B., & Vodden, K. (2017). Engaging the past to create a new future: A comparative study of heritage-driven community development initiatives in the great northern peninsula. Journal of Rural and Community Development, 12(2–3). https://journals.brandonu.ca/jrcd/ article/view/1470 Bylund, E. (1960). Theoretical considerations regarding the distribution of settlement in inner North Sweden. Geografiska Annaler, 42(4), 225–231. Carson, D.  A., & Carson, D.  B. (2014). Mobilities and path dependence: Challenges for tourism and “attractive” industry development in a remote company town. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 14(4), 460–479. Carson, D.  B., Carson, D.  A., Porter, R., Ahlin, C.  Y., & Sköld, P. (2016a). Decline, adaptation or transformation: New perspectives on demographic

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

51

change in resource peripheries in Australia and Sweden. Comparative Population Studies, 41, 3–4. https://doi.org/10.12765/CPoS-2016-11en. Carson, D. B., Carson, D. A., Nordin, G., & Sköld, P. (2016b). Lessons from the Arctic past: The resource cycle, hydro energy development, and the human geography of Jokkmokk, Sweden. Energy Research & Social Science, 16, 13–24. Carson, D. A., Prideaux, B., Porter, R., & Vuin, A. (2019). Transitioning from a local railway hub to a regional tourism system: The story of Peterborough, South Australia. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies (pp. 173–196). Cham: Springer. Carson, D. B., Nilsson, L. M., & Carson, D. A. (2020). The mining resource cycle and settlement demography in Malå, Northern Sweden. Polar Record, 1–13. Clemenson, H. (1992). Are single industry towns diversifying? Perspectives on Labour and Income, 4(1), 4. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/ pub/75-001-x/1992001/150-eng.pdf?st=-6KyAci3 Dignard, L. (2004). Reconsidering staple insights: Canadian forestry and mining towns (PhD dissertation). Ottawa: Carleton University. Dubois, A., & Carson, D. B. (2017). The relational geography of post-staples development—A case in Malå, North Sweden. Journal of Rural and Community Development, 12(2–3). https://journals.brandonu.ca/jrcd/article/view/1461 Enequist, G. (1960). Advance and retreat of rural settlement in northwestern Sweden. Geografiska Annaler, 42(4), 211–220. Gill, A. M., & Williams, P. W. (2011). Rethinking resort growth: Understanding evolving governance strategies in whistler, British Columbia. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 19(4–5), 629–648. Halseth, G. (1999). “We came for the work”: Situating employment migration in BC’s small, resource-based, communities. The Canadian Geographer, 43(4), 363–381. Halseth, G., Ryser, L., Markey, S., & Martin, A. (2014). Emergence, transition, and continuity: Resource commodity production pathways in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Rural Studies, 36, 350–361. Hayter, R. (2000). Single industry resource towns. In E. Sheppard & T. J. Barnes (Eds.), A companion to economic geography (pp. 290–307). Oxford: Blackwell. Hedlund, M. (2017). Growth and decline in rural Sweden: Geographical distribution of employment and population 1960–2010 (Phd dissertation). Umeå: Umeå University. http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record. jsf?pid=diva2%3A1143120

52 

D. B. Carson et al.

Hodge, H., Carson, D., Berggren, P., & Strasser, R. (2016). From Lancelot to Lapland: Implications of engaged rural universities. In P.  Blessinger & B.  Cozza (Eds.), University partnerships for international development (Innovations in higher education teaching and learning, 8) (pp. 123–139). Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120160000008012. Koster, R. L., & Carson, D. A. (2019). Considerations for differentiating among rural tourism geographies. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies (pp. 253–271). Cham: Springer. Lucas, R. A. (1971). Minetown, Milltown, Railtown: Life in Canadian communities of single industry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lundmark, L. (2006). Mobility, migration and seasonal tourism employment: Evidence from Swedish Mountain municipalities. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 6(3), 197–213. Müller, D.  K. (2019). An evolutionary economic geography perspective on tourism development in a remote ski resort: The case of Tärnaby/Hemavan in the Swedish Mountains. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies (pp. 137–157). Cham: Springer. Müller, D., & Hall, C. M. (2003). Second homes and regional population distribution: On administrative practices and failures in Sweden. Espace Populations Sociétés, 21(2), 251–261. O’Faircheallaigh, C. (2013). Extractive industries and indigenous peoples: A changing dynamic? Journal of Rural Studies, 30, 20–30. Pearson, A. C. A. L., & Liu, Y. (2016). A chronicle of indigenous entrepreneurship, human development and capacity building in East Arnhem Land of Australia. In M. F. Rola-Rubzen & J. Burgess (Eds.), Human development and capacity building: Asia Pacific trends, challenges and prospects for the future (pp. 175–198). Oxon, UK: Routledge. Peters, P., Taylor, A., Carson, D. B., & Koch, A. (2016). Modelling settlement futures: Techniques and challenges. In A. Taylor, D. B. Carson, P. Ensign, L. Huskey, R. O. Rasmussen, & G. Saxinger (Eds.), Settlements at the edge: Remote human settlements in developed nations (pp. 270–290). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Peters, P., Carson, D. B., Porter, R., Vuin, A., Carson, D. A., & Ensign, P. (2018). My village is dying? Integrating methods from the inside out. Canadian Review of Sociology, 55(3), 451–475. Petrov, A. N. (2016). Exploring the Arctic’s “other economies”: Knowledge, creativity and the new frontier. The Polar Journal, 6(1), 51–68.

3  Small Villages and Socio-Economic Change in Resource… 

53

Prideaux, B., & Timothy, D. J. (2010). From mining boom towns to tourist haunts: The ghost town life cycle. In M. V. Conlin & L. Jolliffe (Eds.), Mining heritage and tourism: A global synthesis (pp. 249–260). London: Routledge. Randall, J. E., & Ironside, R. G. (1996). Communities on the edge: An economic geography of resource-dependent communities in Canada. Canadian Geographer, 40(1), 17–35. Rantala, O., Barre, S.  D. L., Granås, B., Jóhannesson, G. Þ., Müller, D.  K., Saarinen, J., et  al. (2019). Arctic tourism in times of change: Seasonality. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. Robertsson, L., & Marjavaara, R. (2015). The seasonal buzz: Knowledge transfer in a temporary setting. Tourism Planning & Development, 12(3), 251–265. Ryser, L.  M., & Halseth, G. (2013). So you’re thinking about a retirement industry? Economic and community development lessons from resource towns in northern British Columbia. Community Development, 44(1), 83–96. Sköld, P., & Axelsson, P. (2008). The northern population development; colonization and mortality in Swedish Sapmi, 1776–1895. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 67(1), 29–44. Storey, K. (2018). From ‘new town’ to ‘no town’ to ‘source’, ‘host’ and ‘hub’ communities: The evolution of the resource community in an era of increased labour mobility. Journal of Rural and Community Development, 13(3), 92–114. Vuin, A. (2019). Migration against the tide: Case studies of South Australia, Sweden and Croatia (PhD dissertation). Darwin: Charles Darwin University. Vuin, A., Carson, D. A., Carson, D. B., & Garrett, J. (2016). The role of heritage tourism in attracting “active” in-migrants to “low amenity” rural areas. Rural Society, 25(2), 134–153.

4 The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages in Iceland Þóroddur Bjarnason

The Conventional Wisdom Popular culture frequently emphasizes the contrast between the dynamic and mobile urban and the static and immobile rural. The image of the quiet desperation of the rural population left behind is for instance conjured in the lyrics of Icelandic musician and songwriter Bubbi Morthens (2012): Unga fólkið er fyrir sunnan að dreyma Gamla fólkið situr eftir heima Minningar útá fjörðinn streyma Þorpið er að þurrkast út The young ones are in the south dreaming left behind at home the elderly memories into the fjord are streaming the village is about to disappear

Þ. Bjarnason (*) Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Akureyri, Akureyri, Iceland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_4

55

56 

Þ. Bjarnason

Rural populations are thus frequently seen as relatively immobile, with the bulk of the residents having grown up in the community and having never left. Many young people and in particular young women have moved away looking for better opportunities and new experiences, supposedly resulting in aging, disproportionately male populations. In this view, only a few people return, in particular those who have failed to succeed in the competitive, dynamic urban environment. The fundamentally immobile rural community is believed to be characterized by social closure, leaving outsiders such as spouses of returning locals, lifestyle migrants and refugees largely isolated on the margins of the immobile majority. As a result, many in-migrants are assumed to be temporary residents in rural areas that will eventually leave. Such popular conceptions of a passive, immobile rural population unable to move forwards into an urban future have direct implications for regional policy debates as exemplified by a recent editorial opinion piece in the Icelandic business newspaper Viðskiptablaðið (2020): We have reached the end of the road in governmental attempts to play people like chess pieces on this rugged chessboard, planning employment, progress and prosperity. It never works and the waste is atrocious. The money wasted makes a big difference in a small country at the edge of the inhabitable world. The loss is even greater in terms of human wealth, the people who were not encouraged to pursue their abilities and remained stuck in the bondage of habit, in the entrapment of their community of origin, in the failed plots of bureaucrats down south to determine where best to invest the energy and lifetime of common people.

The Literature Many rural areas far from cities and other larger population centres have indeed suffered significant population loss. This is in particular true of those based on extraction industries where organizational changes and technological advances have diminished the need for manual labour (e.g. Kokorsch and Benediktsson 2018; Johnson and Lichter 2019; Peters

4  The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages… 

57

et al. 2018). Such areas do indeed tend to be characterized by a relatively older population and a disproportionate number of males relative to females (Johansson 2016; Rauhut and Littke 2016; Wiest 2016). Some rural areas have nevertheless experienced an in-migration of various groups, including migrant workers (Aure et  al. 2018), trailing spouses (Stockdale 2017) retired people (e.g. Thompson et al. 2016) and lifestyle migrants (Eimermann and Kordel 2018). In addition, second home owners can be seen as a mobile if occasional and marginal part of many rural communities (Halfacree 2012; Huijbens 2012). More recently, there has been increased interest in staying or returning as a process rather than inertia (see Stockdale and Haartsen 2018). Studies have thus explored the motivations and circumstances of those who never left (Erickson et al. 2018; Morse and Mudgett 2018), the processes by which in-migrants become stayers (Halfacree and Rivera 2012; Haartsen and Stockdale 2018) and the causes and consequences of return migration to rural communities (Kordel and Lutsch 2018; von Reichert et al. 2014). Despite the extensive literature on these issues, there is a surprising lack of studies actually analysing the composition and residential histories of the population of rural and remote communities in general and the segment of the population that grew up in the community in particular. The migration patterns and residential histories of village people in rural Iceland may provide an additional insight into these matters.

The Case of Villages in Rural Iceland Iceland is one the most sparsely populated countries in Europe, yet the overwhelming majority of the people of Iceland live in urban areas. With a population of only about a third of a million inhabitants 103,000 km2, it has only about 3.5% of the population but almost a quarter of the landmass of Sweden. About 64% of the population however lives in the Reykjavík capital area and additional 16% live within commuting distance from the city. The remaining 72,000 inhabitants are scattered in towns, villages and farming communities around the coastline.

58 

Þ. Bjarnason

Fig. 4.1  Urban settlements in Iceland and villages under study (red dots)

Figure 4.1 shows the geographical distribution of all urban settlements in Iceland as defined by Statistics Iceland (2019). The Reykjavík capital area is shown in blue according to actual municipal borders in the southwest of the island, while the location of smaller exurban towns and villages within commuting distance from the capital area is shown with blue dots. The location of the regional centres and adjacent villages is also shown with blue dots in different parts of the country. The remaining 56 villages (shown in red) have a population of less than 2.000 people and are located beyond the immediate influence of either the Reykjavík capital area or any of the regional centres. In 2009, the inhabitants of these villages were surveyed about their residential histories and migration intentions (for details see Bjarnason et  al. 2019). The survey yielded 5.642 responses, representing 30% of all registered inhabitants 18 years or older. According to the results of the survey, 56% of the residents grew up in the community while the 44% grew up in the Reykjavík capital area, elsewhere in Iceland or abroad. Figure 4.2 shows the demographic development of these 56 villages in the period 1880–2019, with each village shown with a separate layer

4  The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages… 

59

35.000

30.000

25.000

20.000

15.000

10.000

5.000

1880 1884 1888 1892 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1940 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2015 2019

0

Fig. 4.2  Demographic development of villages in rural Iceland, 1880–2019

(Statistics Iceland 2019). The stacked graph gives a clear picture of the overall development, even though each community has its own somewhat unique history. For instance, the small pyramid in top layer in 2006 represents a population increase from about 700 to about 2300 inhabitants in the village of Reyðarfjörður in east Iceland, due to a large number of construction workers working on the construction of an aluminium smelter. The subsequent increased thickness of the top layer represents the long-term population increase due to new jobs at the smelter and derivative activities. Despite the differences between individual villages, the stacked layers show the overall development of these smaller urban settlements in rural Iceland over a period of 120 years. Their population grew steadily from about 2000 inhabitants in 1880 to a zenith of about 30,000 in the early 1980s. This growth was largely driven by the rapid development of the fishing industry, widely distributed around the island (Asgeirsson 1988; Magnusson 1993). However, in some cases villages grew predominantly around agricultural services and processing.

60 

Þ. Bjarnason

The bottom layer of the graph shows that due to changes in the herring industry, Siglufjörður, the largest of these villages experienced a shift from growth to decline as early as the late 1940s. For the rural villages as a whole, however, the shift of fortunes was in the 1980s and in particular the 1990s. Although small, isolated communities around the global north face many of the same social, economic and cultural challenges, the abrupt change of fortunes for the villages in rural Iceland can primarily be traced to changes in the fishing industry. Due to serious concerns over the condition of the fish stocks and overinvestment in both fishing vessels and fish processing factories, the government instituted a system of transferrable fishing quotas in 1990 (Bjarnason 2012). This led to massive geographical concentration of the industry in fewer, larger places, increased corporate profits and technological development of both the fishing fleet and the fish processing factories (Gunnlaugsson and Saevaldsson 2016). This in turn decreased the need for manual labour substantially and simultaneously increased the need for high-level technical support that typically can best be found in urban areas. As a result, many of the villages experienced a substantial decline in both economic activities and the local population (Kokorsch and Benediktsson 2018). In recent years, the population decline has levelled off and there are even some signs of population growth in these villages as a whole (Bjarnason 2019). According to the results of the survey conducted in 2019, about 6% of respondents say that they will definitely move from the community within the next 2–3 years and an additional 8% say that such a move is likely within the same timeframe. While the relationship between migration intentions and actual migration can be complicated on the individual level (Bjarnason 2014), on the aggregate level these estimates are in line with official statistics indicating that 5–9% of the residents left these villages each year in the period 2016–2018 (Statistics Iceland 2019). As shown in Fig. 4.3, there is no statistically significant difference in the migration intentions of men and women in these communities (χ2: 1.60(1), p > 0.05). Although somewhat contrary to conventional wisdom that states that women are much more likely than men to leave rural communities, this is in line with the findings that an unequal gender

4  The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages…  18%

61

17%

16% 14% 12% 10% 8%

9%

8% 6%

6% 5%

7%

7%

6%

6%

4% 2% 0%

Men

Women

Community Capital Iceland area elsewhere

Abroad

18-25 yrs 26-30 yrs 31-50 yrs 51 or older

Fig. 4.3  Proportion of residents in rural villages in Iceland that expect to leave within the next 2–3 years by gender, area of origin and age, 2019

balance in rural Iceland is more affected by low in-migration of women than high out-migration (Bjarnason et al. 2019). Figure 4.3 also shows little substantive difference in out-migration intentions between those that grew up in the community and those who grew up elsewhere. Those who grew up abroad seem somewhat more likely to say that they will definitely move within the next 2–3 years but the differences are not statistically significant (χ2: 4.47(3), p > 0.05). The difference by age is however substantial and statistically highly significant (χ2: 159.2(3), p < 0.001). About 17% of the 18–25 year old respondents say that they will definitely leave within the next 2–3 years, compared to only 3% of those who are more than 50 years old. These results seem consistent with the conventional wisdom that young people leave rural areas, leaving behind an ageing, declining community of those who never left and a few in-migrants who have joined their ranks. However, this conventional viewpoint diverts attention from the underlying mobility that characterizes the rural communities themselves.

62 

Þ. Bjarnason

Fig. 4.4  The residential histories of all respondents in villages in rural Iceland 2019

Figure 4.4 shows the proportion of respondents that have lived elsewhere than in the town or village in rural Iceland where they currently reside. Remarkably, only 16% of the respondents indicate that they have never lived elsewhere. In other words, 84% of the respondents have in fact moved to the community from elsewhere, either as locals returning home or blow-ins from other communities. About 82% of the respondents have lived elsewhere in Iceland, including 52% that have lived elsewhere but not abroad and 30% that have lived both abroad and elsewhere in Iceland. About a third of the respondents have lived abroad, but only 2% have only lived abroad and not elsewhere in Iceland. A further analysis (results not shown in figures) reveals that the group that had lived elsewhere in Iceland could be further divided into those who had lived in the capital area only (18%), elsewhere in Iceland only (17%) and both in the capital area and elsewhere in the country (47%). This yields the important conclusion that about two-thirds of the rural village population has experienced living in the most urban Reykjavík capital region.

4  The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages… 

63

It should be noted that 44% of the respondents grew up in the Reykjavík capital area, elsewhere in Iceland or abroad, and therefore have obviously lived elsewhere than in their current community of residence. It is therefore instructive to examine the residential histories of those who grew up in the community. Figure 4.5 shows the residential history of respondents who grew up in the community. The proportion of those who have never lived elsewhere is predictably higher among this group than among the residents as a whole, but nevertheless only 25% of the those who grew up in the community have never lived elsewhere. Similar to the respondents as a whole, about half of those who grew up in the community have lived elsewhere in Iceland but not abroad, and 1% have only lived abroad and in the current community, but not elsewhere in Iceland. The major difference is that only about a quarter of those who grew up in the community had lived abroad, compared to a third of the respondents as a whole. A further analysis (results not shown in figures) reveals that those who grew up in the community but had lived elsewhere in Iceland could be further divided into those who had lived in the capital area only (22%),

Fig. 4.5  The residential histories of respondents who grew up in villages in rural Iceland 2019

64 

Þ. Bjarnason

elsewhere in Iceland only (29%) and both in the capital area and elsewhere in the country (37%). This further yields the conclusion that 59% of the population that grew up in the rural villages has experienced living in the most urban Reykjavík capital region. Furthermore, the people who grew up in the community were much more likely to have lived elsewhere in Iceland than the residents as a whole.

Box 4.1  Demistifying the Gap Between Intentions and Actions Ruth McAreavey Myths abound about migration. It is rarely a one dimensional proposition, nor is it ever a complete process (McAreavey 2017). Sometimes it is an individual choice, but more often than not it is a family decision (Ryan and Sales 2011; Moskal and Tyrrell 2016), especially evident amongst seasonal workers in the Pacific Islands (McAreavey and Shortall 2019). As for time, this is variable, from ping-pong poms (Holmes and Burrows 2012) to Irish émigrés’ seeking the ‘green, green grass of home’ (Ni Laoire 2007), we find lots of evidence of mobility and temporality amongst migrants. As a migrant living in England, I am often asked ‘Is that you now?’, meaning, ‘is that your last move?’ This is a question that few migrants can answer, not least because we cannot look into the future. Even if I were to share my intentions, I suspect they would change. YY (in this chapter) refers to the misalignment between migration intentions and actual migration patterns. This is inevitable given the centrality of individuals and their behaviour to migration decisions. How are we to understand migration intentions and why is it that people become ‘accidental stayers’? What does this mean for the host society? There is a randomness to migration that cannot be fully accounted for in migrant theories. In my recent fieldwork in England, I have been struck by the number of individuals who move to follow a partner. To a greater degree many of those individuals are counting the days until they can return home, unless and until something happens along the way, as it did for a young Polish woman that I first encountered in 2009–10 and again 2013. She spoke originally about her dismay in coming to Northern Ireland, a place about which she knew little, and of which she had clear intentions to leave before too long. Moving the clock forward a few years when I spoke again to the same women, she described how very settled her and her husband were with their three children, one of whom was born in Northern Ireland. Although she was strongly connected to Poland, through regular video-calls and annual visits, she explained how her home was very much in Northern Ireland. This exemplifies very clearly the disparity between (continued)

4  The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages… 

65

Box 4.1  (continued) intentions and actions and the way in which intentions can be transformed, given suitable economic and social conditions. As I’ve argued elsewhere, figures can obscure the specificities of migration (McAreavey 2017). Getting down to the granular local level, beyond statistics, where stories are told and experiences shared, we see the dynamics and fluidity of migrant processes. Official figures point to work as the main reason for people to move to Northern Ireland (predominantly among Eastern European migrants), followed by family (predominantly among migrants from the Republic of Ireland) and education (NISRA 2019). In reality these influences may be intertwined. Migration statistics indicate a shifting demographic profile in Northern Ireland. Birth to non-UK mothers has risen from 5.5% in 1998 to 13.3% in 2018. Immigration continues, despite anecdotal accounts that people have stopped arriving: net international migration was 3900  in mid-2018. This ongoing diversity offers a very real opportunity for a socially conservative society to transform itself, something that I am currently exploring in new fieldwork.

Policy Reflections  udmundur Gunnarsson, Mayor of Ísafjörður Munic., G Westfjords of Iceland In Iceland, we do talk a lot about our history and ancestors. There are few topics more popular at social gatherings than discussions about origin and mutual relations to villages and areas all over the country. I sometimes wonder if it’s because we are constantly searching for our common social thread. That it somehow relates to what it really means to be a small nation. Maybe it’s just because we are all from somewhere else. Essentially. Whatever the reason is, I am certain this vital work, now well underway, will finally give us a new platform for discussion about our true social identity in recent times. Raise questions that relate to our history largely as a nation of rural villages through the ages. It has long been my feeling that we haven’t really taken the time out to explore and study this essential part of our national identity. At least not in depth where we dig deep enough to see trends forming in each and every village, almost regardless of its size. I think this is going to be absolutely vital.

66 

Þ. Bjarnason

In this article, we see an example of exactly that. This general misconception, we are all too familiar with, that people living in small villages lack the experience of life elsewhere in Iceland. That they long for it but haven’t been able to make the move for some reason. And believe it or not, this happens to be a widespread misconception throughout the country. Even in smaller villages. It is simply not true and has very little foundation in reality according to this study. I therefore cannot emphasize enough the importance of a research of this magnitude that focuses on different factors and motivations so essential to our national rural identity. I look forward to future findings and enlightenment.

 igurdur Ingi Johannsson, Minister of Transport S and Local Government, Government of Iceland We Icelanders tend to look at our society thorough bifocal eyeglasses: the Reykjavík capital area and the countryside. Those who have the experience of living in the capital area and the more dispersed communities, not to mention those who have also lived abroad, know that reality is not in black and white. This is what Bjarnason has highlighted in this paper as well as his previous writings. There is not only one countryside, but many countrysides. Social research is very important for us who work in politics and enables us to channel governmental funding more effectively throughout the country. This is partly because we understand better the diversity of social life and the needs of local communities. Such needs can be quite different because of geography, the composition of the population and various other factors. Some will no doubt be surprised by the high mobility of people in small villages that Bjarnason draws attention to in this research. The feeling, I will allow myself to say the general feeling, that communities outside the Reykjavík capital area are stagnant is no doubt a problem that Icelanders share with many if not most other nations; the notion that rural is divided from urban by both heaven and earth. The fact is that all of society is fluid and ever changing.

4  The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages… 

67

In the past decades, we have lived through profound social change, driven by what has been called the third industrial revolution of automation. We are now embarking on a new voyage of uncertainty, the fourth industrial revolution of artificial intelligence and even further automation. This will have a great impact on jobs and employment policy. We have already taken an important step in preparing the Icelandic countrysides for these changes by implementing Iceland’s Rural Fibre Project, which will bring high-speed fibre optic internet to 99.9% of households and businesses nationwide by year-end 2020. Research such as this is an important part of our task to strengthen communities throughout Iceland. The communities are diverse and the challenges they are facing are manifold. We must keep our eyes open to this diversity as we continue along our path towards the future. Acknowledgements  This study is part of the research project Mobility and Stability in Iceland funded by the Icelandic Regional Development Institute.

References Asgeirsson, O. (1988). Iðnbylting hugarfarsins: Átök um atvinnuþróun á Íslandi 1900–1940 [The industrial revolution of the mind: Conflict over occupational development in Iceland 1900–1940]. Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs. Aure, M., Førde, A., & Magnussen, T. (2018). Will migrant workers rescue rural regions? Challenges of creating stability through mobility. Journal of Rural Studies, 60, 52–59. Bjarnason, T. (2012). Hagsmunir íslenskra sjávarbyggða við endurskoðun fiskveiðistjórnunar [The vested interests of Icelandic fishing villages in the revision of fisheries management]. Tímarit um Viðskipti og Efnahagsmál, 9, 3. Bjarnason, T. (2014). Adolescent migration intentions and population change: A twenty-year follow-up of Icelandic communities. Sociologia Ruralis, 54, 500–515. Bjarnason, T. (2019). Íslenskar landsbyggðir og byggðafélagsfræði [Icelandic rural communities and rural sociology]. Íslenska þjóðfélagið, 10(3), 30–64. Bjarnason, T., Johannesdottir, G.  B., Gudmundsson, G., Garðarsdottir, O., Thordardottir, S. E., Skaptadóttir, U. D., & Karlsson, V. (2019). Byggðafesta

68 

Þ. Bjarnason

og búferlaflutningar: Bæir og þorp á Íslandi vorið 2019 [Residential stability and mobility: Town and villages in Iceland in spring 2019]. Saudarkrokur: Byggdastofnun. https://www.byggdastofnun.is/static/files/Skyrslur/byggdafesta/byggdafesta_34bls_2019_net.pdf. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Eimermann, M., & Kordel, S. (2018). International lifestyle migrant entrepreneurs in two new immigration destinations: Understanding their evolving mix of embeddedness. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 241–252. Erickson, L.  D., Sanders, S.  R., & Cope, M.  R. (2018). Lifetime stayers in urban, rural, and highly rural communities in Montana. Population, Space and Place, 24(4), e2133. Gunnlaugsson, S. B., & Saevaldsson, H. (2016). The Icelandic fishing industry: Its development and financial performance under a uniform individual quota system. Marine Policy, 71, 73–81. Haartsen, T., & Stockdale, A. (2018). Selective belonging: How rural newcomer families with children become stayers. Population, Space and Place, 24(4), e2137. Halfacree, K. (2012). Heterolocal identities? Counter-urbanisation, second homes, and rural consumption in the era of Mobilities. Population, Space and Place, 18, 209–224. Halfacree, K., & Rivera, M. J. (2012). Moving to the countryside … and staying: Lives beyond representations. Sociologica Ruralis, 52, 92–114. Holmes, M., & Burrows, R. (2012). Ping pong poms: Emotional reflexivity in return migration from Australia to the UK. Australian Journal of Social Sciences, 47(1), 105–123. Huijbens, E. (2012). Sustaining a village’s social fabric? Sociologia Ruralis, 52(3), 332–352. Johansson, M. (2016). Young women and rural exodus – Swedish experiences. Journal of Rural Studies, 43, 291–300. Johnson, K.  M., & Lichter, D.  T. (2019). Rural depopulation: Growth and decline processes over the past century. Rural Sociology, 84(1), 3–27. Kokorsch, M., & Benediktsson, K. (2018). Prosper or perish? The development of Icelandic fishing villages after the privatisation of fishing rights. Maritime Studies, 17(1), 69–83. Kordel, S., & Lutsch, S. (2018). Status quo and potential of remigration among Transilvanian Saxons to rural Romania. European Countryside, 10(4), 614–633. Magnusson, S.  M. (1993). Efnahagsþróun á Íslandi 1880–1990 [Economic development in Iceland 1880–1990]. In G. Halfdanarson & S. Kristjansson

4  The Myth of the Immobile Rural: The Case of Rural Villages… 

69

(Eds.), Íslensk þjóðfélagsþróun 1880–1990 [Icelandic social development 1880–1990] (pp. 112–214). Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan. McAreavey, R. (2017). New immigration destinations: Migrating to rural and peripheral areas. London/New York: Routledge. McAreavey, R., & Shortall, S. (2019). Non-agricultural seasonal migrant workers in Urban and Rural Scotland. International literature and evidence review. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Morse, C. E., & Mudgett, J. (2018). Happy to be home: Place-based attachments, family ties, and mobility among rural stayers. The Professional Geographer, 70(2), 261–269. Morthens, B. (2012). Þorpið [The Village]. Soundtrack at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=IcOhgLjZbAs. Accessed 20 Oct 2019. Moskal, M., & Tyrrell, N. (2016). Family migration decision-making, step-­ migration and separation: Children’s experiences in European migrant worker families. Children’s Geographies, 14(4), 453–467. Ni Laoire, C. (2007). The ‘green, green grass of home’? Return migration to rural Ireland. Journal of Rural Studies, 23, 332–344. Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. (2019). Long-term international migration statistics for Northern Ireland (2018). https://www.nisra.gov. uk/sites/nisra.gov.uk/files/publications/Mig1718-Bulletin.pdf. Accessed 20 Oct 2019. Peters, P., Carson, D., Porter, R., Vuin, A., & Carson, D. (2018). My village is dying? Integrating methods from the inside-out. Canadian Review of Sociology, 55(3), 451–475. Rauhut, D., & Littke, H. (2016). A one way ticket to the city, please!’ On young women leaving the Swedish peripheral region Vasternorrland. Journal of Rural Studies, 43, 301–310. Ryan, L., & Sales, R. (2011). Family migration: The role of children and education in family decision-making strategies of polish migrants in London. International Migration, 51(2), 90–102. Statistics Iceland. (2019). Urban Nuclei. https://statice.is/statistics/population/ inhabitants/municipalities-and-urban-nuclei/. Accessed 20 Oct 2019. Stockdale, A. (2017). From ‘Trailing Wives’ to the emergence of a ‘Trailing Husbands’ phenomenon: Retirement migration to rural areas. Population, Space and Place, 23(3), e2022. Stockdale, A., & Haartsen, T. (2018). Editorial introduction: Putting rural stayers in the spotlight. Population, Space and Place, 24(4), e2124.

70 

Þ. Bjarnason

Thompson, C., Johnson, T., & Hanes, S. (2016). Vulnerability of fishing communities undergoing gentrification. Journal of Rural Studies, 45, 165–174. Viðskiptablaðið. (2020, January 29). Óðinn: Flateyri og byggðasjónarmiðin. Viðskiptablaðið. https://www.vb.is/skodun/flateyri-og-byggdasjonarmidin/159683/. Accessed 12 Feb 2020. von Reichert, C., Cromartie, J. B., & Arthun, R. O. (2014). Impacts of return migration on rural US communities. Rural Sociology, 79(2), 200–226. Wiest, K. (2016). Migration and everyday discourses: Peripheralisation in rural Saxony-Anhalt from a gender perspective. Journal of Rural Studies, 43, 280–290.

5 The Changing Youth Population Dean B. Carson, Þóroddur Bjarnason, and Olof Andreas Stjernström

The Myth/s: Youth Leave Community development literature has created a picture of a problematic relationship between ‘youth’ and rural areas like the inland north of Sweden. Youth are people who leave such areas, and as a consequence contribute to (and even create) ‘rural decline’ (Jentsch 2006). It is implied that youth out-migration is a contemporary and increasing phenomenon (MacMichael et al. 2016). This image of rural youth also creates a myth

D. B. Carson (*) Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities, Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] Þ. Bjarnason Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Akureyri, Akureyri, Iceland e-mail: [email protected] O. A. Stjernström Nord University, Bodø, Norway © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_5

71

72 

D. B. Carson et al.

of homogeneity within the rural youth population, with relatively little known about the youth who choose not to leave (Stockdale et al. 2018), or indeed the youth who move to rural areas. Researchers are beginning to question the validity of these myths in rural settings around the world, including some of our work in northern Sweden (Carson et al. 2017a, b). The implications for policy makers and rural communities are substantial, with misunderstandings of the nature of rural youth leading to futile attempts to prevent youth from leaving and contributing to poor design of education and employment services, misallocation of public resources and negative impacts for youth themselves (Jentsch 2006).

 outh Migration and Rural Decline: Y New Perspectives? In the inland north of Sweden, as in other rural areas, many youth do not out-migrate. Within the ten inland municipalities which form the Region10 partnership, only about 12–15% of people aged 15–24 years (which the United Nations consider ‘youth’) have out-migrated in any year in this century. Out-migration, in a net context (the excess of out-­ migration over in-migration), is also concentrated within the older youth ages, with there typically having been net in-migration of those aged 15–19 years. There is also a long history of net in-migration of ‘slightly older than youth’ (those aged 25–29 years), and at least since 1968 this age group has usually had the highest net in-migration rate of all ages except very young children (see Fig. 5.1). Part of the reason for growing concern about youth out-migration and its contribution to ‘rural decline’ has been the increasing gendering of youth out-migration (Rauhut and Littke 2016), with young women being 50% more likely than young men to leave the rural north of Sweden this century, and this gap having increased steadily since the 1970s. Young women leave rural areas to access higher education and different employment options (Leibert 2016). However, the ‘slightly older than youth’ in-migrants are also more likely to be women than men, including women returning to their childhood homes because of a lack of resources

5  The Changing Youth Population 

2007 0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00

-0.05

-0.10 0-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75+ years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years men

women

TOTAL

2017 0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00

-0.05

-0.10 0-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75+ years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years years men

women

TOTAL

Fig. 5.1  Net migration by age to region10, 2007 and 2017

73

74 

D. B. Carson et al.

to allow them to live well in the cities to which they migrated (Stockdale and Catney 2014; Jones 2004). These women may also be looking for assistance from family and friends in raising their own children (Eimermann et al. 2018). There is evidence, then, that the migration behaviours of youth are complex, with patterns of coming and going (and staying) varying by age, gender, level of education, aspirations for employment, family and social relationships and many other factors. There is also increasing debate about the extent to which youth out-migration is a ‘new’ phenomenon with counter-examples from Canada (Kealey 2014), Australia (Carson et al. 2017a, b) and Sweden (Kulu et al. 2018) suggesting various periods of high and low (direct and net) out-migration since at least the turn of the last century. Research in the 1950s (Aldskogius 1960) showed that youth out-migration, particularly for employment and often seasonal or short term (as may still be the case for many of these ‘slightly older than youth’ women), has been a recurrent feature of the human geography of the inland north since colonisation. As a long-standing phenomenon, then, there is a need to question the presumed link between youth out-migration and the ‘decline’ of rural areas (Jentsch 2006). On the one hand, while increasing out-migration and economic decline may be correlated in some rural areas (Gibson and Argent 2008), the causative relationship is most likely the loss of economic opportunities first, and the response of young adults following (Alston 2004). Globally, and particularly in high-income countries like Sweden, economic opportunities for individuals have shifted to urban centres (Castells 2010), even where national economies continue to depend on rural-based industries. This urbanisation of opportunity has affected everyone, not just rural youth. While it is unwise to ‘blame’ youth for the economic (and social) decline of some rural communities, it is much easier to recognise the contributions that youth, including in-migrating youth, make to rural communities. Large numbers of youth move to rural areas for lifestyle, economic and social reasons (Tyrrell and Harmer 2015). Many of these in-migrants are young people returning to their childhood homes (Haartsen and Thissen 2014), but there are also many new residents, including ‘escalator migrants’—young adults who move to rural areas to

5  The Changing Youth Population 

75

help advance their careers (Smith and Sage 2014). While there is a growing literature on return migrants, there has been little written about new migrants. Perhaps indicative of the dominant perspectives on rural youth, a 2003 study of rural youth in Scotland, Sweden and Norway classified youth as ‘stayers’, ‘leavers’ or ‘returners’, with no acknowledgement of ‘newcomers’ (Kloep et al. 2003). Both newcomers and return migrants contribute to economic development of rural areas, often filling skilled and professional jobs, stimulating housing and retail sectors and often starting their families in rural communities (MacMichael et  al. 2016). Focusing primarily on out-migration might lead to missed opportunities for rural communities to gain the most benefits from youth stayers and in-migrants. One of the problems with defining rural communities like those in Sweden’s inland north as locales of youth out-migration (and decline) is, as is the case with all ‘myths’, that at times the initial proposition is simply not accurate, or at least not reflective of the total picture. In Region10, there has been net in-migration of youth every year since 2012, and net in-migration of male youth every year since 2009. This has been attributed primarily (but perhaps not exclusively) to the inflow of refugee youth, the largest group of which have been males aged between 15 and 19 years who arrived in Sweden unaccompanied by parents or adult family members. There is a temptation to treat this group as a short-lived exception to ‘normal’ conditions in the inland north, and, indeed, many refugee migrants do remain in the north for just a short period of time (Hedlund et al. 2017). One objection to downplaying the significance of the refugee-driven youth migration ‘turnaround’ that is stretching towards a decade in duration is that even a temporary injection of new populations, and particularly at the scale seen in parts of the inland north, will have a dramatic impact on long-term demographic (and economic, and social, and cultural, and political) development (Bauböck 2011). The refugee population has brought with it other newcomers who provide refugee services. It has increased demand for particular products and services, and stimulated increased consumption of those products (such as particular types of food and sport and recreation activities) among the rest of the community. There are also certain to be flow-on demographic impacts from

76 

D. B. Carson et al.

this dramatic population change, with interactions between refugees and other populations providing opportunities and inspiration for some people who may have otherwise left to stay (including some of the refugees themselves), some who may have stayed to leave, and generally

Box 5.1  Youth Flight or the ‘Grim Reaper’: Iceland Many rural areas are characterised by an uneven age distribution with relatively few 20–40 year old residents, and a corresponding ‘shadow’ of relatively few young children belonging to this age group. The resulting population pyramid thus takes a ‘christmas-tree’ shaped form, such as the following figure of residents in rural Iceland in 2009 (Statistics Iceland 2019a) (Fig. 5.2).

Fig. 5.2  Age and sex distribution of the Iceland population, 2009

(continued)

5  The Changing Youth Population 

77

Box 5.1  (continued) Such figures of uneven population distribution tend to alarm policy makers and community leaders alike. The prospect of the relatively numerous 10–20 year old youth also leaving the community in the near future and the large group of 40–60 year olds advancing into old age without the support of younger generations seems to spell gloom and doom for the rural communities in question. However, such alarmist concerns over youth flight destroying rural communities tend to ignore the life course dynamics of rural areas. Many young people in their twenties and thirties indeed prefer the excitement and opportunities offered by urban areas to the rural idyll of rural areas. A little bit older people may return to their rural communities of origin, follow their spouses to such areas or seek an alternative style of life in a rural community where they have no previous ties. These in-migrants are often accompanied by a little bit older children. The second figure shows the increase or decrease in the size of each birth cohort over a ten year period, 2009–2019 (Statistics Iceland 2019b). The figure thus for instance shows a 1.5% increase in the size of 1999 birth cohort from being ten years old in 2009 to twenty years old in 2019. As shown in the figure, the younger birth cohorts in rural Iceland in 2009 had generally increased in size in 2019, inevitably because of in-migration. Some of the fluctuations in the graph are random, while others correspond to specific turning points in the life course, such as the completion of compulsory school in the home community at age 16, high school generally in larger regional centres at age 20 and university in urban areas in the later twenties. However, youth flight is hardly the primary reason for the slight decline in the rural population of Iceland between 2009 and 2010. Population decline rather seems to be associated with older age (Fig. 5.3). With a national life expectancy of 82.2 years (Statistics Iceland 2018), the sharply declining number of rural residents between the ages of sixty and eighty is likely a combination of mortality, morbidity requiring better access to health care and the increased residential freedom accompanied by the second adolescence of retirement. In the long run, however, everybody unfortunately dies. The christmas-tree shaped population distribution of rural Iceland is quite robust, with the relative absence of younger adults persisting over time, without causing a major decline in the population of older adults. The slight rural decline is thus only marginally related to youth flight, while population is predominantly lost to retirement mobility of older people and the grim reaper. (continued)

78 

D. B. Carson et al.

Box 5.1  (continued) 10,0% 0,0% -10,0%

0 (10)

5 (15)

10 (20)

15 (25)

20 (30)

25 (35)

30 (40)

35 (45)

40 (50)

45 (55)

50 (60)

55 (65)

60 (70)

65 (75)

70 (80)

75 (85)

80 (90)

85 90 (95) (100)

-20,0% -30,0% -40,0% -50,0% -60,0% -70,0% -80,0% -90,0% -100,0%

percentage changes in the size of each birth cohort in rural Iceland, 2009-2019

Fig. 5.3  Percentage change in the size of each birth cohort in rural Iceland, 2009–19

contributing to changes in mobility patterns and other demographic behaviours of the entire community (De Haas 2010). Another reason not to underplay the significance of the refugee youth influx is that sparsely populated rural areas like the inland north of Sweden are typified by periodic inflows and outflows of populations and often focused on those in the youth age group (Aldskogius 1960; Carson et  al. 2011). Labour migration has been particularly important in this regard, with large inflows (and subsequent outflows) of farmers and forestry workers, road and railway makers, miners and hydro-electric dam builders at different stages of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Carson et al. 2016). There have also been inflows and outflows associated with military activity (not least the two World Wars of the twentieth century), and previous migration events from near neighbours (such as

5  The Changing Youth Population 

79

Finland) and distant countries (such as Thailand) (Hedberg and Haandrikman 2014). Many of the migrants involved in these events have been young adults. There is a continuing transience in the northern youth population which defines the north, and it is unwise to fail to consider these periodic ‘bursts of activity’ as anything other than central to the long-term demographic story. Refugee and other international migrants are not the only contributors to the contemporary youth migration story. There is a lot of attention in the international research literature on youth (and ‘slightly older than youth’) who ‘return home’ to the rural areas in which they grew up (Stone et  al. 2014). This attraction to place has also been noted in northern Sweden (Nilsson 2003). Returning home might be motivated by a number of factors, including a desire to reconnect with family and friends (Kolk 2017), a need for economic and social support in the face of rising urban costs of living, and a desire to have their own children experience the values of rural living (Kronholm and Staal Wästerlund 2017). There is also a suggestion in the literature that rural areas increasingly offer opportunities for entrepreneurship and ‘self-made’ lives that are increasingly difficult to find in large cities (Kuhmonen et al. 2016). This motivator may apply to new rural residents as well as returning ones. At the end of 2015, there were over 5500 youth in the Region10 area (see Table 5.1). Two thirds of these had been in the region for their entire lives. One quarter were new arrivals (having never lived in the region previously). The impact of youth from the major refugee source countries (in Africa and the Middle East) was actually quite small, with just 8% of the youth population having been born in those countries. This was almost identical to the number of youth in the region in 2015 who had Table 5.1  A summary mobility profile of youth in region 10, 2015

Never left Returned New arrivals Born in Africa or the Middle East Total

Number aged 15–24 years

Per cent aged 15–24 years

Per cent aged 25–29 years

3711 453 1487 (429)

66% 8% 26% (8%)

51% 22% 27% (6%)

5651

2727

80 

D. B. Carson et al.

previously lived there, moved away and come back. In summary, then, the youth in this rural region at least are most likely to have always lived there or to be living there for the first time rather than to have gone away and then returned. However, among the ‘slightly older than youth’ (aged 25–29 years), one quarter of the total population and about one half of the in-migrating population were people returning to the region where they spent at least some part of their childhood. A separate analysis reveals that nearly 20% of the youth who left Region10 in 2006 had returned by 2015, again demonstrating the importance of return migration even over a relatively short period of time.

What Might the Future Hold? A third and possibly more pragmatic reason for giving serious attention to the contemporary, refugee driven, net youth in-migration episode is that it may not, in the long run, be temporary at all. In the past two years at least, as global refugee flows from the dominant source countries of Syria and Afghanistan have declined dramatically compared to the peak in 2013 and 2014, flows into the inland north have continued to outnumber the outflows of other youth. Almost all of the migrants originally from these countries who came to the inland north in 2016 and 2017 moved from elsewhere in Sweden, compared with the majority moving from refugee camps in secondary countries (or direct from the source country) in the peak period. There has emerged, then, a secondary migration flow which may (although there has not been any research published to this point) be caused by family reunion, the return of some who were originally in the north as asylum seekers, and/or a process of chain migration which could result in the population continuing to increase for some time to come (although not necessarily in the youth age groups). Such an outcome would be in contrast to some claims that rural Sweden is not well suited to becoming ‘home’ for such populations (Arora-Jonsson 2017). Perhaps, instead, it is rural Sweden, and the rural north in particular, which may become the most welcoming home for what is widely expected to be an ever increasing pool of refugees created by global conflict, terrorism and climate change (Stenbacka 2013; Sander et  al. 2017). Rural

5  The Changing Youth Population 

81

spaces might also be the preferred destination for young migrants ‘sent out’ by their newly wealthy parents in low-income and developing countries (Castells 2010; Fehling et al. 2015). The focus of global migration from poorer to richer countries as being a ‘problem’ has largely been around disruptions to urban centres in the receiving countries. Racism, competition for housing and employment, stresses on community infrastructure and increases in crime and social problems have primarily been examined from a city perspective (Goldstein and Venturini 2016). In contrast, rural areas may be more willing and able to negotiate the integration of new populations which ultimately offer desirable economic and demographic dividends (Hedberg et al. 2012; Søholt et al. 2018). It may additionally be that the rural north is pressured by the urban south to serve as the destination for such migrants, irrespective of the attitudes and aspirations of existing residents (Hedberg and Haandrikman 2014). It is hard to estimate how long refugee migrants from the current or future ‘waves’ might remain in the rural north. It is likely that their behaviour will, over time, come to resemble the behaviour of the majority population (Kulu and González-Ferrer 2014), meaning that we could expect substantial numbers of refugee migrants who do leave to one day return. And there are reasons to believe that the return migrant cohort might grow (at least proportionately) over time as the cost of living pressures in cities increase, and the opportunities to live rural but work in urban-oriented jobs also increase (Niedomysl and Amcoff 2011). However, it is also not known how long return migrants stay, particularly once they have established some sort of economic independence (Haartsen and Thissen 2014). The ‘pull’ of family and social ties in rural areas may also be offset by the parents of youth following their children to the city and supporting them financially and socially in the destination location rather than having them return to the childhood home (Kolk 2017). ‘Escalator’ and other new resident groups will remain an important part of the youth and slightly older than youth populations, with an increasing focus on recruitment of health and other professionals who are in their early careers (Carson et al. 2017a, b). Many of these will only stay a short period of time, but some will convert to being long-term residents. The new arrivals may also become older over time as periods of education lengthen for many professions, and this is likely to lead to

82 

D. B. Carson et al.

younger out-migration (Lind 2017; Barbour 2011) and older in- and return migration. As a consequence, the migration patterns of young adults will be increasingly determined by their immediate family ties, with parents playing a greater role in out-migration (and potentially being more likely to leave with the child) and partners and their own children playing a greater role in in- and return migration. Within these dynamics will remain a majority of youth who do not leave, and it is perhaps that group which face greater challenges in obtaining desirable education, employment and family formation (Forsberg 2017). This is particularly the case if the gender imbalance between stayers and leavers persists, and if rural communities downplay the importance of designing appropriate health, education, recreation and other services for and with youth as a result of accepting the youth out-­ migration myth. A failure to provide opportunities for the youth ‘left behind’ may be a larger contributor to rural decline than the ‘brain drain’

Box 5.2  The Youth ‘Left Behind’ Research into population development in sparsely populated areas often focuses on out-migration of youth and young adults (Amcoff and Westholm 2007). The reasons for youth out-migration are well understood—lack of local education opportunities and long distances to institutions of higher education (Amcoff and Westholm 2007; Niedomysl and Amcoff 2011), weak local labour markets (Hedlund and Lundholm 2015) and the desire to establish new relationships including family formation. While youth out-­ migration tends to exceed in-migration (but not always, as shown in this chapter), reasons for in-migration are also quite well known and include ‘escalator’ migration of young professionals (particularly working in the public sector) (Martel et al. 2013) and various motivations to ‘return home’ for short or long periods of time. Far less attention has been paid, however, to the many people who spend their entire youth in sparsely populated areas, neither migrating in or out. The expectation may be that these youth have poorer opportunities for education, employment and family formation. In some parts of the United States of America, youth who stay have not only been depicted as being less well prepared for life, but as contributing to the ‘hillbillyzation’ of society (Vance 2016; Ulrich-Schad and Duncan 2018)—meaning that they adopt particular behaviours and attitudes that restrict the social and economic development of the community. In the con(continued)

5  The Changing Youth Population 

83

Box 5.2  (continued) text of northern Sweden, however, it must also be remembered that many even very small rural areas have substantial local opportunities through relatively diverse employment opportunities, especially in the municipal centres which under the Swedish system often have similar resources (including academic high schools, well-equipped primary health care centres and a variety of local government jobs) to those in much larger urban places. Well-established industries such as mining, forestry, power generation and tourism provide employment opportunities not just for young adults who migrate in, but for local youth who prefer to remain. Traditional industries such as reindeer herding also encourage certain groups of youth to stay. Reindeer herding is often a family-based business, as is forestry, with many forest businesses run by private companies and centred on family homes. As a result, youth who do not leave may be ‘falling through the cracks’ of an economic and social system which requires higher education and employment mobility among young adults, or they may be establishing or continuing livelihoods which are of great value to themselves and to society. For those in the former group, strategies are required to help find pathways to ‘good lives’. For those in the latter, there needs to be more recognition of the value of rural lives and lifestyles which do not simply reflect urban norms and values. Research is required to improve our understanding of how ‘youth left behind’ establish lives in sparsely populated areas, and how society can support and benefit from such lives.

(amongst other impacts) blamed on those who depart (Sherman and Sage 2011).

What Do Policy Makers Need to Know? • Youth out-migration is unlikely to be the cause of ‘rural decline’, and retaining youth is unlikely to be the solution to economic decline. • Youth will be a major component of the increasing global migration flows, and rural areas will often want to or be encouraged to welcome these youth, if only for a short period of time.

84 

D. B. Carson et al.

• Youth in any case are likely to move in and out of rural areas in ‘waves’ of in- and out-migration related to employment opportunities, social needs and global events. • Youth populations in rural areas are likely to become more diverse over time because of these waves, and service design needs to take this into account. • The focus of policy should not be on preventing youth out-migration, but on ensuring that rural youth have the resources to succeed when they do leave, and on welcoming those who wish to return and the large groups of newcomer youth who continue to move to rural areas. • Most youth do not leave rural areas, and ensuring opportunities to a good life for those who stay is a critical task for community leaders.

References Aldskogius, H. (1960). Changing land use and settlement development in the Siljan region. Geografiska Annaler, 42(4), 250–261. Alston, M. (2004). ‘You don’t want to be a check-out chick all your life’: The out-migration of young people from Australia’s small rural towns. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 39(3), 299–313. Amcoff, J., & Westholm, E. (2007). Understanding rural change—Demography as a key to the future. Futures, 39(4), 363–379. Arora-Jonsson, S. (2017). Development and integration at a crossroads: Culture, race and ethnicity in rural Sweden. Environment and Planning A, 49(7), 1594–1612. Barbour, M. K. (2011). The promise and the reality: Exploring virtual schooling in rural jurisdictions. Education in Rural Australia, 21(1), 1. Bauböck, R. (2011). Temporary migrants, partial citizenship and hypermigration. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 14(5), 665–693. Carson, D., Ensign, P., Rasmussen, R., & Taylor, A. (2011). Perspectives on ‘demography at the edge. In D. Carson, R. Rasmussen, P. Ensign, L. Huskey, & A.  Taylor (Eds.), Demography at the edge: Remote human populations in developed nations (pp. 3–20). Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.

5  The Changing Youth Population 

85

Carson, D. B., Carson, D. A., Nordin, G., & Sköld, P. (2016). Lessons from the Arctic past: The resource cycle, hydro energy development, and the human geography of Jokkmokk, Sweden. Energy Research & Social Science, 16, 13–24. Carson, D.  B., Carson, D.  A., Porter, R., Ahlin, C.  Y., & Sköld, P. (2017a). Decline, adaptation or transformation: New perspectives on demographic change in resource peripheries in Australia and Sweden. Comparative Population Studies, 41(3–4), 1–29. Carson, D. B., Punshon, K., McGrail, M., & Kippen, R. (2017b). Comparing rural and regional migration patterns of Australian medical general practitioners with other professions: Implications for rural workforce strategies. Australian Population Studies, 1(1), 55–68. Castells, M. (2010). Globalisation, networking, urbanisation: Reflections on the spatial dynamics of the information age. Urban Studies, 47(13), 2737–2745. De Haas, H. (2010). The internal dynamics of migration processes: A theoretical inquiry. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(10), 1587–1617. Eimermann, M., Agnidakis, P., Åkerlund, U., & Woube, A. (2018). Rural place marketing and consumption-driven mobilities in northern Sweden: Challenges and opportunities for community sustainability. Journal of Rural and Community Development, 12(2–3), 114–126. Fehling, M., Jarrah, Z.  M., Tiernan, M.  E., Albezreh, S., VanRooyen, M.  J., Alhokair, A., & Nelson, B. D. (2015). Youth in crisis in the Middle East and North Africa: A systematic literature review and focused landscape analysis. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 21(12), 916–930. Forsberg, S. (2017). ‘The right to immobility’ and the uneven distribution of spatial capital: Negotiating youth transitions in northern Sweden. Social & Cultural Geography, 20, 1–21. Gibson, C., & Argent, N. (2008). Getting on, getting up and getting out? Broadening perspectives on rural youth migration. Geographical Research, 46(2), 135–138. Goldstein, A., & Venturini, A. (2016). International migration policies: Should they be a new G20 topic? China & World Economy, 24(4), 93–110. Haartsen, T., & Thissen, F. (2014). The success–failure dichotomy revisited: Young adults’ motives to return to their rural home region. Children’s Geographies, 12(1), 87–101. Hedberg, C., & Haandrikman, K. (2014). Repopulation of the Swedish countryside: Globalisation by international migration. Journal of Rural Studies, 34, 128–138.

86 

D. B. Carson et al.

Hedberg, C., Forsberg, G., & Najib, A. (2012). When the world goes rural: Transnational potentials of international migration in rural Swedish labour markets. In Translocal ruralism (pp. 125–142). Dordrecht: Springer. Hedlund, M., & Lundholm, E. (2015). Restructuring of rural Sweden–employment transition and out-migration of three cohorts born 1945–1980. Journal of Rural Studies, 42, 123–132. Hedlund, M., Carson, D.  A., Eimermann, M., & Lundmark, L. (2017). Repopulating and revitalising rural Sweden? Re-examining immigration as a solution to rural decline. The Geographical Journal, 183(4), 400–413. Jentsch, B. (2006). Youth migration from rural areas: Moral principles to support youth and rural communities in policy debates. Sociologia Ruralis, 46(3), 229–240. Jones, G.  W. (2004). A risky business: Experiences of leaving home among young rural women. Journal of Youth Studies, 7(2), 209–220. Kealey, L. (2014). Outport “girls in service”: Newfoundland in the 1920s and 1930s. Acadiensis, 43(2), 79–98. Kloep, M., Hendry, L.  B., Glendinning, A., Ingebrigtsen, J.  E., & Espnes, G. A. (2003). Peripheral visions? A cross-cultural study of rural youths’ views on migration. Children’s Geographies, 1(1), 91–109. Kolk, M. (2017). A life-course analysis of geographical distance to siblings, parents, and grandparents in Sweden. Population, Space and Place, 23(3), e2020. Kronholm, T., & Staal Wästerlund, D. (2017). Elucidation of young adults’ relationships to forests in northern Sweden using forest story cards. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 32(7), 607–619. Kuhmonen, T., Kuhmonen, I., & Luoto, L. (2016). How do rural areas profile in the futures dreams by the Finnish youth? Journal of Rural Studies, 44, 89–100. Kulu, H., & González-Ferrer, A. (2014). Family dynamics among immigrants and their descendants in Europe: Current research and opportunities. European Journal of Population, 30(4), 411–435. Kulu, H., Lundholm, E., & Malmberg, G. (2018). Is spatial mobility on the rise or in decline? An order-specific analysis of the migration of young adults in Sweden. Population Studies, 30(4), 1–15. Leibert, T. (2016). She leaves, he stays? Sex-selective migration in rural East Germany. Journal of Rural Studies, 43, 267–279. Lind, T. (2017). Upper secondary schools and sparsity: The case of northern Sweden. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 63(3), 1–14.

5  The Changing Youth Population 

87

MacMichael, M. F., Beazley, K., Kevany, K., Looker, D., & Stiles, D. (2016). Motivations, experiences, and community contributions of young in-­ migrants in the Maitland area, Nova Scotia. Journal of Rural and Community Development, 10(4), 36–53. Martel, C., Carson, D., & Taylor, A. (2013). Changing patterns of migration to Australia’s Northern Territory: evidence of new forms of escalator migration to frontier regions?. Migration Letters, 10(1), 101–113. Niedomysl, T., & Amcoff, J. (2011). Is there hidden potential for rural population growth in Sweden? Rural Sociology, 76(2), 257–279. Nilsson, K. (2003). Moving into the city and moving out again: Swedish evidence from the cohort born in 1968. Urban Studies, 40(7), 1243–1258. Rauhut, D., & Littke, H. (2016). ‘A one way ticket to the city, please!’ on young women leaving the Swedish peripheral region Västernorrland. Journal of Rural Studies, 43, 301–310. Sander, N., Abel, G., & Riosmena, F. (2017). The future of international migration. In W. Lutz, W. P. Butz & K. C. Samir (Eds.) World population & human capital in the twenty-first century: An overview, (pp. 333–396). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sherman, J., & Sage, R. (2011). Sending off all your good treasures: Rural schools, brain-drain, and community survival in the wake of economic collapse. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 26, 1–14. Smith, D.  P., & Sage, J. (2014). The regional migration of young adults in England and Wales (2002–2008): A ‘conveyor-belt’ of population redistribution? Children’s Geographies, 12(1), 102–117. Søholt, S., Stenbacka, S., & Nørgaard, H. (2018). Conditioned receptiveness: Nordic rural elite perceptions of immigrant contributions to local resilience. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 220–229. Statistics Iceland. (2018). Iceland in figures. https://hagstofan.s3.amazonaws. com/media/public/2019/8f7e6520-8747-467c-bc6e-0600920f666c.pdf. Accessed 3 May 2019. Statistics Iceland. (2019a). Mannfjöldi eftir byggðakjörnum, kyni og aldri 1. janúar 1998–2011. https://hagstofa.is/talnaefni/ibuar/mannfjoldi/sveitarfelog-og-byggdakjarnar/. Accessed 3 May 2019. Statistics Iceland. (2019b). Mannfjöldi eftir byggðakjörnum, kyni og aldri 2011–2019. https://hagstofa.is/talnaefni/ibuar/mannfjoldi/sveitarfelog-ogbyggdakjarnar/. Accessed 3 2019. Stenbacka, S. (2013). International migration and resilience: Rural introductory spaces and refugee immigration as a resource. In C. Tamasy & J. Revilla Diez

88 

D. B. Carson et al.

(Eds.) Regional Resilience, Economy and Society: Globalising Rural Places, 75–94. Oxon, UK: Routledge. Stockdale, A., & Catney, G. (2014). A life course perspective on urban–rural migration: The importance of the local context. Population, Space and Place, 20(1), 83–98. Stockdale, A., Theunissen, N., & Haartsen, T. (2018). Staying in a state of flux: A life course perspective on the diverse staying processes of rural young adults. Population, Space and Place, 24, e2139. Stone, J., Berrington, A., & Falkingham, J. (2014). Gender, turning points, and boomerangs: Returning home in young adulthood in Great Britain. Demography, 51(1), 257–276. Tyrrell, N., & Harmer, N. (2015). A good move? Young people’s comparisons of rural and urban living in Britain. Childhood, 22(4), 551–565. Ulrich-Schad, J. D., & Duncan, C. M. (2018). People and places left behind: Work, culture and politics in the rural United States. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(1), 59–79. Vance, J. D. (2016). Hillbilly elegy: A memoir of a family and culture in crisis. New York: Harper Collins.

6 Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? Linda Lundmark

A Growing Problem Officially the government stance is that it is important for sustainable development that people have the possibility to live in both cities and in rural areas and the functional relationship between cities and the surrounding areas is often highlighted. In Sweden housing has mainly been recognized as being a problem in cities and historically the 1 Million Program (Miljonprogrammet in Swedish) boosted social housing between 1965 and 1974 and was designed to deal with the rapid urbanization process. The pace of urbanization made the problems faced by urban areas acute and still the supply of housing is a severe problem in Sweden. A consequence of the acute situation in the metropolitan areas is that the lack of housing has been so widely discussed as an urban problem that the rural areas have been forgotten in this context.

L. Lundmark (*) Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_6

89

90 

L. Lundmark

With outmigration and a decreasing overall population the myth addressed here is the assumption that the available housing in rural and sparsely populated areas is sufficient and adequate. The media discourse on this topic has been that rural areas are full of empty and cheap houses that no one wants (Fig. 6.1). However, the issue of housing has recently been identified and highlighted as a key question for the future of rural

Fig. 6.1  This house represents a common impression of housing in rural areas. (Photo: Linda Lundmark)

6  Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 

91

areas both in general as is shown by a number of articles in national media (SVT news 2020) and in research (Syssner 2018). Demand on different types of housing is dependent not only on local demography and demand, but also migrants (from lifestyle migrants to refugees) and tourists (such as second-homeowners and more temporary visitors) are part of the housing market. The question arises whether and how this demand is met by supply? Do the municipalities take outside demand into consideration in their assessment of their housing stock? Are there (new) housing possibilities for outside demand to be met? These issues are important not least because the consequences of not supplying appropriate housing are wide ranging especially when it comes to attracting competence to the area (see Carson and Johnson, this volume). The supposition is that the municipalities are well aware of the local demand for housing but less aware of outside interest and demand and this will affect their assessment of the housing availability in their municipalities. Furthermore, the problem of matching housing with particular needs is identified. Based on secondary data from Statistics Sweden, a survey commissioned by Boverket to the County Administrative Boards on housing availability (Bostadsmarknadsanalys Västerbottens län 2019 (AC) and Norrbottens län 2019 (BD)) and media coverage on housing in sparsely populated areas this chapter discusses housing in northern Sweden through examples and the complexity of the demand for housing in rural and sparsely populated areas is highlighted in relation to available and planned housing stock.

 ettlement Patterns in the Sparsely Populated S North of Sweden The demographic and socio-economic characteristics of northern Sweden have been shaped by the development trajectories of historically dominant industries, such as farming, mining and forestry (Carson, Carson, Eimermann, Thompson & Hayes, this volume). The population in the area is concentrated to the coast. Large municipalities with few and widespread inhabitants make planning for housing problematic, and the

92 

L. Lundmark

demographic composition is further aggravating the problem of concentration. This means that the tendency for municipalities to promote settling in major towns is prevailing causing the demise of some villages as time goes by. Population decline and ageing following increased outmigration and job losses in traditional industries have been a common development pattern in the area. Some places have suffered steep decline while others have experienced a more steady and gradual decline, reflecting a broader trend of rural restructuring and persistent urbanization in northern Sweden (Hedlund and Lundholm 2015; Lundmark 2006). In a publication by Carson, Lundmark and Carson (Carson et  al. 2019), settlement patterns of the north have been discussed. They argue that a shift of employment focus from natural resource exploitation to services will continue to determine settlement patterns to a large degree. The needs of ‘traditional’ extractive activities like forestry, mining and energy production require a certain type of settlement structure in smaller, more specialized and centralized labour forces while ‘attractive’ activities like tourism and lifestyle migration will likely continue to involve other types of development with small and widely dispersed populations who are likely to be increasingly transient. This has implications for the way in which housing and future settlement is planned for by municipalities in the north. Another circumstance important for settlement patterns is the access to infrastructure. In the case of northern Sweden, a lot of the infrastructure is built for (historical) purposes of extraction (Byström 2019). This means that settlement today is depending on this network albeit not at all interested or dependent on the same assets as before. However, the infrastructure also allows for commuting. Long distance commuting is especially prevalent in municipalities where there are jobs that can be arranged in a fly in/fly out kind of way, mining in Gällivare being one example. Commuters work long hours but for a limited time period so they can be off work for a week and then work for a week for example. The supply of labour is secured at the same time as people living in areas without that many job opportunities may have a chance at staying. Many people who commute like this live in caravans at the place they work because the alternative would be too expensive (or even non-existing since apartments for one person does not exist/is too expensive).

6  Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 

93

 emand for Housing in Sparsely D Populated Areas When talking about the housing market in general most research focus on issues related to metropolitan areas. Segregation and gentrification as part of the changing cityscape are topics widely discussed in literature covering not only major cities worldwide but also discussed from Nordic and Swedish contexts (Hjort 2009; Scarpa 2016). Following from the sustainability debate the focus for planning has been directed towards denser cities thus connecting housing and commuting through labour market issues and competence. Furthermore, the high cost of living in urban areas, too small and too few apartments, no or low maintenance of buildings where property owners can make a lot of money on rundown properties (in 1 Million Program areas) have also been part of the public debate on housing. High cost for loans make households vulnerable to fluctuations on the market and in mortgage rates tying the banking sector to the individual need for housing. These problems mostly prevalent in cities are serious however there are also problems facing rural areas and populations that are equally problematic. One issue rarely discussed from a rural housing perspective is demand— who are looking for housing in rural areas and for what reasons? In terms of attracting people from more distant places the nature has been seen as a possible attractor to rural areas. However, the Seashore Protection Act could be a problem not least with regards to second home developments. According to Boverket (https://www.boverket.se/sv/samhallsplanering/ sa-planeras-sverige/planering-av-mark-och-vatten/strandskydd/landsbyggdsutveckling-i-strandnara-lagen/) the seashore protection includes a perimeter of 100 meters from the seashore as well as 100 meters out in the water. This exemption is required for any built structure such as a hut, a fire place or a shed closer than 100 meters from the shore. Apart from securing good living environments for plants and seashore-dependent wildlife the Seashore Protection Act is also ensuring that the public has access to the seashore for outdoor recreation. Exemptions from the Act can be made by the municipalities and according to especially appointed areas called LIS (Landsbygdsutveckling i strandnära lägen). Tourism that

94 

L. Lundmark

is depending on built structures close to the water are mentioned as one thing that can be exempted, as well as the possibility to build attractive housing close to service and commercial facilities in order to maintain a good level of service. This would also include second homes. As is well known, demand is generated for different reasons. One way to look at demand is from a life course perspective where individual and family needs are connected to different stages (or cycles). With regards to this the commonalities between rural and urban housing demand are many since local demand is linked to people entering different stages in their life. Young people moving away from their parents to their first home of their own have different needs than couples starting a new family however elderly people moving from a house to an apartment have similar needs as young people: They want a smaller and cheaper apartment at walking distance from service. Also other events in life will generate demand on housing. For instance divorce will lead to demand on more housing. Jones (1987) developed a schematic typology including six stages where the life course is connected to housing needs and aspirations (Table 6.1). His typology is however made to match a different context and therefore some alteration to fit rural northern context have to be made, partly based on supply-side issues but also, as has been shown by research that people tend to prefer similar housing that they grew up in Table 6.1  Life course typology and housing needs Housing needs and aspirations (Jones 1987) Pre-child

Cheap apartment in central location Child-bearing Rented single-family dwelling close to apartment zone Child-rearing Owned single-family suburban home Child-­ Owned single-family suburban launching home Post-child Smaller high-quality home Later-life Institution apartment or live with children

Adapted to northern context by author Cheap apartment or house in central location Single-family dwelling Single-family dwelling Single-family dwelling Single-family dwelling Apartment or single-family dwelling

Source: Adapted from Jones (1987) to northern context by author

6  Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 

95

(Feijten et al. 2008). Assuming that demand in rural areas to a higher degree than elsewhere is mostly locally generated increases the probability that demand is on single-family dwellings. Having said that the commonalities are many there is also a need here to emphasize that the demographic composition in terms of age structure of the local population thus has a great importance for the type of local demand generated but that residential mobility in general also is intimately connected to factors such as urbanization level, government intervention and the size and structure of the housing market (Van der Vlist et al. 2002). Apart from local demand there is also non-local demand. Outside demand is for example generated by people who have found new jobs in the local area or from those who have bought agricultural land or have invested in forest land. Attractive housing is a prerequisite for voluntary in-migration and for attracting so-called footloose migrants to areas rich in natural amenities (Andersson 2015). These migrants are those who have no previous attachment to the area through family or friends and are highly mobile. Because of the varying motivations for outside demand it is hard to predict what kind of housing is needed because these people do not necessarily have the same requirements on housing as local residents do. A recent trend that has been much debated is the demand emerging from people looking for a ‘simpler life’, the so-called down-shifters (Saltzman 1991; Etzioni 1998, and see Eimermann, Hedberg and Nuga, this volume). These are those who are moving from urban areas to rural areas looking for qualities often related to sustainability and value of natural environment. These could be both national migrants and migrants coming from other parts of the world (Europe mostly) with the common goal of escaping the city life (Eimermann et al. 2020 forthcoming). The demand generated by such population flows, albeit small and trickling at the moment, might be something to consider for the future in some northern areas. There are also hopes that already abandoned houses in rural areas can be used not only for housing but also for businesses relocating from metropolitan areas (SVT news 2020). This phenomenon also has the potential to affect the overall settlement patterns in the long run in the inland north (Carson et al. 2019).

96 

L. Lundmark

Similarly, some non-local demand is generated by city dwellers buying a second home or converting a permanent home into a second home in order to gain access to certain amenities which might also be related to the simple life or the natural environment (Müller and Marjavaara 2012). To complicate the story even more, second homes are also converted into permanent homes in some cases (Marjavaara 2008) which also can be seen as a local opportunity to gain population easily. Second-home ownership in rural and sparsely populated areas can be either intentional and well-considered investments in high amenity areas (coast or mountain in general) or in areas where people have roots (Lundmark and Marjavaara 2005) but they could also be inherited by people living in urban areas who do not feel a connection to the second-­ home area (Lundmark and Marjavaara 2013; SVT news 2020). This will alter the use of the second-home as well as it alters the ownership structure in the long run. Empty and underused second homes could be considered problematic for places where there is a shortage of available housing needed for the local housing market (Lundmark and Marjavaara 2013). The competition for properties is also uneven in some places where people buying permanent dwellings to use as second homes. One issue discussed in relation to this is that these people might have different socio-economic background giving them more money to spend thus marginalizing locals and causing displacement. However, the magnitude of this phenomenon is unclear (Marjavaara 2008) but on the individual level this is a real problem. Changes in the preferences and needs of second home owners may also be associated with changes in the family life-­ stage (Godbey and Bevins 1987; Lundmark and Marjavaara 2013). Not only second homes can change the dynamics of the local housing market. Also other externally generated activities might have large effects. This might be in relation to outside seasonal pressure for housing for workers in a special industry where the hotels cannot supply sufficient rooms. In the case of Arjeplog the car testing industry has influenced the prices on houses and created difficulties for the local population since housing has become very expensive in relation to the local salaries. In general people selling their properties get good money for that, but these are not the ones affected negatively by the rising prizes. It is not those

6  Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 

97

who have the possibility to sell their house that are the ones buying a new or first home on the local housing market. Another factor affecting housing in sparsely populated areas is the ownership structure of forest and agricultural land. People buying forest holdings and get a house on their hands—what do they do with it? Urban people who buy forest land and then also get a house which they are not really interested in might choose to ignore it and leave it unused. Also a number of large properties bought by the same person might have several buildings on it and that might mean that only one of them is used for housing. Since the prices on the market are so low the owner might choose to leave one house abandoned and unused.

Supply of Housing Historically, the Social Democratic housing policy stated that social housing should provide good dwellings for all, not just those in special need of housing (Turner 1997). This meant that the welfare state subsides ensured housing on more equal terms (Hedin et al. 2012). However, a rapid change of direction of housing policy since the 1990s has turned the housing market into a market-governed one. The removal of laws regulating the housing market has been a game changer and since 1992, municipal housing companies have competed equally with the private sector for credit for new developments; before then, municipal housing companies received preferential treatment (Turner and Whitehead 2002). This has had a number of consequences for an already dysfunctional market and made the building of apartments difficult for financial reasons in the sparsely populated areas. The housing situation in the north of Sweden compared to the rest of the country is interesting also in view of type of housing available. In Sweden as a whole 40.5% of households live in detached houses (villor), 28.3% of households are living in rental apartments and 20.2% live in bostadsrätt (www.scb.se). In the areas covered here are very few apartment buildings and as many as 75% of households live in houses as compared to rental apartments. This is the case in Övertorneå and in Överkalix municipalities (Bostadsmarknadsanalys Norrbotten 2019).

98 

L. Lundmark

The Swedish government is supporting building new housing in areas where the population is growing and in areas where there is a lack of certain housing options that cannot be fulfilled otherwise. The support is also available for municipalities that have suffered from large changes in physical structure. In the case of northern Sweden there are two municipalities that have gained the most attention for this: Gällivare and Kiruna. Both have a longstanding history of mining and the Swedish mining companies LKAB and New Boliden are game changers in the housing market in both municipalities. In Gällivare which is an extreme case the relocation of Malmberget is causing extreme flows of displaced people who look for other housing in Gällivare and nearby places (see Box 6.1). The competition in the market is also special in the region. Low prices of the existing housing stock have implications in the market: Older people keep their house for as long as possible instead of selling because selling and moving to an apartment or another region often means higher cost of living. Furthermore, low house prices and empty houses of high age/low standard also make it difficult to motivate building new houses since that is much more expensive although there is a demand for housing that is not met by the standard offered in existing market. Box 6.1  Gällivare, a Two-Town Merger A special set of housing issues is present in Gällivare municipality in Norrbotten county. This is a municipality where mining has been the mainstay for a century and the mine has also been decisive of where the settlement has developed into towns. The municipality has two towns 5 kilometres apart—Malmberget and Gällivare where Gällivare is the central place. The town Malmberget (translated into English it means Ore mountain) is a major iron ore deep mine run by the state-owned company LKAB.  The very reason why Malmberget is located where it is has now become a problem because of the risk of the mine collapsing at various places beneath the town. As a consequence, the whole town is successively but rapidly being moved and incorporated into Gällivare central place. Important here is that it is not only people who are relocated but also the buildings that can be moved (Fig. 6.2 (a and b), alongside the actual relocation of buildings for resettling new apartments and houses being built in Gällivare. (continued)

6  Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 

99

Box 6.1  (continued)

Fig. 6.2  (a and b) Pictures showing houses moving from Malmberget. (Photo: Linda Lundmark) (continued)

100 

L. Lundmark

Box 6.1  (continued) The example of Malmberget and Gällivare illustrates issues of planning for housing where demand is generated by sudden and unexpected changes in the housing market: 3200 people are affected, 2000 homes and 250,000  m2 of housing, office and retail space is affected. The planning monopoly held by municipalities in Sweden has been tried to the limits by such a profound change and according to the official home page the process will not end before 2032 (LKAB, 2020: https://samhallsomvandling.lkab. com/en/malmbergetgallivare/two-cities-become-one/). Normally the municipalities have a long time to prepare for new housing blocks. When the risk of the mine collapsing became known the municipality together with LKAB had to speed up the planning and actual preparation of housing blocks. This process has not left anyone in the area without a feeling of urgency and stress. Thus, issues of compensation and other issues raised by people that were forced to move away from their homes have been at times difficult and painful to deal with. Malmberget is not the only town that is being moved because of mining. Kiruna is perhaps the most famous example.

 ow Do the Municipalities Assess Their H Housing Stock? In view of the above issues of supply, demand and settling patterns the assessment made by municipalities with regard to the available housing stock becomes interesting since it might be crucial for attracting not only local inhabitants but also attract outside demand. At the time when the assessments were made (2019) 19 municipalities estimated there to be insufficient housing in central locations of the municipality while 11 municipalities assessed that there were insufficient housing in the rural parts. The current housing situation seems to be worse than the assessment made about in the three-year time frame when at least one municipality says that they will have reached equilibrium (Arjeplog). This indicates that municipalities see no significant inflow as realistic. Seven municipalities think that they will have insufficient housing in rural areas in three years’ time. These are: Sorsele, Storuman, Åsele, Älvsbyn, Vännäs, Luleå and Skellefteå.

6  Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 

101

Skellefteå is one municipality that assesses that there will be insufficient housing in all of the municipality both at present and in the future. This is due to the establishment of the large battery factory North Volt which will be built within a few years. The factory will employ some 2500 people causing an inflow of people to the municipality. However, in terms of population development and outside demand not much is said. There are three different groups specially mentioned and they are: newly arrived refugees, young people and older people where the refugees are the only population mentioned that come from the outside (Fig. 6.3). The municipalities identify some important obstacles for building new housing that can be summarized into these main points: • High costs for municipalities to build new apartments. • Difficult to get bank loans for individuals AND private property developers. • The market itself has some weaknesses identified in the assessments. A weak second-hand market that makes it difficult to sell also cheap older houses hampers new developments since expensive houses will be difficult to sell and you will not get returns on the investment.

 he Future of Housing in Sparsely T Populated Areas In this chapter we have seen how the housing market is diverse, complex and highly dependent on planning and resources to be efficient in supplying adequate and sufficient possibilities for people to live, work and stay in the rural areas. A short discussion on what the future might hold, and what the policy options might be follows. Research on housing and residential mobility is rare in the context of rural areas however, there might be a negative net change in population as there are still people moving in to these areas. This has left many questions unanswered as to how the rural areas should handle their housing issues. What can be concluded from the brief review of available material in this chapter is that there is a mismatch between the housing stock and

102 

L. Lundmark

Fig. 6.3  Map showing municipalities’ assessment of housing availability in Norrbotten and Västerbotten counties. The upper two maps show the assessment of currently available housing and the two bottom maps show the assessment of available housing in three years’ time. Assessment regarding central locations is to the left and rural areas to the right. (Source: Bostadsmarknadsanalys Norrbotten and Västerbotten counties 2019. Maps made by Linda Lundmark)

6  Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 

103

the demand also in many rural areas. This means for instance that commuting distances are very long for some (to areas in Gällivare and Kiruna, for example) and it could also push people to move from rural areas to more urban places. In this area there are also lots more proactive measures to take for the municipalities as well as policy on national and EU level in order to attract new inhabitants. Instead of only focusing on the economy, businesses and services in sparsely populated areas, housing is just as important when addressing rural development. Another thing that is apparent from the assessments made by the municipalities is the lack of planning for the future. Municipalities seem unaware of potential demand from the outside which could prove detrimental for attracting new populations such as down-shifters or competence for public and private businesses and operations. Without attractive housing there will be little demand generated from the outside. However, there is of course a complex picture to paint here. On the one hand some municipalities see a blatant need to be able to take away abandoned and collapsing buildings while on the other hand create possibilities to build new and appropriate housing. This is also an example of an issue that seldom is addressed outside of public and political debate, that is in research. The lack of financial support is highlighted as the most difficult hurdle to overcome for renewal of the housing stock. This, in combination with new regulations for the banking sector on how much loans people are allowed to get, is making it a lot more difficult to build new housing in rural areas. The reports from Norrbotten and Västerbotten demonstrate that the need for housing is not fully recognized by the municipalities and looking at the whole chain of needs there are big challenges ahead in terms of second-home market, supply of housing for professionals and others looking for housing outside of the city regions. These reports show that the municipalities are doing what they are asked to do, that is surveying the need of the existing population. This means that demand coming from outside or demand that is generated by attractive living conditions otherwise is not taken into consideration, especially not in view of the labour market demand in public as well as private sectors.

104 

L. Lundmark

To conclude this chapter there are some things to be said about the future of rural areas: (1) The population is dynamic even though it does not increase. This means that there is a need to cater for demand for different types of housing suitable for different stages in life. (2) Potential in-migration such as second-home owners, long distance commuters, down-shifters and immigrants have different needs than required for local residential mobility and (3) the general restructuring of the economy means that other types of jobs and sectors will affect the geographical distribution of demand and in the long run this change also has implications for the settlement structures because of the different resource needs that other economic activities have compared to the traditional mining and forestry.

References Andersson, E.  K. (2015). Rural housing market hot spots and footloose in-­ migrants. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 30, 17–37. Bostadsmarknadsanalys Norrbottens län. (2019). Report commissioned by Boverket. ISBN/ISSN-nr: 405-7159-2019. Accessible online: https:// www.lansstyrelsen.se/download/18.35db062616a5352a22a24ee9/ 1560771224005/Bostadsmarknadsanalys%20f%C3%B6r%20 Norrbottens%20l%C3%A4n%202019.pdf Bostadsmarknadsanalys Västerbottens län. (2019). Report commissioned by Boverket. Accessible online: https://www.lansstyrelsen.se/download/18.35 db062616a5352a22a235a3/1560511878490/Bostadsmarknadsanalys_ 2019.pdf Boverket. (2020). https://www.boverket.se/sv/samhallsplanering/sa-planerassverige/planering-av-mark-och-vatten/strandskydd/landsbyggdsutveckling-istrandnara-lagen/. Accessed 17 Feb 2020. Byström, J. (2019). Tourism development in resource peripheries: Conflicting and unifying spaces in northern Sweden (Dissertation). Umeå: Umeå universitet. Carson, D., Lundmark, L., & Carson, D. A. (2019). The continuing advance and retreat of rural settlement in the northern inland of Sweden. Journal of Northern Studies, 13(1), 7–33. Eimermann, M., Hedberg, C., Lindgren, U. (2020, Forthcoming). Downshifting Dutch rural tourism entrepreneurs in Sweden: Challenges, opportunities and

6  Housing in SPAs: Too Much of Nothing or Too Much for ‘Free’? 

105

implications for the Swedish welfare state. In A. Walmsley, G. T. Jóhannesson, P. Blinnikka, & K. G. Åberg (Eds.), Tourism employment in Nordic countries – Trends, practices and opportunities. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Etzioni, A. (1998). Voluntary simplicity: Characterization, select psychological implications, and societal consequences. Journal of Economic Psychology, 19, 619–643. Feijten, P., Hooimeijer, P., & Mulder, C. H. (2008). Residential experience and residential environment choice over the life-course. Urban Studies, 45(1), 141–162. Godbey, G., & Bevins, M. I. (1987). The life cycle of second home ownership: A case study. Journal of Travel Research, 25(3), 18–22. Hedin, K., Clark, E., Lundholm, E., & Malmberg, G. (2012). Neoliberalization of housing in Sweden: Gentrification, filtering and social polarization. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(2), 443–463. https://doi. org/10.1080/00045608.2011.620508. Hedlund, M., & Lundholm, E. (2015). Restructuring of rural Sweden employment transition and outmigration of three cohorts born 1945–1980. Journal of Rural Studies, 42(2015), 123–132. Hjort, S. (2009). Socio-economic differentiation and selective migration in rural and urban Sweden (PhD dissertation). Umeå: Umeå universitet. Jones, G. (1987). Leaving the parental home: An analysis of early housing careers. Journal of Social Policy, 16(1), 49–74. LKAB. (2020). https://samhallsomvandling.lkab.com/en/malmbergetgallivare/ two-cities-become-one/ Lundmark, L. (2006). Mobility, migration and seasonal tourism employment, Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 6(3), 3–17. http://pdfserve. informaworld.com/712803_731463925_758317487.pdf Lundmark, L., & Marjavaara, R. (2005). Second home localizations in the Swedish mountain range. Tourism, 53, 3–16. Lundmark, L., & Marjavaara, R. (2013). Second home ownership: A blessing for all? Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 13(4), 281–298. Marjavaara, R. (2008). Second home tourism: The root to displacement in Sweden? Umeå: Umeå University. Müller, D. K., & Marjavaara, R. (2012). From second home to primary residence: Migration towards recreational properties in Sweden 1991–2005. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 103(1), 53–68. Saltzman, A. (1991). Downshifting: Reinventing success on a slower track (1st ed.). New York: HarperCollins.

106 

L. Lundmark

Scarpa, S. (2016). Looking beyond the neighbourhood: Income inequality and residential segregation in Swedish metropolitan areas, 1991–2010. Urban Geography, 37(7), 963–984. https://doi.org/10.1080/0272363 8.2015.1123448. SVT News. (2020, January). https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/tomma-husen-resurs-eller-en-belastning;https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/halland/vill-lockaforetagare-till-tomma-hus-pa-landsbygden https://www.svt.se/nyheter/ inrikes/vem-vill-bo-granne-med-ett-odehus; https://www.svt.se/nyheter/ maklare-manga-ser-det-som-meningslost-att-salja; www.scb.se. Accessed 17 Feb 2020. Syssner, J. (Ed.). (2018). Nya visioner för landsbygden. Boxholm: Linnefors förlag. Turner, B. (1997). Municipal housing companies in Sweden: On or off the market? Housing Studies, 12(4), 477–488. Turner, B., & Whitehead, C. M. E. (2002). Reducing housing subsidy: Swedish housing policy in an international context. Urban Studies, 39(2), 201–217. Van der Vlist, A. J., Gorter, C., Nijkamp, P., & Rietveld, P. (2002). Residential mobility and local housing-market differences. Environment and Planning A, 2002(34), 1147–1164.

7 Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication in Swedish Villages Marco Eimermann, Daniel Tomozeiu, and Doris A. Carson

The Myth Statistics Sweden (2019) indicates that 12,095 people born in the Netherlands lived in Sweden in 2018, which was more than twice the volume in 2000. Populations from Germany and Switzerland increased as well (although slower), and many of them settled in remote rural areas or isolated villages (Carson and Carson 2018; Eimermann 2015a). The migrants often do so in the hope to leave the rat race and hectic lives in urbanized areas and to perform outdoor hobbies and activities in pristine nature and tranquil surroundings while also spending more time with the family (Carson et al. 2018; Eimermann 2013). As further specified below, these imaginaries of the good life in rural Sweden resemble many

M. Eimermann (*) • D. A. Carson Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] D. Tomozeiu University of Westminster, London, UK © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_7

107

108 

M. Eimermann et al.

international lifestyle migrants’ motivations (Benson and O’Reilly 2009, 2016, see the lifestyle migration hub website (2020)). Based on this, we will briefly introduce lifestyle migration as a theoretical frame and intercultural communication as a more hands-on tool to understand the empirical data, before nuancing the myth that these Europeans easily integrate into the Swedish host communities. We here start by identifying some contributing factors to the rising number of Dutch, German and Swiss migrants in rural Sweden: • Swedish television series like Pippi Long stocking and other mediated images of Swedish rural idylls in books, social media, blogs, internet forums and so on. • The Emigration Expo near Utrecht (the Netherlands) is Europe’s largest emigration fair, organized since 1996 and taking place in three event halls with an area of 12,000  m2. The event offers about 200 exhibitors and numerous presentations, attracting about 11,500 prospective migrants annually, many of whom are dreaming of a more relaxed life in Sweden. • A Swedish real estate agent in Värmland who has participated in the Emigration Expo to sell houses in the Dutch market since the early twenty-first century. Finding the ideal property ‘somewhere’ in the rural north is the main reason for selecting a specific rural location for migration. This choice is greatly influenced by real estate agents who specialize in selling rural properties to foreign markets in their native languages. A considerable cluster of German-speaking migrants emerged around Sorsele and Arvidsjaur in northern Sweden simply because a German-speaking real estate agent advertised properties on German-speaking websites. • Swedish villages that have hired a Dutch-Norwegian migration consultancy agency (Placement), often for three-year ‘Holland-projects’ sometime between 2004 and 2013 for 90,000 SEK per year to attract and retain Dutch families in the hope that they improve local socio-­ economic conditions. • There is a lot of ‘chain migration’ as international lifestyle migrants attract new migrants from their personal networks (including friends, relatives, former employees or customers). A certain ‘tourism-­

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

109

migration’ transition also exists, as people visiting for a holiday or temporary volunteering often get a taste of living in the north and subsequently decide to move there on a seasonal or more permanent basis. This has been particularly the case with people active in northern signature outdoor hobbies, such as dogsledding, snowmobiling or fishing. Since 2000, these developments have inspired more than half of Sweden’s 290 municipalities to attract more such immigrants through place-marketing projects (Eimermann 2015c; Eimermann et al. 2017). Assuming that lifestyle migrants will stay long and integrate easily into receiving communities, local municipal officials have promoted their municipality in the Netherlands and Germany through presentations, brochures, movies and by talking to prospective migrants. Hällefors in the Bergslagen region was the first Swedish municipality to run a Holland project (2004–2007) with Placement. An official explained how overwhelmed he was during a migration meeting that Placement organized in the Netherlands: “all brochures we had with us were gone so soon! I had to cling on the last one to have something to show all these people who visited our stand” (Interview 2008). These visitors told him about their lives and his visit to the densely populated Netherlands made him realize what so many Dutch were looking for in Sweden: There are often traffic jams on the highways, queues on the roads to the North Sea can be several kilometres long on warm days, parking lots are crammed with cars, and when you finally get to the beach, it is hard to find a spot. Whereas in Hällefors we have 400 lakes and the right of public access. You can almost pick your own private lake. (Interview with Hällefors municipal official 2008)

Two project leaders at Region Dalarna compared their Holland-project with their previous domestic place-marketing campaigns. They were astonished with some Dutch families’ rapid decisions: It can take years before a Swedish family moves from a Swedish city to Dalarna, because it is a big step of course. But some of the Dutch we have been talking to

110 

M. Eimermann et al.

at the Emigration Expo a while ago are already here! They have bought an apartment, he has found a job at the factory, and when she finds a job, she will move here with the children. (Interview with project leaders at Region Dalarna 2008)

One project leader explained in a radio show that many Dutch in Sweden settle in small villages outside municipal centres, that they contribute to the economy with their businesses and that their school-aged children help prevent the closure of day care centres and schools. The journalist then asked why not, for example refugees were targeted in the same way, and the answer was that they were also welcome, but that the intra-EU free movement of people facilitated (rather rapid) migration of Dutch and Germans (P1 Morgon 2011). This hints at the popular belief that the similar cultures, languages and mind sets make it easier for these intra-European migrants to integrate in Sweden than for non-Western refugees. Such reasoning may be plausible from a lay perspective, but it can also be criticized for dividing newcomers into desirable and undesirable people. As rural place-marketing projects are unprecedented and seldom thoroughly evaluated, officials have had little information to base their projects on. Some of them assume that prospective migrants are attracted by what local Swedes value, such as the Swedish way of consensus rather than majority decision making, and a strong community feel that resembles the Pippi-like rural idylls indicated above. Yet, this is seldom true, as the following example illustrates: when a Swedish group showed pictures of moose hunting in their presentation at a Dutch emigration meeting, they told stories of a community spirit as Swedish locals were hunting in teams, getting up early and drinking coffee together around a camp fire. They said that sitting on watch for hours in the woods can be a sort of meditation and they explained how this contributes to Swedish relaxed attitudes. Yet, when they showed a picture of a dead moose on its way to a slaughterhouse, many Dutch in the audience were in shock. They saw the moose as a majesty in the mystic Swedish woods. Killing a moose equalled killing their Swedish dream! Therefore, although Dutch, German, Swiss and Swedish cultures may not be that different on a global scale, we will show that there are

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

111

differences between Swedish and relatively proximate cultures that often manifest themselves in different communication styles. These differences may be quite subtle but they can lead to intercultural misunderstandings that become substantial barriers to integration. These need to be understood when local officials work with rural place marketing. We are writing this chapter to provide Swedish local officials who are (thinking of ) engaging in place marketing with relevant insights from lifestyle migrants in rural Sweden. We focus on Dutch and German-speaking migrants (largely from Germany, but also Switzerland) and their experiences and practices after moving, to contribute to a better understanding of the factors influencing integration of these migrants in Sweden. We base this on the field of intercultural communication (IC) e.g. Jandt 2004.

Theories and Methods Lifestyle migration studies often use sociological and anthropological theories and methods such as interviews and field observations. Around 2009, such studies started to use a definition based on the migrants’ accounts rather than the researchers’ interpretations: Lifestyle migration is the spatial mobility of relatively affluent individuals of all ages, moving either part-time or full-time to places that are meaningful because, for various reasons, they offer the potential of a better quality of life. […] Lifestyle migration is about escape from somewhere and something, [and] to self-fulfilment and a new life. A recreation, restoration or rediscovery of oneself, of personal potential or of one’s ‘true’ desires. (Benson and O’Reilly 2009: 2–3)

This definition indicates that social reasons rather than economic, political or other reasons are pivotal in the voluntary decision to migrate. The interviewees in our studies match this definition in that they indicated social reasons for migrating to the studied Swedish villages, which is why we refer to them as lifestyle migrants. The definition remains open for amendment through new insights, and over the years, lifestyle migration research was included in population studies (Barcus and Halfacree 2018) and more general migration studies (Benson and O’Reilly 2016;

112 

M. Eimermann et al.

O’Reilly 2012). This has contributed to a less rigid labelling of migration types. For instance, although lifestyle migrants may move for social reasons mainly, those of working age still need to earn an income and consider economic aspects. On a different note, reasons for initial refugee migration may connect with political threats, but reasons for the same individuals’ later relocation choices can be lifestyle-related (Eimermann and Karlsson 2018). Our chapter therefore adds to these insights and integrates lifestyle migration with the general field of migration studies by highlighting some of the interconnected social and economic dynamics of the migration process and its outcomes. More concretely, some previous studies have investigated how lifestyle migrants integrate in receiving communities (e.g. O’Reilly 2007). Benson (2010) related her study of Britons living in the French Lot area to literature on the integration of Britons living in France (Buller and Hoggart 1994). She found three groups of migrants: • young families, whose decision to migrate and choice of location were influenced by their desire for a better, healthier life where their children could have more freedom; • mid-life migrants: young, childless, ex-professionals who had left their jobs in Britain to move to France where they had set up their own businesses; and • retirement migrants, who perceived that elderly in France were treated with more respect than elderly in Britain, and who chose to live close to facilities such as general practitioners since they anticipated a future where they may not be as mobile anymore. Benson (2010) then linked the extent to which these migrants perceived their integration experiences (in terms of taking part in  local groups, organizations and activities) in receiving communities to their life course stage and family circumstances at the time of migration. The family migrants whose children attended French schools had had more opportunities to meet members of local communities. The mid-life migrants were also integrating rather well through frequent interactions with local French through their businesses or helping the community. The retirement migrants were less successful, which was partly due to

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

113

their limited abilities to communicate in French. Yet overall, motivation of the migrants, acceptance by the local communities and the active pursuit of shared interests were more important than linguistic ability. Benson (2010: 60) called for a way of studying integration, which takes account of the “symbiotic relationship between the host community and individual migrants” rather than focusing on the newcomers’ efforts to become part of the host society. This chapter responds to that call, introducing basic understandings of IC, like Hofstede and Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture (Table  7.1) and Berry’s (1980) acculturation theory, to lifestyle migration studies. Besides various observations reported in previous studies, this chapter draws on over 50 interviews conducted with Dutch, German and Swiss lifestyle migrants in the rural communities of Hällefors (Örebro county), Hagfors, Munkfors (Värmland), Arjeplog, Arvidsjaur and Sorsele (northern Sweden). The studies were conducted between 2011 and 2017, and the researchers asked about motivations for migrating, practices of living in Sweden and managing personal lifestyle and economic business interests through nature-based tourism enterprises (e.g. Carson and Carson 2018; Eimermann 2013; Eimermann and Kordel 2018). This chapter introduces insights from Hofstede and Hofstede (2008), Lewis (2000) and Berry (2005), highlighting that lifestyle migrants may face considerable barriers to their perceived levels of local integration that result from issues around intercultural communication. We present the studies’ findings combined with IC insights below to elaborate on the points that we want to make with this chapter. To decrease hindrances for the Swedish villages’ local socio-economic diversification and development, we build on Berry’s (1980) model in which acculturation means that newcomers have better chances to integrate into a host society if this society is open for the newcomers’ viewpoints and efforts.

Hofstede’s Six Dimensions of National Culture IC helps us understand the lifestyle migrants’ interpretations of their practices in rural Sweden. We see practices as activities influenced by both existing structures (based on laws, social norms, expectations and

114 

M. Eimermann et al.

Table 7.1  The six dimensions of national culture in brief Power distance

Individualism— Collectivism

Masculinity— Femininity

Uncertainty avoidance

Long-term orientation

Indulgence— Restraint

How does a society handle inequalities among people? Low scores indicate that people strive to equalize the distribution of power and demand justification for inequalities of power. Societies with high scores accept a hierarchical order in which everyone has a place, with little further justification. Low scores represent collectivism; a preference for a tightly knit framework in society in which individuals expect their relatives or members of an in-group to look after them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. High scores indicate individualism; a preference for a loosely knit social framework where individuals often take care of only themselves and their immediate families. People in more feminine societies (with lower scores) prefer cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak and quality of life. Consensus is important in such a society. In more masculine societies (with higher scores), more people prefer achievement, heroism, assertiveness and material rewards for success. Such a society is more competition-oriented. This dimension regards the degree to which the members of a society feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity. The future can’t be known, but should we try to control it or just let it happen? In societies with low scores, people have more relaxed attitudes in which practice counts more than principles. In societies with high scores, people maintain rigid codes of conduct and belief, and they are intolerant of unorthodox behaviour and ideas. Most societies prioritize the existential goals of maintaining links with its own past and dealing with present and future challenges. Low scores mean that people often maintain long-standing traditions and view societal change with suspicion. High scores indicate that thrift and efforts in, for example, modern education to prepare for the future are encouraged. Low scores are found in restraint societies, where people suppress gratification of needs and regulate this by means of strict social norms. High scores in this dimension mean societies allow relatively free gratification of basic and natural human drives related to enjoying life and having fun.

Source: Adapted from Hofstede and Hofstede (2008) and Hofstede (2019)

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

115

imaginaries), individual decisions and agency and changing interactions between these structures and agencies (Benson and O’Reilly 2018). Therefore, we draw on previous findings regarding the lifestyle migrants’ daily lives in general and their experiences as tourism entrepreneurs specifically, as many of our interviewees became self-employed in tourism after arriving in Sweden (Carson et al. 2018; Eimermann 2016). Although most studied lifestyle migrants were satisfied with their lives in rural Sweden, many of them indicated unexpected challenges in daily communication with local Swedes. Research participants said that many of them were feeling ‘so-so’ in Sweden and that they missed seeing happy faces around and people greeting each other merrily. They elaborated on how they felt that social contacts were harder to establish in Sweden than back home: relatives can’t come over for a drink, and other parents seldom chat with them when picking up their children at the school-yard (Eimermann 2015b). We view this ambivalence as an everyday mismatch of post-migration experiences with previous hopes and dreams based on practices before migration (Eimermann 2014). We explore this further using the six dimensions (6D) of national culture developed by Hofstede and colleagues (Table 7.1). The authors define culture as “the collective programming of the mind, distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others” (Hofstede and Hofstede 2008: 17). The dimensions are used to distinguish countries from each other, regarding what situations are preferred over others. The model is based on relative country scores (0–100), meaning that they can only be used to compare countries with each other. Hofstede (ibid.) maintains that a person from one culture experiencing another would feel a difference of 10 points or more in a particular dimension. Although scholars are critical of Hofstede’s model (e.g. Jones 2007), and we acknowledge that it is essentialist in its approach without paying attention to regional, individual and urban-­ rural differences, we still find it a useful point of departure. It illustrates possible differences and similarities between Swedish, Dutch, German and Swiss national cultures. Figure 7.1 shows scores on all six dimensions for Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, which is a first step to understanding some of the interviewee’s ambivalence. It shows broad similarity in

116 

M. Eimermann et al.

83

80 71

31

67 68

66

74

70

65

58

53

78 66 68

67

53 40

35 34 38

29 14 5

power distance

individualism masculinity Sweden

Germany

uncertainty avoidance Switzerland

long term orientation

indulgence

The Netherlands

Fig. 7.1  Country scores: Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and The Netherlands. (Source: Adapted from Hofstede 2019)

four dimensions, but specific difference for Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance. The low scores for Masculinity in Swedish (5) and Dutch (14) cultures mean that people prefer consensus, while the high scores in German (66) and Swiss (70) cultures indicate a preference for competition. The Uncertainty Avoidance dimension shows how much Swedish (29) culture differs from the Dutch (53), Swiss (58) and German (65) cultures: these three accept uncertainty much less than Swedish culture does. For this reason, we will now briefly focus on Uncertainty Avoidance in the following paragraph. According to country comparisons using the 6D model, Dutch, Germans and (German-speaking) Swiss can be expected to maintain rigid codes of behaviour, which makes them less tolerant of unorthodox ideas or behaviour. They would also have an emotional need for rules and an inner urge to work hard and precise, along the adagio ‘time is money’. The model expects Germans in particular to prefer systemic overviews before proceeding in thinking, presenting or planning, and to rely on expertise to avoid uncertainty. In contrast, Swedes tolerate uncertainty more, which shows in their more relaxed attitude in which practice counts more than principles and deviance from the norm is more easily

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

117

tolerated. Swedes work along flexible schedules and undertake hard work when necessary, not for its own sake. Such expectations are reflected in our interviews, particularly when focusing on the interviewees’ entrepreneurship practices in rural Sweden. A female Dutch horse ranch owner complained about the local Swedish Box 7.1  A Swedish Swirl (Discussion, More Discussion, Consensus) Marco Eimermann, Daniel Tomozeiu & Doris A. Carson Studies (e.g. by Carson and Eimermann) on Dutch- and German-speaking lifestyle migrants found the migrants reflecting on meetings, and failed collaboration and networking efforts with Swedish local entrepreneurs. Lewis (2000) shows that there is a close connection between culture and communication style. Some interviewees pointed out that many migrants were disappointed with the repeated discussions during business breakfast meetings without anybody taking real action (Carson and Carson 2018: 237). Many migrants gave up going to the meetings as they found the outcomes too fuzzy and the number of new valuable contacts too few for the time and effort for travelling and attending them. It was also frustrating that “unless they know you really well” local Swedes’ ways of networking and arranging collaboration were through meeting in person, while this could be managed more efficiently online or by phone (ibid.). Some northern Swedish local government officials recognized this, saying it was difficult for them to embed lifestyle migrants in  local networking efforts. They viewed the Swedish way as a rather laid-back attitude involving multiple meetings, discussions and informal networking before possibly implementing more concrete projects or development strategies. These accounts fit neatly with Lewis’ (2000) studies of national communication patterns. Lewis (2000) visualizes national communication patterns as a schematic diagram of how meetings and decisions usually proceed over time (Fig. 7.2). We are aware of the focus on national stereotypes and the challenge of including regional variations and individual traits, but still this model provides a good overview. First, we can see that both Dutch and Swedish communication patterns start with a word base, including a short while of semi-formal and social talk. The Dutch are more time aware during this introductory phase as demonstrated by the more specific 5–10 minutes of social talk, which could be interpreted as their desire to “get down to business” promptly. The Swedish word base is wider, implying more verbosity and discussions in order to set the scene and provide the context in a semi-­ formal, correct and proper manner. This also corresponds with Swedish families needing more time before an eventual move in the example given by Region Dalarna’s project leaders in the introduction above. The Swiss use a modest word base, while the Germans start promptly. Resistance or differ(continued)

118 

M. Eimermann et al.

Box 7.1  (continued)

(continued)

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

119

Box 7.1  (continued)

Fig. 7.2  (a–d) National communication patterns. (Source: Adapted from Lewis 2000. See more diagrams in Lewis 2016) (continued)

120 

M. Eimermann et al.

Box 7.1  (continued) ent arguments are engaged differently: while the Germans and the Swiss absorb the counter-arguments before proceeding along the prepared lines, the Dutch check for bluffing and then engage in a logical debate. The Swedes, on the other hand, have a tendency to engage in a wide-ranging discussion (illustrated in the shape of a swirl) in an attempt to find consensus, which can be quite time consuming. We link this back to the Dutch quick decision-making observed by the two project leaders at Region Dalarna (in this chapter’s introduction). Although Lewis (2016) states that “the Dutch are focused on facts and figures, but are also great talkers and rarely make final decisions without a long ‘Dutch’ debate, sometimes approaching the danger zone of over-analysis”, this long debate appears to be more focussed. The extended time and scope of the Swedish debate can be explained also by the reluctance to seek a new consensus, further down the line. The horizontal lines for the German and Swiss communication patterns show that these are straightforward, rely on logic and don’t leave the beaten track. The Swiss tend to obtain concessions by expressing confidence in the quality and value of their goods and services, which we link with quotes in this chapter where Swiss migrants tell they feel uncomfortable with the Swedish swirl.

youth’s work ethics, saying that they report ill rather often or simply don’t come to work at the ranch, without notice. Some German and Swiss accommodation operators also explained that Swedish employees often seemed to have lower service quality expectations (e.g. in relation to cleanliness of rooms or facility maintenance). Employing local Swedes was often an unattractive option because local service attitudes did not always match the quality standards that these entrepreneurs were aiming to provide for their foreign markets. Carson and Carson (2018) found more evidence for a contrast in mentality and cultural stereotypes between Swedes and Germans, where the latter are “never satisfied and always strive for better things”. The migrants describe Swedes as ‘humble and modest’, not doing more than absolutely necessary. One interviewee refers to this with the Swedish term ‘lagom’, or ‘just right, no need for any more or less’ work or guests for instance. Another migrant was frustrated that local stakeholders often ignored well-meant

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

121

business advice, stating that talking to Swedes is sometimes “like talking to a brick wall”. Some interviewees indicated that their flawed efforts to contribute to local learning and capacity building may be due to cultural misunderstandings. These interviewees felt that they could come across as overly pushy and arrogant ‘know-it-alls’, which is not appreciated within the ‘Nordic-noble’ Swedish culture (see Box 7.1). Two quotes illustrate this: I personally got off to a really bad start when I came here. I had around 15 years of experience in tourism at the time, and so I made the mistake, like many Germans do around here, to speak out and tell them [local businesses] what they should be doing. ‘Alright, you want to attract the German market? I’m from Germany, I know this stuff, so we should be doing this, and this, and that’ (…). That was the last meeting I was invited to. They don’t like that sort of smart-arse (sic) attitude. (Interview 2016) There is always lots of talking [at these business meetings], again and again the same thing. Come along and have your say! Smalltalk, introduce yourself, etc. etc. But at the end, real actions are rare. (…) They never have a clear plan— like these are the next steps—a, b, c—and they need to be completed by date a, b, c! It’s like they want to avoid responsibility. It’s so frustrating—just stop the talking, and put your money where your mouth is! (Interview 2016)

These quotes indicate how some lifestyle migrants experience the Swedish swirl, which they think doesn’t lead to a concrete outcome or a plan.

Acculturation When introducing northern Swedish tourism entrepreneurs to the continental European market, a Swiss entrepreneur noticed rather quickly that simply telling the local Swedes what a typical Swiss customer expects does not really help (Carson and Carson 2018: 237): They have never been outside Sweden before, so how can they possibly understand the Swiss mind set? And so I invited them on a trip to Switzerland to

122 

M. Eimermann et al.

actually experience what life in Switzerland is like, what people do and expect, but also what they don’t have and what we can provide for them up here. I think this has been a real eye-opener for them. But it takes some time and effort to build that trust and understanding, a lot of newcomers here don’t seem to realise that.

This need for patience and effort to build trust is also captured in Berry’s (1980) acculturation theory. Acculturation was defined by Redfield, Linton and Herskovits (1936: 149) as comprehending “those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups”. More recent studies (Guarnacia and Hausmann-Stabile 2016) support the definition although they question the need for ‘continuous and first-hand contact’ mentioned by Redfield et al. (1936) given the power of media and communication. While Swedish entrepreneurs might have to shift their approach in order to make their products appealing to a wider market, as highlighted above, the lifestyle migrants face more obvious acculturation choices. Depending on how much of their home (internalized) culture they keep and how much of the host (Swedish) culture they adopt, the lifestyle migrants may more or less deliberately engage in one of four strategies (Berry et al. 1987, Table 7.2). Acculturation is not a one-way street but acculturation strategies are reciprocal and mutual, which means that a lifestyle migrant can integrate or assimilate only if the host community is open to such a strategy (Berry 1980). Of the four strategies, the literature highlights the advantages of

Table 7.2  Four strategies of acculturation Do they value maintaining their identity and characteristics? No Do they value maintaining or creating relationships with the larger society?

Yes Assimilation No Marginalization

Source: Adapted from Berry et al. (1987)

Yes Integration Separation

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

123

an integration approach, which requires double engagement in the home and host culture. Such an approach has the advantage of allowing lifestyle migrants access to a large and diverse social capital, with multiple social networks both in Sweden and in the home culture, which is beneficial for everyone.

Conclusion: Labels Can Lie While it can be debated whether refugees prefer an assimilation strategy (as they might want to leave behind and move away from certain experiences and practices in their home culture that may have pushed them to seek refuge in the first place), local municipal officials have assumed that lifestyle migrants tend to prefer an integration strategy. Marginalization is rarely desired and separation is unlikely to be the choice for someone who wanted to leave their own cultural community, with all the moral certainties it provides. With this chapter, we implicitly turn our attention to the similarities between refugees and lifestyle migrants in terms of their intentions of integration in the (European) host society (see Box 7.2). Berry (2005) indicates two requirements for effective integration: diversity and equitable participation in society. While a certain level of diversity appears to be desired by the officials involved in preparing and delivering the migration meetings in The Netherlands and beyond, the question of equitable participation in society is more complicated. Limited participation is seldom the result of an intentional policy of excluding (lifestyle) migrants, but rather of the cultural norms and expectations such as the language in which meetings are conducted, the length of the meetings, the result of these meetings and so on as we have seen in the examples above. This leads to the ‘so-so’ feelings on the side of the lifestyle migrants and, potentially, of the host community. It is important to acknowledge that the acculturation path is, in reality, more complicated than it can be inferred from Berry’s model. While the individual is the decision-maker in terms of the initial move, the level of internalized culture preservation and Swedish culture adoption (and its resulting acculturation outcome) depends on several factors beyond the individual. In addition to the individual and the local authorities, family

124 

M. Eimermann et al.

structure and family dynamics (both in Sweden and in the home country), the existence of a local diaspora from the home country, as well as the attitude of the local Swedish community at an interpersonal level, all play a determining role in the final acculturation outcome. Berry’s model provides a good starting point in understanding this complex dynamic

Box 7.2  Came to Stay? Refugees in Rural Germany. Insights into Implicit Place Marketing Stefan Kordel and Tobias Weidinger A large number of asylum seekers have arrived in Germany since 2014 as a result of armed conflicts and persecution. Following a mandatory national dispersal system, they were distributed to rural areas during the asylum process. Simultaneously, residence obligations limit the residential location choice of recognized refugees to a specific spatial scale for those reliant on social welfare. Thus, state-led regulation mechanisms result in the arrival of newcomers in rural areas and offer the opportunity to revitalize regions. A case study (cf. Kordel and Weidinger 2019) in rural Bavaria identified various activities for indirect and implicit place marketing, which casually went alongside the placement of asylum seekers. Some actors unintentionally became promoters of their regions. Mayors, employers and volunteers from the civil society enabled refugees to accumulate local knowledge on rules of conduct (Larsen 2011). Especially volunteers teach refugees the German language prior to official courses, assist them in the flat hunting process, job search or visits to the authorities. Moreover, the organization of leisure events (e.g. going hiking, asylum cafés, intercultural gaming afternoons or soccer games) aims at familiarizing them with the area of living as well as with local inhabitants. Therefore, these persons function as intermediaries (Radford 2016) to the local population but also as bridge-­ builders to the region. This becomes evident not least as they also advise refugees to stay in the region. They highlight that settling down would be much easier in the countryside: Volunteer 1 from a rural municipality (female, 2016, translated): We always tried to make clear to them that it would make sense to stay here and learn German in the short run. And in the long run, they could search another place for them, where to find also a workplace. Volunteer 2 from a rural municipality (female, 2016, translated): We always tried to argue how good it is here for children. (continued)

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

125

Box 7.2  (continued) As a consequence, and as time passes by, many of those establish emotional and cognitive attachments and stay in the region. Migrant communities themselves act as catalysts for positive representations of the region, and point out, for instance, advantages for rural sites of living among relatives in bigger cities, which may result in urban-rural chain migration. In sum, the dispersal of newcomers provides the legal framework for implicit place marketing activities, whilst particularly the civil society casually promotes their regions on a personal and face-to-face level. Since 2020, building on the expertise of 25 partners in 10 different countries, the EU’s H2020 research project ‘MATILDE’ continues to study the impact of third-country nationals on a European scale.

but, in our view, it remains a starting point only and further research in this area is needed. Based on the findings and models presented in this chapter, we challenge the assumption that lifestyle migrants encounter few difficulties after relocating to Sweden. Although cultural differences between Swedish people and Dutch, Germans and Swiss might not be extensive when looked at on a global scale (Hofstede and Hofstede 2008), local politicians and officials should not underestimate these differences and the challenges they bring. In areas where they exist, in terms of Uncertainty Avoidance (ibid.) and in communication strategies (Berry 2005), these challenges should be acknowledged and explored. Else, frustrations can occur that hinder local economies’ diversification and development through entrepreneurial knowledge transfer, or ‘unnecessarily’ high numbers of migrants may leave the area again. Therefore, we propose some recommendations for officials and policy makers when engaging in rural place marketing projects through Holland projects or the Emigration Expo. First, we support an ongoing development among Swedish stakeholders: be better prepared! We refer here to a recent observation (during Emigration Expo 2019) that campaigns were more sophisticated than previously (Eimermann 2015c). Whereas initially Swedish officials generally promoted their villages and communities in the hope to attract anyone to migrate to rural Sweden (ibid.), these campaigns have become more interrelated with job opportunities and

126 

M. Eimermann et al.

they target specific professions such as primary school teachers or medical staff. Second, and perhaps more novel, we would like to encourage local and regional Swedish officials and organizations to initiate tailored integration projects for lifestyle migrants, with a similar awareness of the need for such active efforts, as in existing initiatives designed for other migrant groups in Swedish society. To this end, we think nature-based integration (NBI, see Box 7.3) projects would appeal to many lifestyle migrants, since they are interested in nature-based activities both for their own wellbeing and to explore development paths for their nature-based (tourism) businesses. NBI would thus give the lifestyle migrants a sense of inclusion that has apparently been lacking. If local entrepreneurs and other stakeholders also participate, NBI would provide a platform that meets Berry’s (2005) requirements better than existing arenas such as

Box 7.3  Nature-Based Integration (NBI) in Sweden Benedict E. Singleton Similar to many European countries, there is much discussion of the need to integrate incomers into Swedish society. With ‘nature-based outdoor recreation’ framed as an important part of modern Swedish identities (Sandell and Öhman 2010: 115–6) it is thus unsurprising that there is growing interest in the potential of various outdoor activities to bring people together (Gentin et al. 2018, 2019). In Sweden, NBI projects include guide training programmes, the provision of active excursions to migrants and educational projects and schemes to ‘match’ immigrants with employers in the Swedish agri- and horticultural sectors. What unifies different NBI projects is the idea that exposure to local nature increases the likelihood of diverse groups successfully integrating into local society as well as providing broader health benefits to individual participants. Recently, NBI has been defined as “the process in which an immigrant gets familiarized with the local environment, through activities that take place in a natural environment” (Gentin et al. 2018: 17). NBI activities in Örebro County, central Sweden, for the most part take the form of guided walks in nature, providing language practice and/or information on the Right of Public Access (Allemänsrätten) enjoyed by inhabitants of Sweden. In examining these activities, three aims were discerned. Explicitly, guides set out to 1) inform and 2) entertain participants. (continued)

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

127

Box 7.3  (continued) More or less implicitly, 3) NBI activities sought to engender an ‘ecological mind set’ among participants. In this understanding, NBI activities are posited to aid integration by providing a) useful knowledge (language skills, rules, norms, dangers) and b) a place to interact with Swedes. It is felt that by doing similar things in similar places people will naturally grow alike and acquire similar understandings. Alien landscapes are thus transformed into mutual taskscapes (cf. Ingold 2000). Through performing shared taskscapes, a common Swedish society also emerges. In this latter aspect, NBI were also posited as addressing a wider malady of disconnect from nature in modern societies. Thus NBI are intended as part of building a sustainable Sweden (Singleton 2020). There are tensions within these observed NBI, containing as they do normative notions on appropriate nature use and ‘Swedishness’. These relate to power disparities integral to NBI—guides (and ‘Swedes’ generally) are tasked to defining the norms that incomers are required to adopt. This at times may generate conflict deleteriously affecting the integrational potential of NBI (Singleton n.d., Submitted).

business breakfast meetings. It can be a win-win situation, if all stakeholders allow this process to take time (Carson and Carson 2018). Still, to avoid replicating previous issues of cultural misunderstandings and conflicting interests, the design of such NBI projects needs to take into account the different communication practices highlighted above. There also needs to be more explicit consideration of the migrants’ interests and expectations in relation to nature consumption and their nature-­ based tourism enterprises, and how these might correspond with (at times competing, at times complementing) local practices and interests (Eimermann et al. 2019). Successful integration, whichever shape it may take, requires reciprocal and mutual understanding of each other’s cultural similarities and differences. By recognizing and openly acknowledging this, the lifestyle migrants and the host community can work together towards the diversity and equitable participation discussed above (Berry 2005). In intercultural communication there is a saying that “the fish is always the last one to notice the water” alluding to the fact that recognizing one’s own cultural practices (such as long and wide-ranging meetings)

128 

M. Eimermann et al.

and the cultural values they underpin (such as the need to reach consensus) is not always a straightforward process. However, a reflective attitude, as well as open and non-judgemental discussions around expectations and frustrations, can lead to a better understanding of these processes and values. This can be a rewarding experience both for the lifestyle migrant as well as for the host community. In sum, this chapter has discussed some unexpected complexities that have arisen from rural place-marketing projects and other factors contributing to an increased number of Dutch, German and Swiss lifestyle migrants in rural Sweden. It represents a step towards more thorough analyses of mismatches between local officials’ expectations of lifestyle migrants’ contributions on the one hand and migrants’ actual experiences on the other hand (Eimermann et al. 2017). Contrary to popular belief, highlighted in this chapter’s introduction, the integration of lifestyle migrants from perceived culturally similar countries is not necessarily smooth and easy. Given the dynamic nature of the migration process and the cultural differences, lifestyle migrants might not necessarily stay longer than other types of migrants, and may not always make the socio-­ economic contributions envisioned by municipal officials. In this sense, we think Box 7.4 can be helpful. Box 7.4  Came to Stay? What Policymakers Need to Know About Lifestyle Migration, Fantasy and Reality Robin Cranmer A common challenge to both lifestyle migrants and receiving communities is the existence of a gap between how lifestyle migrants imagine their new life and the reality. Where can this gap originate and how might it be bridged? There are limits to how far even the best-prepared individuals can imagine accurately how a radical change in their living context will work out. An additional difficulty for lifestyle migrants may be generated by the fact that their decision to migrate is motivated by their negativity about specific features of their current life context. This may lead them to focus primarily on the absence of those features when imagining their future life context, even to romanticize the exotic (cf. Todorov 1996)—and all of this to the exclusion of the endless challenges and complexities that any form of migration actually involves. (continued)

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

129

Box 7.4  (continued) The nature of the challenges involved in any migration and the skill-set needed to deal with them have been minutely articulated in the last 50  years within what one might term ‘Intercultural Studies’ (cf. Byram 1997). A lifestyle migrant whose vision is dominated either by escapism or related romanticism will often lack an awareness of the range of challenges they face or the skills they might need to cope. It is common to divide that ‘skill-set’ into knowledge, skills and attitudes—knowledge, for example, of relevant languages and cultural differences; the skills, for example, of being able to cope with the unfamiliar and to remain non-judgemental; and attitudes, for example, of curiosity and openness towards the host culture. Beyond the academic literature on this, numerous commercial organizations offer training in these areas and there is a plethora of easily available online developmental materials. It is in almost no one’s interest for lifestyle migration to fail and a gap between fantasy and reality increases the chances of failure. Accordingly, it is in the interest of those involved both in place marketing and in facilitating integration to make potential migrants aware as far as possible of the full range of challenges, as well as the rewards, which may await them. This may include making them aware of the distorting effects of escapism and romanticism in their vision of the future as well as making them aware how to access intercultural training in a way that can leave them prepared in a more rounded way. Such training may be of no less value to relevant members of the host community. In such ways, some small steps may be taken in bridging any gap between fantasy and reality.

References Barcus, H.  R., & Halfacree, K. (Eds.). (2018). An introduction to population geographies. Abingdon: Routledge. Benson, M. (2010). The Context and Trajectory of Lifestyle Migration: the Case of the British Residents of Southwest France. European Societies, 12, 45–64. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (Eds.). (2009). Lifestyle migration; expectations, aspirations and experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2016). From lifestyle migration to lifestyle in migration: Categories, concepts and ways of thinking. Migration Studies, 4, 20–37.

130 

M. Eimermann et al.

Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2018). Lifestyle migration and colonial traces in Malaysia and Panama. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Berry, J. W. (1980). Acculturation as varieties of adaptation. In A. Padilla (Ed.), Acculturation: Theory, models and some new findings (pp.  9–25). Boulder: Westview. Berry, J.  W. (2005). Acculturation: Living successfully in two cultures. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 29, 697–712. Berry, J. W., Kim, U., Minde, T., & Mok, D. (1987). Comparative studies of acculturative stress. International Migration Review, 21, 491–511. Buller, H., & Hoggart, K. (1994). International Counterurbanization. British migrants in rural France. Aldershot, Avebury. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Carson, D. A., & Carson, D. B. (2018). International lifestyle immigrants and their contributions to rural tourism innovation: Experiences from Sweden’s far north. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 230–240. Carson, D. A., Carson, D. B., & Eimermann, M. (2018). International winter tourism entrepreneurs in northern Sweden: Understanding migration, lifestyle, and business motivations. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 18, 183–198. Eimermann, M. (2013). There and back again? Dutch lifestyle migrants moving to rural Sweden in the early 21st century. Doctoral thesis, Örebro Studies in Human Geography 8. Örebro University, Örebro. Eimermann, M. (2014). Ambivalent Dutch lifestyle migrants in rural Sweden. AEMI Journal, 12, 48–57. Eimermann, M. (2015a). Lifestyle migration to the north: Dutch families and the decision to move to rural Sweden. Population, Space and Place, 21, 68–85. Eimermann, M. (2015b). ‘I felt confined’ – Narratives of ambivalence among Dutch lifestyle migrants in Hällefors. In M.  Eimermann & A.  Trumberg (Eds.), Place and identity – A new landscape of social and political change in Sweden (pp. 31–56). Stockholm: Santérus. Eimermann, M. (2015c). Promoting Swedish countryside in the Netherlands: International rural place marketing to attract new residents. European Urban and Regional Studies, 22, 398–415. Eimermann, M. (2016). Two sides of the same coin: Dutch rural tourism entrepreneurs and countryside capital in Sweden. Rural Society, 25, 55–73. Eimermann, M., & Karlsson, S. (2018). Globalising Swedish countrysides? A relational approach to rural immigrant restaurateurs with refugee backgrounds. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift  – Norwegian Journal of Geography, 72, 82–96.

7  Lifestyle Migrants and Intercultural Communication… 

131

Eimermann, M., & Kordel, S. (2018). International lifestyle migrant entrepreneurs in two new immigration destinations: Understanding their evolving mix of embeddedness. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 241–252. Eimermann, M., Agnidakis, P., Åkerlund, U., & Woube, A. (2017). Rural place marketing and consumption-driven mobilities in northern Sweden: Challenges and opportunities for community sustainability. The Journal of Rural and Community Development, 12, 114–126. Eimermann, M., Tillberg Mattsson, K., & Carson, D. A. (2019). International tourism entrepreneurs in Swedish peripheries: Compliance and collision with public tourism strategies. Regional Science, Policy and Practice, 11, 479–492. Gentin, S., Chondromatidou, A. M., Pitkänen, K., Dolling, A., Præstholm, S., & Pálsdóttir, A. M. (2018). Defining nature-based integration. Perspectives and practices from the Nordic countries. Helsinki: Finnish Environment Institute. Gentin, S., Pitkänen, K., Chondromatidou, A. M., Præstholm, S., Dolling, A., & Palsdottir, A.  M. (2019). Nature-based integration of immigrants in Europe: A review. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 43, 126379. Guarnaccia, P. J., & Hausmann-Stabile, C. (2016). Acculturation and its discontents: A case for bringing anthropology back into the conversation. Sociology and Anthropology, 4, 114–124. Hofstede, G. (2019). Country comparison tool. http://www.hofstede-insights. com. Accessed 6 Sept 2019. Hofstede, G., & Hofstede, G. J. (2008). Organisationer och kulturer. Malmö: Studentlitteratur. Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment. London: Routledge. Jandt, F. E. (2004). An introduction to intercultural communication – Identities in a global community. London: Sage. Jones, M. L. (2007). Hofstede – Culturally questionable? Oxford Business & Economics Conference. Oxford, UK, 24–26 June, 2007, available at https:// ro.uow.edu.au/commpapers/370/. Accessed 4 Sept 2020. Kordel, S., & Weidinger, T. (2019). Onward (im)mobilities: Conceptual reflections and empirical findings from lifestyle migration research and refugee studies. Die Erde, 150, 1–16. Larsen, B. R. (2011). Drawing back the curtains: The role of domestic space in the social inclusion and exclusion of refugees in rural Denmark. Social Analysis, 55, 142–158. Lewis, R. D. (2000). When cultures collide: Managing successfully across cultures. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Lewis, R.  D. (2016). How to negotiate around the world. http://www. businessinsider.com/how-to-negotiate-around-the-world-2016-8?r= US&IR=T. Accessed 6 Sept 2019.

132 

M. Eimermann et al.

O’Reilly, K. (2007). Intra-European migration and the mobility-enclosure dialectic. Sociology, 41, 277–293. O’Reilly, K. (2012). International migration & social theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. P1 Morgon. (2011, February 14). Swedish radio show, broadcast and downloaded by author. http://www.sr.se Radford, D. (2016). ‘Everyday otherness’ – Intercultural refugee encounters and everyday multiculturalism in a south Australian rural town. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42, 1–18. Redfield, R., Linton, R., & Herskovits, M. (1936). Memorandum on the study of acculturation. American Anthropologist, 38, 149–152. Sandell, K., & Öhman, J. (2010). Educational potentials of encounters with nature: Reflections from a Swedish outdoor perspective. Environmental Education Research, 16, 113–132. Singleton, B. E. (2020). Improvising taskscapes: The rituals of guided NatureBased (Dis)Integration in Sweden. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2020.1775560. Singleton, B. E. (n.d., Submitted). Go to the forest! Exploring the ordering of Swedish Nature-Based Integration. Statistics Sweden. (2019). Born abroad. http://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se. Accessed 5 July 2019. The lifestyle migration hub website. (2020). https://research.tuni.fi/lifestyle. Accessed 14 Feb 2020. Todorov, T. (1996). L’homme dépaysé. Paris: Seuil.

8 Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities for Employment Marco Eimermann and Ingemar Elander

Introduction: Why Do People Work? You may have heard of Dutch historian Rutger Bregman. He featured in American and other TV shows and on social media after his bold performance at the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2019. His one-liners and directness provoked the WEF audience (consisting of billionaires and millionaires). “It feels like I am at a firefighters conference and no one is allowed to speak about water”, said Bregman, arguing that if the superrich of this earth would pay more tax, many more people would live much more equal and sustainable lives. His book “Utopia for realists and how we can get there” (2018) further explains this idea, relating it with

M. Eimermann (*) Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] I. Elander Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_8

133

134 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

debated socio-economic issues like a universal basic income, open borders and a 15-hour workweek. Another of Bregman’s one-liners can indicate the current window of opportunity we may be living in, when he cites Oscar Wilde on Dutch TV (DWDD 2019): “Stronger than a thousand armies, is an idea whose time has come”. Towards the end of 2019, Bregman’s new book presented a new history of human kind, in which he argues that most people are good creatures who help each other in times of need. Warfare as we know it has in fact only occurred relatively recently in human history, during the latest 10,000 years. Before this time, according to Bregman, living as hunters and gatherers we human beings had little personal possessions and few places to call home. We shared more and protected less as if it were “our own”. This all changed when we became masters of agriculture (e.g. in Mesopotamia), so that we made fertile lands render yield to feed ever more mouths. As the need for hunting and gathering diminished, the incentives to construct permanent settlements increased. Over time, stronger leaders created strong armies to protect their own position in society and the physical borders of their territories. Too many leaders were blinded by power and the obsession to stay in power. Such dynamics do not only occur in old and new warfare, they also happen in today’s management and business cultures (Schein 1980; Bregman 2019).

The Myth that Humans Are No Good Bregman (2019) further describes research on so-called primitive cultures like those on Easter Island. He argues against the myth “proven by science” (Ponting 1991; Diamond 2005) that these cultures consisted of two hostile opposite groups of cannibals, slaughtering each other and tearing down trees to transport Moai statues and to cultivate arable land, which instead lead to food shortages. Bregman (2019) has revisited the old studies and found that there was no evidence for the slaughtering and it is more plausible that the (16 million!) trees died out due to a rat plague. The original descriptions by the eighteenth century Dutch and Spanish explorers painted a picture of friendly and hospitable human beings in very good physical and mental shape (Boersema 2015). It is

8  Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

135

hard to find evidence for how such primitive societies would have organised themselves in today’s Western capitalist cultures, but Bregman’s conclusion that most people are good instead of bad seem at least as plausible as the reverse. Inspired by Bregman’s (2019) counterarguments to the myth that human beings are intrinsically no good, we do not, however, shut our eyes for current world-wide tendencies back towards “Retrotopia”, or “the Age of Nostalgia”, a world ruled by Hobbes’ Leviathan “suppressing the inborn cruelty of humans” (Bauman 2017:13). As a cautious reminder, we also bring attention to the classic citation of Karl Marx (1852): “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”. Nonetheless, considering the ongoing “perfect storm” of coinciding crises we should not dismiss the potential windows of opportunity for something better given by this “critical juncture” (see Box 20.1 in Chap. 20). In this broader context, this section consists of five chapters, the first of which relates directly with the above-outlined themes of modernity and tradition, focusing on Sami indigenous livelihoods in northern Sweden. Much has been written about Sami and we agree that it is better to write with indigenous peoples than about them. The Arctic Research Centre at Umeå University (ARCUM) also acknowledges this in collaboration with researchers of Sami backgrounds and the Centre for Sami Research. In Tradition is essential: clashing articulations of Sami identity, past and present, Green and colleagues wonder how Sami and other people’s traditional-ness has been influenced by modernity. They contest the myth that “tradition” and “modernity” are inherently in opposition. Instead, they argue that articulations of indigenous identity are political positions manifesting difference, especially in relation to a majority ethnic population. Their chapter seeks to problematize simplistic notions of northern peoples as backward relics or as bearers of ancient wisdom from another, simpler, better time. The authors highlight the complexity of Sami identity processes, where notions of tradition and modernity are potent concepts articulated by both insiders and outsiders in order to demarcate cultural difference. Leu provides an example of how minority, majority and international populations’ interests can evolve in tourism,

136 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

which illustrates both questions of who works in and who visits the north (Box 8.1). The second chapter is about a socially accountable health and care work force in northern Sweden, which asks who it should contain, who it is for and what it should do. Carson and Jonsson warn that myths like “rural health is about the elderly, and health and care is only about medical care” may be developing. Their chapter therefore also involves questions of how to handle different populations’ health and care needs. From the perspective of modern Swedish inland health care, the authors are concerned about the ways in which the health and care work force in northern Sweden is being developed, and they aim to contribute to a broader discussion about health and care and work force needs in this region. Carson and Jonsson argue for a better balance between population ageing and elderly care and other issues such as child and maternal health services, the wellbeing of Sami and migrant populations and health and care needs arising from rapidly changing socio-economic environments. These first two chapters study current demographic situations in northern Sweden (and beyond), and how various people deal with social and spatial inequality.

Box 8.1  Modern People, Ancient Stereotypes. Using Tourism to Bring Perceptions Up to Date Traian C. Leu The Sami have a long history with reindeer herding to the extent that herding in Sweden is closely associated with Sami identity even though only a minority actually herd. In public discourse and for touristic purposes indigenous modernity is often downplayed while traditional Sami stereotypes are reproduced (Eriksson 2010). Images of reindeer herding Sami using traditional methods and living traditional lifestyles are deep-rooted in the public psyche and such stereotypes are difficult to change. In northern Sweden, tourism has become a tool in the fight against such ignorance. Sami tourist entrepreneurs are using tourism as a platform to inform others about modern Sami life, culture and reindeer herding. Many tourists to northern Sweden have little knowledge regarding the modern Sami lifestyle but are willing to learn about it through contact with local (continued)

8  Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

137

Box 8.1  (continued) guides and experiences (Tuulentie 2006). Interviews with Sami tourist entrepreneurs have shown that the majority consider themselves cultural ambassadors educating Swedish and foreign tourists about their lifestyle. This phenomenon is echoed throughout northern Sweden by various Sami tourist entrepreneurs: “[tourism] becomes a channel through which one can inform [...]—ignorance is the absolute worst enemy”; “What is great [with tourism] is that it shows our everyday, the reality; we don’t live in the tent [...] but we are exactly like a typical Swede” (Leu et al. 2018). Spreading accurate information that does not show a stereotypical view of the Indigenous as archaic and unchanging but modern and living a lifestyle comparable to any other Swede is an important component of modern-­day tourism ventures run by Sami in northern Sweden. Alongside the direct Sami-tourist interaction taking place in-situ, Sami artists often display and sell their handicrafts in exhibitions elsewhere, such as during the Sami week held annually in the city of Umeå or various indigenous fairs in other parts of the world, where they discuss and inform about Sami culture and ways of life to visitors there. Together, these platforms are used to attempt to break down old stereotypes that continue to persist about the Sami in northern Sweden, who are in fact a modern group of people living modern lifestyles.

Intrinsic Motivations to Work Bregman continues his book (2019) by raising a blasting question: why do people work? Is it for extrinsic motivations such as earning money or avoiding a punishment (like bad grades or traffic fines) as the myth of bad people suggests? Viewing humans as selfish and greedy, it makes sense to argue that we need policymakers and managers to provide stimulations like bonuses to bankers, or penalties like decreasing payments to the unemployed or bad grades for pupils to make them work harder for their exams. But this “extrinsic-motivation-prejudice” in which we assume that others are only in it for the money (Morse 2003) leads to situations in which creativity decreases. Instead, people start producing more of what they are paid for: if scientists are paid per article, they write more articles, if surgeons are paid per operation, they perform more operations. In his

138 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

movie “Sorry we missed you” (Box 8.2), producer Ken Loach shows how delivery drivers are ruled by their targets and how care workers are supposed to perform a myriad of tasks such as Bregmans’ (2019:324) example of changing elderly clients’ support stockings in 7 minutes. Bregman (2019) refers to a study among 230,000 employees in 142 countries showing that only 13% of them feel “engaged” with their work

Box 8.2  Sorry We Missed You Marco Eimermann This is this year’s most poignant movie because it is so incredibly true. Ken Loach tells about today’s labour market and how vulnerable a family can be when flexibility is the rule that everyone must obey. (Böhlin 2019—my translation) The movie “Sorry we missed you” tells a bitter story of a family in Newcastle (England) struggling with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The father (Ricky) lost his job, which forced the family to pull out of buying a house, and the mother (Abby) is working under immense pressure as “an agency care-worker in an uncaring world, shuttling endlessly between too-short appointments with the elderly” (Kermode 2019). To pay their debts and to afford the rent of a shabby apartment in a working class neighbourhood, Ricky becomes a so-called self-employed franchise owner. In fact, this is a job as a delivery driver with little basic worker’s rights! The electronic scanner records and dictates Ricky’s whereabouts as he “races to meet deadlines”, while falling asleep behind the wheel. This symbolises how “heartless, soulless machines” have come to decide what is right and what is wrong (ibid.), which puts him under so much stress that he hurts both his kids (spoiler alert). The teenage son is becoming a troublemaker in school, and the younger daughter feels it is all her fault, wanting life to return to the way it was. The movie has an open end: all could eventually turn out well. But who are we kidding? Ricky and Abby face far more challenges than opportunities! This movie illustrates how some people need to work an awful lot under insecure circumstances. At a societal level, the movie inspires us to think about what is changing, who decides what changes should be favoured over others, who benefits from these changes and who loses? Because at the same time, there are also people who can afford to work less and to leave this rat race. It makes you wonder what is going on in Western societies, what is wrong and where this will end.

8  Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

139

(Crabtree 2013). “If you take a moment to realize what this means, you understand how much ambition and energy we are not using, and how many possibilities we have to change things” (Bregman 2019:329, our translation). By stimulating extrinsic motivations, he argues that we undermine each other’s intrinsic motivations at a large scale. Whereas extrinsic motivations are about gaining more money, status and power, intrinsic motivations are based on values like helpfulness, honesty and justice (Common Cause Foundation 2016). This also comes to the fore in the third chapter: Is downshifting easier in the countryside? by Eimermann, Hedberg and Nuga. Based on a focus group session during the 2019 Transition Conference in Umeå, the authors reflect on the participants’ visions regarding individual social and ecologic sustainability transitions. In this initial publication in their research project “Money makes the world go round? Geographical perspectives on downshifting and voluntary simplicity as sustainable ways of life”, they view downshifters as deploying a long-term strategic lifestyle change to reduce work hours and to increase quality of life (Larsson 2015). But what does downshifting mean, and is it only for the “have yachts” while the “have nots” like Ricky and Abby are left behind empty handed? The authors address this issue indirectly, pointing at downshifters’ intentions to connect their work more with personal values, and referring to intrinsic more than extrinsic motivations. Eimermann and colleagues examine the myth that downshifters must migrate, often to rural areas, to practice their desired lifestyles. If we would imagine a society in which motivations for working are more based on intrinsic values, and if for example more people would become downshifters, we can also ask whether more people would be willing to work after the current retirement age. Widell explains how she studies this in her doctoral thesis in Box 8.3. The section thus connects concrete studies of people, communities and societies with broader social perspectives specified at the end of this chapter.

140 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

Box 8.3  The Senior Work Force Bettina Widell In Sweden, the regular work life has for a long time had a natural end point at 65 years when most people retire. However, the last decade or so there have been political discussions and decisions on raising retirement ages to create incentives for people to work later in life. The number of people in Sweden that already extend their work lives beyond 65 years is high in a European perspective (Dingemans et al. 2017). About one fourth of the population in the age group 65–74  years are active in the labour market (Statistics Sweden 2018) and if all self-employed, regardless of activity level, are included, the numbers increase to almost 40% of the senior population. Studies focusing on who keeps on working past retirement age find that this is more common among men, well educated, self-employed and people in good health (Klevmarken 2010) and that it is more common to stay in work life out of opportunity than out of necessity (Anxo et  al. 2019). The most common sectors for senior work life are (1) public administration, education and social care, (2) trade and service industries and (3) farming, fishing and forestry (Statistics Sweden 2018). However, geographical perspectives on this issue have so far been poorly highlighted. In my PhD project I examine geographical differences in the prolonged work life and how this phenomenon is represented specifically among small business owners in rural areas. Since rural populations are on average older than urban populations, it is often framed as a demographic problem, that is a decreasing younger population should support an increasing older population. However, when analysing micro data from four counties in Sweden the results show that senior (65+) populations in sparsely populated areas are a part of the work force to a greater extent than their counterparts in more dense (urban) environments. The data also show that senior entrepreneurship is an explanatory factor as to why rural seniors are, largely, more active in the work life. A general conclusion is that seniors who continue to work past normal retirement age are a highly significant but heterogeneous group. For instance, when focusing specifically on senior, rural entrepreneurs as an example there are significant differences in business performance, levels of activity and the use of place specific resources. I have identified three categories in the qualitative data. The first category is landowners who inherited their business in farming or forestry. Their personal connections to the rural site are immense and they use material as well as social aspects of the rural in the business. The second category continues their pre-retirement business in knowledge-intensive sectors but uses rural values for recreation as a complement to their intense work life. The third category of senior (continued)

8  Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

141

Box 8.3  (continued) small business owners has a side business, often in trade or service, which they after retirement could develop further. They choose their rural location strategically and are often lifestyle migrants and/or lifestyle entrepreneurs (Eimermann, Tomozeiu and Carson, this volume). Overall, the senior working population is hidden in old age dependency quotas that measure the share of working population (20–64 years) in relation to the non-working population (65+ years). However, data show that seniors are more and more active in work life and that we should reinterpret this group as a resource rather than a burden.

Working with Food This chapter on downshifting also shows how the focus group participants ponder about possible socio-economic transitions and sustainable lifestyles based on their intrinsic motivations related with optimal size towns, urban farming and growing their own food to diminish ecological food prints. These thoughts connect with two other chapters, which take novel perspectives on food in (northern) Sweden. In their chapter Stayin’ alive  – new associations in Southern Lapland farming, Dubois and Thompson show that, through differentiated initiatives and new associations in the regional food chain, there is a lively new scene for farmers in the Swedish periphery that enable them to pursue their farm-based lifestyles. The authors explore alternative food networks (AFN) as manifestations of new social and spatial meanings of food through the cases of “Lapland  – a culinary region”, “REKO-ring” and “Inlandsmat”. They argue that local agriculture in community development processes positions producers as spearheads of emerging societal values (e.g. near-­ produced, climate-smart, animal welfare, traceability of food). This links them to growing sections of northern local economies, such as Arctic tourism (Lundmark et al. in this volume). Dubois and Thompson thus demonstrate the vitality of local small-scale farming in northern peripheries (instead of its decline, as the myth at the beginning of their chapter suggests).

142 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

Communities are also the focal point in this section’s final chapter, Exploring food practices as means to promoting entrepreneurship in rural Sweden (Webster & Forsberg). The authors study food practices and Thai women migrants’ entrepreneurship in rural Sweden to nuance the myth that there is only traditional Swedish food in the countryside. Webster and Forsberg highlight local food festivals and baking bread in traditional wood-fired ovens to argue that the implications for not recognizing the wide range of food cultures in rural areas may hinder opportunities for migrant entrepreneurship and integration. Instead, working through food can mediate the differences between people and highlight commonalities shared by people when eating and enjoying each other’s food. Examining food projects, the authors emphasize the link between gender and food in rural social and economic spheres. Finally, their chapter offers a recipe for spicy meatballs that one interviewee kindly shared with us!

Broader Perspectives on Work This chapter briefly puts the coming chapters into broader social scientific perspectives on work-related practices. “Practices” here refer to the way in which people perform their daily life (and thus their agency) within wider societal structures consisting of social norms, expectations, imaginaries or laws, and the ways in which interactions between agency and structures change over time. Sociologic perspectives like Beck’s (2000) “brave new world of work” in which a second modernity is slowly superseding a first modernity view such practices in terms of society beyond modernity. More concretely, societies in the “first” modernity were constructed upon static ideas around post-WWII institutions such as nation states with hard borders, reliable welfare states, nuclear families consisting of one breadwinner, his housewife and their children (Ahlberg 2008) and fulltime work (Schierup et al. 2006). Over the past decades, a “second” and contrasting modernity has been arising, constructed on transitions in static societies’ main principles and institutions (Beck et  al. 2003; Schierup et  al. 2006). These transitions reflect people’s changing attitudes that question post-war taken-for-granted structures like mass political parties anchored in class

8  Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

143

culture, economic security webs interwoven with industrial regulation, life-long careers and full employment (Beck 2000). These transitions also add new perspectives on the role of work in a society characterised by a multiplicity of jobs and engagements rather than one full-time job (Beck 2000). Yet, individual opportunities and local necessities are unevenly distributed. In Sweden, as much as 7.5% of the officially defined workforce is unemployed at the same time as there is an alarming lack of workers in welfare sectors like health care, social care and education (Ehrenberg 2020). The movie “Sorry we missed you” (Box 8.2) illustrates the idea of work as the cornerstone of modern society, as described and critiqued by Swedish sociologist Paulsen (2017). He argues that because of technological developments, the “absolute” need for human labour is now less than ever. However, differences in class, income and other life circumstances are enormous. Burnouts and stress are increasing, occupations are filled with “empty labour”, retirement age becomes higher and at the same time, unemployment is considered a problem in Sweden and elsewhere, often plaguing young people. In the work society, working has become a goal in itself, no matter what we do at work. Box 8.4 provides some historical and geographical perspectives on this. From a political science perspective, one may ask whether a movie like “Sorry we missed you” (Box 8.2) could have been staged in a Nordic country as well. Box 8.4 focuses on individual ways to shift down, voluntary or by force, and on another kind of (forced) downshifting, related to place. Thus, zooming in on the municipalities in the rural north and other sparsely populated areas in Sweden, the concept “downshifting” could also be applied to these bodies as political agents, that is local and regional governments. The book’s final chapter will return to this. Meanwhile, we here present a political perspective that is in line with the rural challenges introduced in this book’s first chapter. Local governments in many small and financially poor municipalities are today under strong pressure due to lack of job opportunities, an ageing population and recently arrived immigrants—who are potential resources in terms of future work-force, but also a challenge for the short- and medium-term social budget. In addition, governments in some richer, urban municipalities are “dumping” migrants in poor municipalities, already under

144 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

Box 8.4  Downshifting Between Retrotopia and Utopia Ingemar Elander Literally, the term “downshifting” gives utopian hints to a youth text by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, indicating a communist society (with a male bias): For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood. While in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible […] to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner […] without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. (Marx and Engels 1932; written in 1845–1846) However, 175 years after the publishing of this text, keeping in mind its explicitly utopian character, and acknowledging later contributions along this line (Gorz 1999; Bregman 2018) these words are still as utopian as they can be, especially when noticing current retrotopian tendencies worldwide (Bauman 2017). Still, “downshifting” indicates a kind of utopia, keeping in mind that it is so far largely a potential reserved for individuals disposing of due to financial and institutional resources. For most people living on earth “downshifting” would rather appear as a cynical play with words; living under circumstances close to the level of subsistence or working under stern pressure, like the family in the picture “Sorry we missed you” and many others in the “gig-economy” (hopping from one temporary job to another). Or, even more troublesome, the beggar in the street, the “irregular” migrant, the “alien” or “nomad” lacking all or most of common citizen rights (Andersson 2015; Anderson 2013; Balibar 2009). In the context of this chapter, I notice a similarity between local government “creative adaptation” strategies proposed by Syssner (2020) and “downshifting governance” boosted by local governments as well as individuals and associations in civil society. This implies radical or partly revised lifestyles among citizens, for example by cultivating their own vegetables, spending more time with relatives, neighbours and friends, as well as read(continued)

8  Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

145

Box 8.4  (continued) ing, walking and doing other everyday activities. Such strategies may be difficult to legitimize in front of residents whose experience is rather one of having to leave one’s place to evade everlasting unemployment. On the other hand, in case voluntary downshifting by urbanized newcomers becomes frequent this might contribute to the development of new forms of “rural” lifestyles on a broader scale. At this point, we should keep in mind that thoughts related to “demographic adaptation” (“downshifting”) of places are not new in the Swedish context. As early as the 1960s, a renowned Swedish geographer called for “an emergency program for depopulation of places that can’t be saved”, implying “a general study of the problems of permanent exodus”, while an economist recommended “a demographically well-balanced evacuation of areas of depopulation” (respectively Torsten Hägerstrand and Åke E.Andersson; cited in Elander 1978:126, and here translated from Swedish). However, in case of downshifting of place, it would probably be combined with a corresponding upshifting to more work by “domestic migrants” who are willing, able or forced to continue their life careers in urban growth areas elsewhere in Sweden. Relating to Marxist and liberal-orientated economic growth theory, capital accumulation and competition are driving mechanisms intrinsic to the system, and adjustable to different cultural, political and geographical contexts, although under shifting labels such as “corporate capitalism”, “consumer capitalism”, “crony capitalism”, “green capitalism”, “surveillance capitalism” and so on (Monbiot 2019; Hickel and Kallis 2019; Zuboff 2019). Notably, even under such labels, voluntary “downshifting” might be possible for some people provided there is a height to climb down from. On the other hand there is also a growing kind of precarious living where you do not know from one day to another whether, where and/or how much you are demanded for selling your work capacity. Whereas most voluntary downshifters are in a situation where they can replicate on traditional welfare amenities in a broad sense, “forced downshifters” or “up-and-­ downshifters” live under more precarious conditions, often lacking private savings for survival during bad times. To summarize, I brought attention to the aspect that downshifting should not only be considered a case of well-off people wanting to slow down and reap some fruits they could not enjoy in case of a never-ending stressful work life. I also noticed that there is conversely a much too common kind of forced “downshifting” or “merry-go-round-shifting” where people lacking long-term security at work—“the precariat”—do not know from day to day whether they can earn their living or not (Standing 2016). In addition, I (continued)

146 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

Box 8.4  (continued) highlighted the precarious situation of many small rural areas and governments in the north and other parts of Sweden where many residents can find neither jobs, nor the social and cultural services available to people living in most urban areas of the country. Whether residents and governments in these areas are able to develop some kind of alternative, “demographic adaptation” (“creative downshifting of place”) remains to be seen. Probably, there will be substantial variations between places. In the end, spatial inequalities are always, in one way or another, manifestations of social and economic inequalities in society. And then suddenly the corona pandemic turned everything upside-down, as I will address in Box 20.1.

pressure due to increasing social commitments (SvT 2020). Huge differences in attitude between municipalities thus reflect a new political landscape with a multitude of political coalitions many of which do not replicate national policy coalitions and practices. In contrast to a previous period when many cities and smaller municipalities were led by “growth coalitions” competing for jobs (Elander 2002), the rural areas in north and other parts of Sweden are now facing contraction of jobs and financial means to take full responsibility for an elderly population and influx of immigrants not yet integrated in terms of language, education and work. As bluntly stated by the Head of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (i.e. a crucial actor during the post-war welfare state expansion): We don’t have a regional policy in Sweden. The tax-base is eroding in many smaller municipalities, people are leaving and what remain are empty houses. People who stay feel that local developments go backwards. Then, municipal taxes are raised to meet all welfare state assignments. It becomes a negative spiral. (Dagens Nyheter 2020, our translation)

There is a growing insight among local politicians and officials that routinely proclaimed growth strategies should be revised towards becoming “adaptive” rather than spreading the illusion of a sudden shift to a

8  Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

147

local growth economy. They see the need for “a policy that describes, in a coherent manner, the efforts that are being made to adapt the municipality to the new conditions that a shrinking economy and a reduced population entail” (Syssner 2020). Overall, instead of seeing areas as either poor or rich, either rural or urban, the chapters in this section show that it is more reasonable to characterise places as part of a socio-economic continuum. This entails differences in population size and density, infrastructure, location, proximity to the built-up area, quality and type of amenities, spheres of influence, cultural distinction and regional identities (Champion and Hugo 2004; Hedlund 2016). In other words, this highlights the huge social and economic differences between individuals and deepening development cleavages between urban and rural places, including radically different conditions for work. The authors in this section provide northern views on the question whether the time has come to change the meanings of employment.

References Ahlberg, J. (2008). Efter kärnfamiljen – Familjepraktiker efter skilsmässa. Doctoral thesis, Örebro Studies in Sociology 11. Örebro University, Örebro. Anderson, B. (2013). Us & Them? The dangerous politics of immigration control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Andersson, R. (2015). Hardwiring the frontier? The politics of security technology in ‘Europe’s fight against illegal migration. Security Dialogue, 47, 22–39. Anxo, D., Ericson, T., & Herbert, A. (2019). Beyond retirement: Who stays at work after the standard age of retirement? International Journal of Manpower, 40, 917–938. Balibar, E. (2009). Europe as borderland. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 27, 190–215. Bauman, Z. (2017). Retrotopia. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U. (2000). The brave new world of work. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U., Bonss, W., & Lau, C. (2003). The theory of reflexive modernization: Problematic, hypotheses and research programme. Theory, Culture & Society, 20, 1–33.

148 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

Boersema, J.  J. (2015). The survival of Easter Island. Dwindling resources and cultural resilience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Böhlin, L. (2019). Så bra var filmåret 2019. Västerbottens Kuriren. www.vk.se. Accessed 28 Jan 2020. Bregman, R. (2018). Utopia for realists  – And how we can get there. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. Bregman, R. (2019). De meeste mensen deugen. Amsterdam: De correspondent. Champion, T., & Hugo, G. (2004). Introduction: Moving beyond the urban-­ rural dichotomy. In T. Champion & G. Hugo (Eds.), New forms of urbanization. Beyond the urban–rural dichotomy (pp. 3–24). Aldershot: Ashgate. Common Cause Foundation. (2016). Perceptions matter – The common cause UK values survey. https://valuesandframes.org/values-in-action/survey. Accessed 30 Jan 2020. Crabtree, S. (2013, October 8). Worldwide, 13% of employees are engaged at work. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employeesengaged-work.aspx. Accessed 30 Jan 2020. Dagens Nyheter. (2020, February 11). LO-basen om situationen i Bjuv: “Det är inte jobben, det är bygden” [Head of The Swedish Trade Union Confederation on the situation in Bjuv: “It’s not the jobs, it’s the place], p. 8. Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse, how societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Viking Penguin. Dingemans, E., Henkens, K., & Van Solinge, H. (2017). Working retirees in Europe: Individual and societal determinants. Work, Employment and Society, 31, 972–991. DWDD [De Wereld Draait Door]. (2019, January 31). Rutger Bregman zorgt voor ophef op World Economic Forum [Rutger Bregman is causing a stir at the World Economic Forum]. https://dewerelddraaitdoor.bnnvara.nl/ media/682308. Accessed 24 Apr 2020. Ehrenberg, J. (2020, February 21). Det normala: massarbetslöshet. Dagens ETC, p. 2. Elander, I. (1978). Det nödvändiga och det önskvärda. En studie av socialdemokratisk ideologi och regionalpolitik 1940–72 [The necessary and the desirable. A study of Social Democratic ideology and regional policy] Lund: Arkiv för studier i arbetarrörelsens historia. Elander, I. (2002). Partnerships and urban governance. International Social Science Journal, 54, 191–204.

8  Who Works in the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

149

Eriksson, M. (2010). (Re)producing a periphery: Popular representations of the Swedish north. Doctoral thesis, Acta Regiae Societatis Skytteanae 66. Umeå University, Umeå. Gorz, A. (1999). Reclaiming work: Beyond the wage-based society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hedlund, M. (2016). Mapping the socioeconomic landscape of rural Sweden: Towards a typology of rural areas. Regional Studies, 50, 460–473. Hickel, J., & Kallis, G. (2019). Is green growth possible? New political economy (ahead of print). https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964. Kermode, M. (2019, November 3). Sorry we missed you review, a gruelling stint in the gig economy. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/ nov/03/sorry-we-missed-you-review-ken-loach. Accessed 28 Jan 2020. Klevmarken, A. (2010). Vem arbetar efter 65 års ålder? En statistisk analys. (Statens offentliga utredningar, SOU 2010:85). Stockholm: Fritze. Larsson, J. (2015). Downshifting. In D. T. Cook & J. M. Ryan (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of consumption and consumer studies (pp.  248–250). Chichester: John Wiley. Leu, T.  C., Eriksson, M., & Müller, D.  K. (2018). More than just a job: Exploring the meanings of tourism work among indigenous Sámi tourist entrepreneurs. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 26, 1468–1482. Marx, K. (1852). The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. https://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm. Accessed 24 Apr 2020. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1932; written 1845–1846). Critique of the German Ideology. Marx/Engels Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org. Accessed 17 Feb 2020. Monbiot, G. (2019, April 25). The problem is capitalism. The Guardian. Morse, G. (2003, January). Why we misread motives. Harvard Business Review. Paulsen, R. (2017). Arbetssamhället  – hur arbetet överlevde teknologin. Stockholm: Atlas. Ponting, C. (1991). A green history of the world. London: Penguin books. Schein, E. H. (1980). Organizational psychology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Schierup, C.-U., Hansen, P., & Castles, S. (2006). Migration, citizenship, and the European welfare state. Oxford: University Press. Standing, G. (2016). The precariat: The new dangerous class (3rd ed.). London/ New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Statistics Sweden. (2018). Statistikdatabasen. Registerbaserad arbetsmark-­ nadsstatistik (RAMS).

150 

M. Eimermann and I. Elander

SvT [Television Sweden]. (2020, January 15). Kommuner slår larm hos civilministern om social dumping [Local governments alarm about social dumping to the Minister of Civil Affairs]. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/ manga-kommuner-larmar-om-social-dumpning. Accessed 9 Mar 2020. Syssner, J. (2020). Pathways to demographic adaptation. Perspectives on policy and planning in depopulating areas in northern Europe. http://www.springer.com/ gp/book/9783030340452. Accessed 21 Feb 2020. Tuulentie, S. (2006). The dialectic of identities in the field of tourism. The discourses of the indigenous Sami in defining their own and the tourists’ identities. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 6, 25–36. Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism. London: Profile Books.

9 Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity, Past and Present Carina Green, Benedict E. Singleton, and Firouz Gaini

The Myth Integral to framings of ‘traditional’—often indigenous—peoples around the world is a particular temporal placing. Such groups are typical juxtaposed with ‘modernity’. While, such framings have long formed a part of cultural violence, justifying land-grabs and other abuses, they may also be made with positive intent. For example narratives of the ‘noble savage’ may characterize indigenous or traditional groups as eco-friendly, natural conservationists. (Redford 1990; Conklin 1997; Krech 1999). This has certainly been the case for the Sami, the indigenous peoples of Fennoscandia

C. Green (*) Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] B. E. Singleton University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden F. Gaini University of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_9

151

152 

C. Green et al.

and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. By turns in their history, Sami have been characterized as backward, at others they have been seen as the bearers of important Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of northern environments. It is not however as simple as saying that indigenous and traditional groups are simply fixed in the past. Often their contemporary practices are assessed over the extent that their ‘traditional-ness’ has been influenced by modernity. They may be portrayed as living in harmony with nature, resisting globalized capitalistic corruption and holding on to age-­ old ways of relating to the world around them. As such, they may be depicted as victims of modernity, the guardians of morality in an immoral time. Sometimes indigenous peoples are castigated for becoming “too modern”, having lost the authentic source of their wisdom through changes in their ways of life (cf. van Ginkel 2004). Such arguments are used to justify efforts to curtail local practices (see Box 9.2). At still other times, the ‘backwardness’ of such people may be used as justification for their continued oppression and as a way of occluding the iniquitous contexts they find themselves in vis-à-vis ‘modern society’ (cf. Douglas 2004). Such processes are not however always one-way. Sometimes, indigenous peoples, as well as other minority groups, play into the myth of separation from modernity. In doing this, they use stereotypical rhetoric and imagery when presenting themselves and their ethnicity. This has been called ‘counter-exoticization’ and ‘self-exoticization’ where a group uses (positive) exotic characteristics and ‘self-idealization’ to portray themselves. “Self-exoticization, in its counter-exoticizing capacity, can be understood as a ‘weapon of the weak’”—a way to reaffirm their “cultural distinctiveness” (Bhattacharya 2016: 133). The ‘self-exoticizing’ of Sami culture and tradition can also form a very powerful political tool in negotiations on sovereignty and control. As such, performing Sami-ness authentically is a double-edged sword that can imply uniqueness and support claims to immemorial rights, but may also lead to the reproduction of negative stereotypical images (Green 2009: 215). We want to contest the myth that ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ are inherently in opposition. Instead we argue that articulations of indigenous identity are political positions manifesting “difference” in relation to other groups, especially in relation to a majority ethnic population (Green 2009: 162). Indigeneity is thus not to be understood as:

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

153

natural or inevitable, but neither is it simply invented, adopted, or imposed. It is, rather, a positioning which draws upon historically sedimented practices, landscapes, and repertoires of meaning, and emerges through particular patterns of engagement and struggle. (Li 2000: 151)

This chapter and accompanying vignettes seek to problematize simplistic notions of northern peoples as backward relics or, more charitably, as bearers of ancient wisdom from another, simpler, better time. To do this, we highlight the complexity of Sami identity processes, where notions of tradition and modernity are potent concepts used and articulated by both insiders and outsiders in order to demarcate cultural difference. Globalization and climate change are bringing transformation and focusing attention on new northern resource frontiers (Ray and Maier 2017). As such, discussions of the authenticity of tradition are likely to remain prominent. This myth pertains to many indigenous peoples of the north, including Sami, linking to long-standing conceptual structures in Western thought. These structures classify peoples and cultures on a cultural evolutionary time-scale and continuously re-define notions of the exotic but elusive Other. The effect of this is to deny “cosmopolitan identities and [ignore] the emergent forms of cultural expression … that blend different styles and cultural influences, utilize technologies of communication, and celebrate cosmopolitanism and cultural diversity” (Nuttall 2010: 153).

Introduction Sami are regarded as the indigenous people of Fennoscandia and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Within this area, a band of land stretching from northern Norway to Russia is considered the core area of Sami people, called Sápmi in the north Sami language. Sami are most commonly divided into three main linguistic groups (East, North and South), where each group comprises different dialects. In Sweden, North and South

154 

C. Green et al.

Sami dialects are predominant, with North Sami by far the largest language group. It is difficult to know the exact number of Sami today, mainly due to the fact that ethnic belonging questions are not commonly part of censuses, and many individuals with ‘mixed’ ethnic backgrounds will move in and out of their Sami identity, depending on context and life situation. Nevertheless, rough estimates suggest there are over 80,000 Sami people in total. About 50,000 of these live in Norway, 20,000 in Sweden, 8000 in Finland and 2000 in Russia (Samer.se 2019) Sami, like many other indigenous peoples around the world, are involved in a cultural revival process (cf. Box 9.1). This is a partly political development aiming to increase self-determination and responsibility for the management of traditional land and water. Moreover, like so many indigenous peoples, they are constantly negotiating their position as a distinct ethnic group in relation to the majority population. Indeed, for much of modern history, Swedish Sami identities have been linked to state structures that associate place-based lifestyles with particular ethnicities. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Swedish state progressively started to give exclusive rights to those engaged in full-time nomadism at the expense of other Sami occupations (such as fishing, farming or most often a combination of different sources of income) (Mörkenstam 1999, 2002; Lantto 2000). This was a reaction to growing competition over resources between farmers and reindeer herders (Beach 1981: 306–307; Mörkenstam 1999, 2002). By keeping the two activities separate, legislators hoped to reduce the number of confrontations between the two groups. This action was underpinned by the Social Darwinism of the time that encouraged the separation of distinct peoples characterized by cultural practices (Lundmark 1998, 2002). The fact that a strong emphasis on full-scale nomadic herding as the only rightful Sami enterprise effectively renders non-reindeer herding Sami as non-Sami or at least “invisible” and subject to assimilation. This process had the effect of occluding the diversity of lifestyle practices of Sami people in the north throughout history (Mörkenstam 2005). These categorizations resonate to this day with the division of reindeer herding and non-reindeer herding lifestyles continuing to be a source of discussion within the Swedish Sami community. It also has had material effects: generally, knowledge of Sami language and cultural practices is

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

155

greater among reindeer herding families. This is because non-herding Sami were the focus of more pervasive assimilation policies. However, today, Sami cultural revival is very much linked to the broader global indigenous movement, and as a people, they are very active in international indigenous fora, such as the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. These international discourses on indigeneity have played a role in creating a more inclusive sense of Samihood based on language, cultural heritage and tradition (Sillanpää 2002, Minde 2003). A feature of the international indigenous arena is an emphasis upon indigenous people’s perceived closeness to nature and their specific non-­ Western ecological knowledge. Concurrently, in global environmental fora (such as the Intergovernmental Platform on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Intergovernmental SciencePolicy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of indigenous peoples is gaining prominence; increasingly seen as essential to curbing biodiversity loss and halting climate change (cf. Thaman et al. 2013). However important it is to include indigenous voices in nature conservation discussions, it is remarkable how TEK is often talked about as a homogenous knowledge system, presumably differing fundamentally from the scientific knowledge of majority populations and state agencies. So while the international indigenous movement gives leverage to rights-claims concerning ownership and management of traditional land and water, it can be argued that it also to some extent reinforces simplified images of indigenous peoples as ‘nature’s children’—unchanging and fixed in time. For decades, the Sami community in the Nordic countries has collectively been active in the international indigenous movement. International trends, concepts and developments have thus quickly and easily trickled down to the national and local levels. Ideas and words from the international indigenous community have many times strengthened Sami political endeavours and helped formulate strategies and specific struggles. They have also reinforced a tendency to use rhetoric that emphasize Sami connectedness to nature, Sami use of TEK and the authenticity of ‘traditional’ Sami culture. As such, it is often a delicate and difficult endeavour

156 

C. Green et al.

to articulate Sami-specific cultural images, knowledge and practices without falling into the stereotypical a-historical, eco-friendly version of being indigenous.

L aponia World Heritage Site: Negotiating Authentic Traditional Ecological Knowledge UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention is influential; many of the natural and cultural sites listed relate to indigenous peoples in some way. In the north of Sweden, the world heritage site “Laponia” obtained its status in 1996 (Laponia.nu 2019). As Laponia is situated on traditional Sami land, and the Sami reindeer herding culture of the area forms part of the justification for its world heritage status, the local Sami community was from the beginning committed to taking on a leading role in management of the site. The years leading up to the current management structure over Laponia serve as an illustrative example of how perceptions of tradition versus modernity relate to Sami TEK and ideas of cultural authenticity. The institution of Laponia’s world heritage status triggered a lengthy (and at times heated) discussion concerning the position of local Sami in the management structure (Green 2009, 2014). Inspired by the success of other indigenous peoples, local Sami representatives claimed that they had the right to take a leading role in the management of the world heritage site based on their status as indigenous peoples. They emphasized that they had used their TEK to form and manage the area for thousands of years and that the continued integrity of the landscape depended on their strong role in a future management organization. Prior to this, the area had been under Swedish government jurisdiction, comprising some of the largest and oldest national parks and nature reserves in the country. This area was used by local Sami for herding, hunting and fishing. As far as management was concerned, Sami had only been involved in irregular consultations with authorities at best. The local municipalities and the state authorities involved (the regional county administrative board and the Swedish Environmental Protection

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

157

Box 9.1  ‘The sled has departed’. The City as Battlefield for Greenlandic Cultural Identities Firouz Gaini In present-day Greenland, people put a lot of effort into breaking free from two sets of entrenched images of their culture, which are interrelated: the scene of the free Inuit hunters living in harmony with nature, and the scene of the displaced and impoverished people in colonial cities. In this endeavour, young people reinterpret the Greenlandic/Danish (‘Insider/ Outsider’) opposition in dominant political and cultural discourses and reflect on the role of history in their future images: how to articulate and construct Greenlandic identity today? How to reinvent ‘traditional’ culture in a quest for a strong future-oriented identity matching national ambitions? The city, with the capital of Nuuk (18,000 inhabitants) iconic, serves as an intersection, connecting ‘authentic’ (rural) Greenland, ‘colonial’ (Danish) Greenland and ‘global’ (rest of the world) Greenland. In the context of the city, discussions about ‘authentic’ culture, for instance regarding language (fluency in Danish or Greenlandic or both languages), race/ethnicity (Inuit, Danish or ‘mixed’ Greenlandic) and lifestyle (for instance, hunting and fishing experience and formal education and training), become a battlefield of Greenlandic and global identities. Nuuk is an Arctic “micropolis” full of contrasts (Rygaard 2010), which never really found its “identity as small city” (Chemnitz 2013: 7). Nuuk’s concrete apartment blocks erected in the 1960s echo Danish plans to transform Greenland through speedy ‘modernization’: by moving people from remote villages to the city and to offer modern housing. ‘Block P’ (the largest residential complex in the Kingdom of Denmark for many years) was built in 1965 and demolished in 2012. Block P was the most monstrous of these buildings, housing more than 500 residents, and a strong symbol of what you could describe as the painful passage from the previously mentioned ‘scene one’ to ‘scene two’. Nevertheless, it is a part of the history of Nuuk and Greenland, and the bulldozing of colonial ‘monuments’ has led to the creation of homes mirroring traditional Greenlandic architecture (Figs. 9.1 and 9.2). “There is no way back, the sled has departed”, said the priest and politician Jonathan Motzfeldt (1938–2010), thus, he adds categorically, “we must forget the old dream about the kayak” (cited in Kentorp 2002: 3). Motzfeldt wanted to fend off the image of the Inuit as victim-heroes lost in a mythic past. In the city, where “the white man’s culture reigned” (Dahl 2010: 132), and where the “hunter” was made redundant, the kayak was reduced to tourist memorabilia and a cultural symbol. M. Kleist from the popular rock band Chilly Friday said in an interview: “So far, many people have hidden behind the excuse that the Danes destroyed our hunting culture. That became an excuse for drinking and (continued)

158 

C. Green et al.

Box 9.1  (continued)

Fig. 9.1  Nuuk apartment blocks. (Photos: Firouz Gaini) wallowing in self-pity, but in modern Greenland, we have to move on. Greenlandic youth wish to live a proud and good life instead of being pathetic” (cited in Pedersen 2008: 95). The truism of the lack of Arctic hunting grounds in the urban area does not erase present-day Greenlanders urge to go hunting. A boy’s first killing is still “a cornerstone in the life of the family” (Sejersen 2004: 77) and the culture “lives on through recreational hunters” (Greenland Today 2013). Greenlanders do not want to renounce the pleasure of hunting in pursuit of imagined, Danish-modelled modernization, as they seek to (re)articulate their Inuit traditions on own terms. There are “quite a few us”, says Pia Arke, a female artist from Greenland, “who belong neither in the west, nor in the marginal rest” (cited in Meredith 2013). As a voice of the ethnically mixed (Inuit/Danish) population betwixt the main cultural groups, she asserts: “we have to create a place for ourselves” (ibid.). Others, like Bolatta, who is also part of the arts scene, stress that it is necessary to uphold “our culture” because “everything is melting together around us” (cited in Høegh and Havsteen-Mikkelsen 2006. 48). Trying to break up the tautology of the colonial discourse, Greenlanders also call for a reassessment of the captivating image of the Inuit as the ‘lucky’ dependents of Danish colonial power: “We have always been taught we were one of the best colonies in (continued)

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

159

Box 9.1  (continued)

Fig. 9.2  Nuuk apartment blocks. (Photos: Firouz Gaini) the world. No slavery, no killings”, says the anthropologist Aviâda Egede Lynge, and, she adds sarcastically, “we learned how to be Danish and we learned how to be thankful” (cited in Bujis 2016: 539). What we have seen in this vignette is that tradition is rekindled through dynamic conversations and articulations in Nuuk, and that young people draw new complex constellations of rural/urban, tradition/modern and Greenlandic/Danish identities.

Agency) initially opposed management of Laponia led by local Sami and based on Sami TEK. The fact that the local Sami reindeer herders have specific environmental knowledge deriving from their occupation was not controversial as such. However, claims that this knowledge could constitute a basis for influence on the management of the area seemed both unnecessary and legally difficult to implement too many non-­ Sami actors. Moreover, Sami claims emphasizing the importance of Sami TEK, and rights based on indigeneity were sometimes questioned as “fabricated”

160 

C. Green et al.

and “exaggerated” (Green 2009: 153). Surely, Sami TEK and specific procedures were not that different from the knowledge and practice held by other non-Sami locals or by the authorities? The words of a representative from the regional county administrative board illustrate this position: They [the local Sami representatives] claim that they want to introduce a kind of public deliberation where the general public would have chance to communicate with the Laponian management. They say that this is a specific Sami way of letting everybody be heard and informed. Well… this is not new to us! We simply call it an ordinary meeting and there is nothing typically Sami about it! (From fieldwork notes)

In order to improve their negotiating position, local Sami drew on international discursive resources, highlighting the fact that other indigenous peoples had important roles in different co-management processes and that their TEK contributed significantly to the management of these areas. By semantically moving towards the international indigeneity discourse, they brought Sami culture and TEK into line with established notions of indigenous peoples as more or less a homogenous group with similar worldviews and relations to their environments. This notion fits well into UNESCO’s conception of indigenous peoples (see, e.g. Nakashima et  al. 2012). It also fits well with the belief of the general public, including many visitors to the area. This might be illustrated by a tourist from central Europe that in a conversation with the lead author compared Sami people with “North American Indians” and declared that all indigenous peoples are close to nature in ways that Europeans are not—“they live with nature, not against it” (Green 2009: 178). In order to be considered a distinct actor group, with rights and interests equal to other actor groups (such as the county administration or the municipality), the local Sami articulated their relative ‘otherness’ in relation to the Swedish authorities. Rhetorically bringing forward their connection to cultural traditions, their specific TEK and their indigenous identity would prove effective in negotiations with the non-Sami counterparts in the process, but was unquestionably at times a difficult framework to negotiate within. Sami representatives had among themselves lively discussions on how to deal with the potential power that lies within

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

161

the discourse of traditionalism (Green 2009: 170). In the words of one of the Sami negotiators over the management process: We want to point to our historical connection to the land and also to convey that we, as an indigenous people, according to international law have the right to be influential in, or even responsible for, the management of Laponia. But it is difficult sometimes to do that without falling into the “noble savage-trap” and appear only as a traditional “people of nature”. But sometimes when we write or talk about this we will make sure to throw in a sentence here and there about our intentions of keeping motorized reindeer herding to a minimum. This is mainly to calm down those who think we are too modern already and are worried that contemporary forms of reindeer herding will threaten the authenticity of the world heritage status. There is no harm in reassuring others that the local Sami reindeer herders have a strong environmental ethos.

And then to put the traditional  – modern spectra into perspective he added: Besides, a typically traditional way of herding, like using skis instead of snowmobiles, could just as well be interpreted as a “modern” way of going about things. It is better for the environment and can be seen as progressive! (From fieldwork notes)

During the process, the trick was to stand out as different enough to be trustworthy when claiming to have a specific knowledge system and specific cultural practices that differed from those of the majority society. However, this could not be done in such a way that might disqualify local Sami from taking charge of the management of the world heritage area, for example, by appearing insufficiently skilled in bureaucratic structures or unaware of national environmental regulations and goals (Green 2009). The management proposal plan that the local Sami produced during the negotiation phase (called Mijá Ednam—Our Land) is an example of how Sami cultural distinctiveness and right to self-determination are expressed with words and in a format that is recognized by the other actors as professional and competent. In other words, the plan is written in what can be recognized as “bureaucratic” Swedish and follows a structure that is typical for any kind of official document, but the message

162 

C. Green et al.

spells out that there are clear historical and ontological differences between Swedish and Sami natural and cultural management (Green 2009: 158–159). For instance, the Mijá Ednam plan states that: Traditionally, the Sami, like many other indigenous peoples, perceived the Earth animate and alive. It has been self-evident that the natural resources should be used – but not exhausted. (Mijá ednam 2000: 32) To develop specific environmental policy programs is not a traditional Sami way dealing with issues concerning sustainable use of nature and natural resources. (Mijá ednam 2000: 35) As pointed out before, the Sami trades assume a holistic view of nature, culture, and sustenance. The traditional trades, reindeer herding, hunting, and fishing, constitute an inseparable whole. (Mijá ednam 2000: 37)

In the end, local Sami were successful in creating space for themselves and took on a leading role in the management organization of Laponia. Through strategic manoeuvring in negotiations where they managed to both comply with the view that they were indeed closer to nature and more traditional because of their indigeneity, and simultaneously present themselves as being tuned in to modern conservation methods and practices. The management plan stipulates that traditional Sami knowledge together with modern science and new technology should develop the management of the area over time (Tjuotjudusplána [Management plan] n.d.). Nevertheless, when a new Laponia management organization— Laponia-tjuottjudus—was up and running, an interesting conversation unfolded around when specific Sami traditional practices and management strategies were to be articulated as part of the new management regime. It often proved challenging for Sami involved to pinpoint and explicitly present just exactly how Sami practices and strategies differed from those of the majority society. In practice “Sami” and “Swedish” ways seemed entangled and overlapping, with the validity of Sami TEK often questioned due to its similarities to what could be characterized as scientific knowledge or Western knowledge (Green and Hilding-Rydevik n.d., forthcoming).

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

163

The process of demarcating Sami and ‘Swedish’/‘Western’ practices and knowledge often involves claims of ‘authenticity’—with tradition juxtaposed with modernity. Sami customs are often criticized as somehow invented, or ‘tainted’ if they are perceived to resemble Swedish or Western values or practices too much. In other words, there is a tendency to only take seriously Sami TEK and allow it to influence environmental policies and practices if it can be decisively framed as authentic and pure in the sense that it can be clearly separated from non-Sami practices. What is somewhat contradictory is that distinctively Sami TEK appears to be most acceptable and understandable when it echoes the language of general international pan-indigenous ‘Mother Earth’-discourse. Articulating traditional customs and ecological knowledge thus seem dependant on a very recent phenomenon—that of international cooperation and pan-indigenous rhetoric—in order for it to be taken seriously. The distinctiveness of Sami culture and knowledge thus becomes subject of contestation both within and outside Sami communities. The example of Laponia World Heritage Site illustrates both the complexity of articulating TEK discourses and their potential contestation. Perceptions of the innate value of traditional authenticity are often juxtaposed with ideas of a-historical Western modernity in a way that risks reproducing stereotypical notions of indigenous peoples, but that also holds a promise of increased self-determination and decolonizing developments.

Discussion There are many different thoughts on Sami culture and what constitutes ‘real’ Sami-ness. Also in various international fora and in tourist marketing, the stereotypical image of the eco-friendly, low-tech, traditionally dressed Sami is the most common representation (e.g. Lapland n.d.). In short, Sami people are commonly displayed with those particular symbols, characteristics and material commodities that can easily be recognized as exotic and thereby create a relative difference in relation to normative, “mainstream” Swedish society (Viken and Müller 2017).

164 

C. Green et al.

The multifaceted ways that Sami traditions and TEK are debated, articulated and contested in the case of Laponia provide just one example of how complex the subject of tradition is when applied to concrete cases where identity, rights issues and reconstruction of power relations are at stake. In this regard, we argue that usages of TEK and particular articulations of tradition are acts of positioning in relation to other societal groups. In the case of indigenous peoples, this often means in relation to the majority society or dominant ethnic group. As such, the performance of tradition must always be considered part of a relational situation, where the nature of the presentation and articulation of certain traditions is a result of a relation between at least two parties—a relation that often bears traits of colonial memories and narratives (Hall 1996; Li 2000; Clifford 2001). The negotiations between, and use of, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ necessarily draw on particular memories of the past as part of enacting visions of the future and explanations of the present—those who draw upon the past are actually seeking to affect the present and push society towards a particular vision of the future (Sejersen 2004). Whilst a resource, “tradition” may also prove a double-edged sword, with “authenticity” becoming a means to expel or disinherit those judged insufficiently traditional (e.g. Chiaravalloti 2019). Such essentialism may thus become part of on-going cultural violence discursively creating the conditions for structural and physical violence oppressing and restricting marginal communities and groups (cf. Maddison 2013). As such, examinations of tradition should not be about exploring whether particular practices are more or less authentic. Rather, it requires an understanding of the political contexts within which tradition is performed. The concepts of tradition and modernity are constructed notions; ideas that help order the world and categorize people. This is part of a long-lived conceptual “Western” framework that classifies societies and cultural practices on the axes of both Beyond (geographically distant and exotic) and Before (temporally distant) (Pearce 1995: 350) where Otherness is defined in relation to a sliding scale of increased difference from the majority society. Along with this difference also comes the idea of authenticity. That which is deemed ‘authentic’ is usually considered in opposition to dominant global and national cultural norms. As such, the demarcation of authenticity, that is, which particular articulations of

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

165

culture, history and lifestyle are valid, is an inherently political process. This political character resonates both within and outside of traditional societies. Thus defining authenticity could imply the values of elite groups being conflated with those of wider culture (cf. Gaard 2001) or a resource for rejuvenating marginal communities (cf. van Ginkel 2004). Likewise, communities may draw upon authenticity demarcations as opportunities for networking and solidarity beyond the traditional community itself (cf. Helander-Renvall 2010; Sakakibara 2017). This allows so-called traditional peoples to “construct empowering notions of cultural longevity and agency” (Cannady 2014: 89). The process of demarcating authenticity effectively essentializes diverse histories and cultures of disparate groups of people and places. Indeed, this is often done strategically by those involved in a conflict (cf. Gaard 2001). Through such conflict, particular articulations become ‘fixed’ (cf. Helander-Renvall 2010: 184), for example, that which is considered older or more exotic in comparison to wider values may well be considered more authentic. ‘Fixing’ a particular articulation may create a way for it to be understood/translated by cultural outsiders (as is the case with ‘Traditional Ecological Knowledge’), but it also has a tendency to effectively remove ‘tradition’ from time. Ironically, northern peoples, many of whose lifestyles have always been characterized by flexibility, opportunism and adaptation, become fixed as a set of practices using particular technologies according to particular rules as part of a particular image (Kalland and Sejersen 2005). There are several potential consequences of this: firstly, it misses that much human practice has an inherent future-­ orientation. People act now under the assumption there will be a tomorrow (Sejersen 2004). Secondly, the policing of “authenticity” may become a way of perpetuating imperialist oppression and/or local power inequities (Gaard 2001). Thus, populations that are perceived of as ‘traditional’ find their right to use (often safer or more efficient) modern technology criticized as inauthentic. Battles in the present over static visions of a culture and its history become conflicts about what sort of futures are possible. At such times it is easy for often-marginalized groups to be robbed of their right to choose what exactly their culture is for them (cf. Kalland 2009: 113).

166 

C. Green et al.

It is a well-documented fact among historians and anthropologists that such “invention of tradition” is not simply a habit of indigenous peoples or other marginalized groups (Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983; Linnekin 1983; Handler 1984; Hanson 1991; Desai 1993). Indeed, this is what nationalistic ideologies on all levels revolve around. However, for indigenous peoples, tradition seems to be both a justified political tool to claim independence and sovereignty, and part of a colonizing structure that works to cement and re-produce a prejudiced image of the ‘ecological savage’, dressed in a contemporary language. Tradition and modernity are not a choice between which Sami individuals must choose. Cultures are dynamic, and Sami find themselves involved in local and domestic conflicts where aspects of their distinct cultural features are articulated, for many reasons and in multiple political arenas. Sami will continue to draw upon their cultural richness. However, whether this be in the form of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, livelihood methods or picturesque experiences for tourists, it will remain integrally political and complicated in its consequences.

Box 9.2  “It’s Tradition, Jim, But Not As We Know It.”—The complicated cultures of Faroese Pilot Whaling Benedict E. Singleton. I normally say that there are two grindadráps in the Faroe Islands. There’s [the academic one], and then there is the real one. Faroese Pilot Whaler. Discussions of ‘tradition’, ‘modernity’ and ‘authenticity’ are features of conflicts over whaling. Faroese pilot whaling, grindadráp, an opportunistic, ad hoc, community-based, drive-style hunt is no exception; lines are drawn about permissible levels of moral and cultural relativism (Lien 2004). Grindadráp involves a flotilla of small boats driving pods of pilot whales to the shoreline, with the meat distributed to participants and local residents (see Fielding et al. 2015 for a description). Whaling is a practice with a long history in the Faroe Islands, although practice has changed and continues to change (Joensen 2009). Over the past 30 years grindadráp has become a site of considerable conflict with anti-whaling protestors. Anti-whalers employ rhetoric around (continued)

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

167

Box 9.2  (continued) tradition and authenticity in particular ways. Whaling is considered be a ‘barbaric’ practice, a throwback to a more savage time. At the same, “nontraditional” aspects of grindadráp are highlighted, such as pointing to the small amounts of meat that do enter the capitalist market (e.g. Vermeulen 2014). Finally, as modern Europeans, such subsistence hunting is framed as unnecessary (Singleton 2016: 37). This echoes rhetoric towards other forms of whaling (Barsh 2001). By contrast, to Faroese pro-whaling advocates, whaling forms part of a particularly Faroese modernity, framed as part of cultural and political sovereignty (Singleton 2016). The government of the Faroe Islands stresses the historic nature of grindadráp, situating the practice as part of a long history of Faroese sustainable use of the local environment (e.g. Føroya Landsstýri 2017). Pilot whaling has a prominent place within much Faroese nationalist symbolism. It is also prominent in material culture (no Faroese museum is complete without a collection of whaling equipment) and in folklore (whaling songs and dances remain in folk groups’ repertoires) (cf. Joensen 2009). In common with other whaling nations, histories and cultures of whaling are drawn upon to justify contemporary practice (Brydon 1996; van Ginkel 2004; Mathisen 1996). The relationship between whaling and Faroese culture is far from simple. Just as there are Faroese people who oppose whaling, the cultural aspects of whaling are not always aligned with the practical. A good example of this is the ‘whale dance’—historically participants in grindadráp would dance and sing to keep warm while clad in sodden clothes waiting for their allotted shares of whale meat. Nowadays, with cars available, participants are able to travel home to change (Joensen 2009), although particular dances retain resonance as Faroese cultural symbols (Cannady 2014). As such, the tradition of dancing after grindadráp has died out. Indeed, several respondents voiced a certain disquiet in the framing of their whaling practices as simply a performance of tradition. They asserted that their primary motivation for participation was to avail themselves of a source of meat. Grindadráp thus means different things to different people, and there are periodic disconnects between grindadráp as an articulation of Faroese identity and as a subsistence practice. Rather, the ‘traditional-ness’ of grindadráp is something that is strategically essentialized by various actors involved in different performative contexts, often as part struggles rooted in conflicting moral understandings of the world. Prei Magazine (Fig.  9.3) provided results of a local survey of attitudes towards grindadráp. The image is notable because in this representation, the whaler is wearing traditional clothes and using older tools that may only be used with permission from the authorities in contemporary grindadráp. (continued)

168 

C. Green et al.

Box 9.2  (continued)

Fig. 9.3  Image used on the cover of the Faroese magazine Prei. (Photo: Benedict E Singleton)

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

169

References Barsh, R. L. (2001). Food security, food hegemony, and charismatic animals. In R.  L. Friedheim (Ed.), Toward a sustainable whaling regime. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute. Beach, H. (1981). Reindeer-herd management in transition. The case of Tuorpon Saameby in northern Sweden. Doctoral Thesis, Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 3. Uppsala University, Uppsala. Bhattacharya, U. (2016). From primitive to culturally distinct: Patachitra art and self-exoticization in West Bengal. In B. Kapferer & D. Theodossopoulos (Eds.), Against exoticism. Toward the transcendence of relativism and universalism in anthropology. Oxford: Bergahn. Brydon, A. (1996). Whale-siting: Spatiality in Icelandic nationalism. In G.  Pálsson & P.  E. Durrenberger (Eds.), Images of contemporary Iceland: Everyday lives and global contexts. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Buijs, C. (2016). Museum collection decolonization and indigenous cultural heritage in an island community: East Greenland and the ‘roots 2 share’ photo project. Island Studies Journal, 11, 537–560. Cannady, K. (2014). Dancing on the fissures: Alternative senses of crisis in the Faroe Islands. In K. Lóftsdottir & L. Jensen (Eds.), Crisis in the Nordic nations and beyond. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Chemnitz, J. (2013). Mikropolis. In Blok P – En boligblok i Nuuk. (7–16) Copenz. Chiaravalloti, R. (2019). The displacement of insufficiently ‘traditional’ communities: Local fisheries in the Pantanal. Conservation and Society, 17, 173. Clifford, J. (2001). Indigenous articulations. The Contemporary Pacific, 13, 468–490. Conklin, B. A. (1997). Body paint, feathers and VCRs: Aesthetics and authenticity in Amazonian activism. American Ethnologist, 24, 711–737. Dahl, J. (2010). Identity, urbanization and political demography in Greenland. Acta Borealia: A Nordic Journal of Circumpolar Societies, 27, 125–140. Desai, G. (1993). The invention of invention. Cultural Critique, 24, 119–142. Douglas, M. (2004). Traditional culture  – let’s hear no more about it. In M.  Walton & V.  Rao (Eds.), Culture and public action: A cross-disciplinary dialogue on development policy. Stanford: University of California Press. Fielding, R., Davis, J. E., Jr., & Singleton, B. E. (2015). Mutual aid, environmental policy, and the regulation of Faroese pilot whaling. Human Geography, 10, 37–48.

170 

C. Green et al.

Føroya Landsstýri, F. (2017). A millennium living from nature [Online]. https:// www.whaling.fo/en/natural/a-millennium-living-from-nature/. Accessed 17 Apr 2019. Gaard, G. (2001). Tools for a cross-cultural feminist ethics: Exploring ethical contexts and contents in the Makah whale hunt. Hypatia, 16, 1–26. Green, C. (2009). Manging Laponia. A world heritage as arena for Sami ethno-­ politics in Sweden. Doctoral thesis, Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 47). Uppsala University, Uppsala. Green, C. (2014) The Laponian World Heritage area. Conflict and collaboration in Swedish Sápmi. In S. Disko and H. Tugendfeld (Eds), World Heritage and Indigenous Peoples’ rights. IWGIA, Copenhagen. Green. C., & Hilding-Rydevik T. (n.d., Forthcoming) Confusion and scepticism. State officials and the discourse on ‘indigenous and local knowledge’ within nature conservation administration in Sweden and New Zealand. Greenland Today. (2013). Journal. Nuussuaq. Hall, S. (1996). On post-modernism and articulation. An interview with Stuart Hall. In D. Morley & K.-H. Chen (Eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical dialogues in cultural studies. London: Routledge. Handler, R. (1984). On sociocultural discontinuity: Nationalism and cultural objectification in Quebec. Current Anthropology, 25, 55–71. Hanson, A. (1991). The making of the Maori. Culture inventions and its logic. American Anthropologist, 91, 890–902. Helander-Renvall, E. (2010). Globalization and traditional livelihoods. In L. Heininen & C. Southcott (Eds.), Globalization and the circumpolar north. Fairbanks: University of Alaska. Hobsbawn, E. J., & Ranger, T. (1983). The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Høegh, I.S., & Havsteen-Mikkelsen, A. (2006). Melting barricades [arts project]. In F.  Hansen & T.O Nielsen (eds.), Rethinking Nordic colonialism [Rethinking-nordic-colonialism.org]. Joensen, J. P. (2009). Pilot whaling in the Faroe Islands. Torshavn, Fróðskapur: Faroe University Press. Kalland, A. (2009). Unveiling the whale. Discourses on whales and whaling. Oxford: Berghahn. Kalland, A., & Sejersen, F. (2005). Marine mammals and northern cultures. Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press.

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

171

Kentorp, M. (2002, October 16). Mr. Grønland. Berlingske Tidende. Copenhagen. Krech, S. (1999). The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: Norton. Lantto, P. (2000). Tiden börjar på nytt: en analys av samernas etnopolitiska mobilisering i Sverige 1900–1950. Umeå: Kulturgräns norr. Lapland. (n.d.). Authentic Arctic – Life on a Sámi reindeer farm. https://www. lapland.fi/visit/tips-stories/authentic-arctic-sami-reindeer-farm/. Accessed 11 Oct 2019. Laponia.nu. (2019). https://laponia.nu/livet-i-laponia/markerna/spar-i-landskapet/hamberg/. Accessed 1 Oct 2019. Li, T. M. (2000). Articulating indigenous identity in Indonesia: Resource politics and the tribal slot. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42, 149–179. Lien, M. E. (2004). Dogs, whales and kangaroos: Transnational activism and food taboos. In M.  E. Lien & B.  Nerlich (Eds.), The politics of food. Oxford: Berg. Linnekin, J. (1983). Defining tradition: Variations on the Hawaiian identity. American Ethnologist, 10, 241–250. Lundmark, L. (1998). Så länge vi har marker. Samerna och staten under sexhundra år. Stockholm: Rabén Prisma. Lundmark, L. (2002). “Lappen är ombytlig, ostadig och obekväm…” Svenska statens samepolitik i rasismens tidevarv. Umeå: Norrlands universitetsförlag. Maddison, S. (2013). Indigenous identity, ‘authenticity’ and the structural violence of settler colonialism. Identities, 20, 288–303. Mathisen, S. R. (1996). Real barbarians eat whales: Norwegian identity and the whaling issue. In P.  J. Anttonen (Ed.), Making Europe in Nordic contexts. Turku: Nordic Folklore Institute. Meredith, A. (2013). Northern lights. Greenlandic art in the 21st Century. In FirstAmericanArt Magazine Spring 2013 [firstamericanartmagazine.com]. Mijá ednam  – samebyarnas laponiaprogram. (2000). Jokkmokk, Samebyarnas Kansli. Minde, H. (2003). The challenge of indigenism: The struggle for Sami land rights and self-government in Norway 1960-1990. In Indigenous peoples: Resource management and global rights (pp.  75–104). Utrecht: Eburon Academic. Mörkenstam, U. (1999). Om “Lapparnes privilegier”: föreställningar om samiskhet i svensk samepolitik 1883–1997. Doctoral thesis, Stockholm Studies in Politics 67. Stockholm University, Stockholm.

172 

C. Green et al.

Mörkenstam, U. (2002). The power to define: The Saami in Swedish legislation. In K.  Karppi & J.  Eriksson (Eds.), Conflict and cooperation in the north. Umeå: Norrlands Universitetsförlag. Mörkenstam, U. (2005). Indigenous peoples and the right to self-­determination: The case of the Swedish Sami people. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, XXV, 433–461. Nakashima, D. J., Galloway McLean, K., Thukstrup, H. D., Ramos Castillo, A., & Rubis, J. T. (2012). Weathering uncertainty: Traditional knowledge for climate change assessment and adaptation. Paris: UNESCO. Nuttall, M. (2010). Epistemological conflicts and cooperation in the circumpolar north. In L. Heinenen & C. Southcott (Eds.), Globalization and the circumpolar north. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Pearce, S. M. (1995). On collecting. An investigation into collecting in the European tradition. London: Routledge. Pedersen, B. K. (2008). Young Greenlanders in the urban space of Nuuk. Études/ Inuit/Studies, 32, 91–105. Ray, S.  J., & Maier, K. (2017). Introduction. Approaching critical northern issues critically. In S. J. Ray & K. Maier (Eds.), Critical norths: Space, nature, theory. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Redford, K. (1990). The ecologically noble savage. Orion Nature Quarterly, 9, 25–29. Rygaard, J. (2010). Proxemic Nuuk. Town and urban life with Nuuk as example. In K. Langgård, F. Nielsen, B. K. Pedersen, & J. Rygaard (Eds.), Cultural and social research in Greenland (pp. 229–248). Nuuk: Ilisimatusarfik. Sakakibara, C. (2017). Northern relations. Colonial whaling, climate change, and the inception of a collective identity in northern Alaska and the northern Atlantic. In S. J. Ray & K. Maier (Eds.), Critical norths: Space, nature, theory. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Samer.se. (2019). http://www.samer.se/samernaisiffror. Accessed 2 Oct 2019. Sejersen, F. (2004). Horizons of sustainability in Greenland: Inuit landscapes of memory and vision. Arctic Anthropology, 41, 71–89. Sillanpää, L. (2002). Government responses to Saami self-determination. In K. Karppi & J. Eriksson (Eds.), Conflict and cooperation in the north. Umeå: Norrlands universitetsförlag. Singleton, B.  E. (2016). Love-iathan, the meat-whale and hidden people: Ordering Faroese pilot whaling. Journal of Political Ecology, 23, 26–48.

9  Tradition Is Essential: Clashing Articulations of Sami Identity… 

173

Thaman, R., Lyver, P., Mpande, R., Perez, E., Cariño, J., & Takeuchi, K. (Eds.). (2013). The contribution of indigenous and local knowledge systems to IPBES: Building synergies with science. IPBES Expert Meeting Report, UNESCO/ UNU. Paris: UNESCO. Tjuotjudusplána  - Management Plan. n.d. Jokkmokk. https://laponia.nu/wpcontent/uploads/2018/11/Laponia-forvaltningsplan-eng-web-150327_2_ utan_appendix.pdf. Accessed 1 Oct 2019. van Ginkel, R. (2004). The Makah whale hunt and Leviathan’s death: Reinventing tradition and disputing authenticity in the age of modernity. Etnofoor, 17, 58–89. Vermeulen, E. (2014). The Faroe islands support commercial whaling [Online]. https://seashepherd.org/2014/08/19/the-faroe-islands-support-commercialwhaling/. Accessed 17 Apr 2019. Viken, A., & Müller, D. (Eds.). (2017). Tourism and indigeneity in the Arctic. Bristol: Channel View Publications.

10 A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce in Northern Sweden: Who Should It Contain, Who Is It for and What Should It Do? Dean B. Carson and Frida Jonsson

The Myth/s This chapter raises some concerns about the ways in which the health and care workforce in northern Sweden is being developed, and aims to contribute to a broader discussion about health and care and workforce needs in this region. We are concerned that (necessary) attention to the health and care needs of older residents is potentially coming at the expense of attention to other critical issues, such as the health and well-being of youth, migrants and Sami populations. Secondly, we are concerned that

D. B. Carson (*) Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities, Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] F. Jonsson Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_10

175

176 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

workforce development is becoming too focused on the medical workforce, with the contributions of non-medical professionals and carers being under-valued and under-supported. Rather than proposing myths that already exist, we warn that these ‘myths’ (that rural health is about the elderly, and that health and care is only about medical care) may be developing, and should be questioned. Recruitment and retention of health and care professionals (and other workers) are a persistent challenge in the inland north of Sweden, as it is in almost all regional, rural and remote parts of the world (Carson et al. 2016). Sweden’s Centre for Rural Medicine (Glesbygdsmedicinskt Centrum—GMC) has a mandate to develop strategies to address workforce shortages in this region. GMC has developed a reputation for innovative research and development in the contexts of health technologies (particularly digital technologies) and health workforce development. Regional, national and international leadership in the latter has been demonstrated through GMC’s involvement in the development of rural medical education at Umeå University, and through being the lead partner in the European Commission’s Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme Recruit and Retain: Making it work project. These initiatives seek to uncover new approaches to addressing the persistent challenges of recruiting and retaining health and care professionals (and non-­ professional workers) in rural areas like the inland north of Sweden (Hodge et al. 2016). Former Head of GMC, Dr Peter Berggren, regularly introduced the Centre as having two ‘natural advantages’ in positioning itself locally and internationally. The first is its location in the small rural town of Storuman in Sweden’s inland north, providing associated researchers with direct lived experience of the contexts with which they are concerned. The second is the relatively old-age profile of the population of the inland north, providing a focus for service and workforce development locally, and a laboratory for elderly care research that anticipates what is expected to occur through demographic development of rural and urban populations in high-income countries. According to the GMC mission, health and care workers in the inland north now, and in many rural and urban places

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

177

in the future, will need to be focused on the challenges of elderly care. The focus on elderly care has consequently directed much of GMC’s work including development of Virtual Health Rooms to provide basic care services in towns and villages without permanent primary care facilities (Näverlo et  al. 2016), and training of a variety of health and care professionals, but with a focus on medical service contexts. While there is substantial evidence of population ageing and its influence on health and care service delivery in the inland north (see below), there has also been some criticism of the way in which attention to elderly care has been at the cost of consideration of other populations, including youth (Hulstrand et al. 2019) and Sami (Daerga et al. 2012). There is also some suggestion that a workforce increasingly oriented to medical care of the elderly has fewer opportunities to develop and practice skills in other areas of care. This clearly brings risks of increasing the health care access ‘gap’ for populations in the inland north, misdirecting investment in workforce development, service design and technological innovation. Already there is evidence of an increasing reliance on relatively low-skilled health and care workers (such as home care assistants), with, however, few initiatives designed to integrate these workers in a broader system of care which both respects the roles they perform, and which is designed to help them improve their knowledge and skills (Swedberg et al. 2013). This chapter provides a broader perspective on health and care services in the region, and particularly a broader perspective on how health and care workers should be prepared for working in this environment. We argue that a better understanding of population health needs is one of the essential steps towards improving the recruitment and retention of health and care workers. As such, it is essential that the current focus on population ageing and elderly care be balanced by investment in a workforce that can also attend to issues around child and maternal health services, youth health and care, the well-being of Sami and migrant populations, and health and care needs arising from rapidly changing economic and social environments in the inland north.

178 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

Global Perspectives Comparable rural and sparsely populated areas have been experiencing substantial demographic, economic and social change over recent decades, of which population ageing is but one. Migration flows to these regions have changed dramatically, with vastly increased levels of international migration (Carson et al. 2019). As this book describes elsewhere, those flows have had a variety of forms. Movement of workers and lifestyle seekers between proximate countries has increased, not just within the context of the European Union, but within and between the Americas, and Oceania, south-east Asia, and the Asia-Pacific. Even more dramatic has been the increased movement of economic and humanitarian refugee migrants into even the most isolated regions. Many of these regions have a long history of attracting migrants from low-income countries looking for economic opportunities (Ålund 2003), as has been the case with Thai migrants to northern Sweden (Hedberg and Haandrikman 2014). However, a large proportion of the more recent migrant population has been escaping war, famine and conflict, has come from regions not previously known as sources of migrants, has been relatively poorly prepared to engage in local economies, and has very different social, cultural and religious values to the majority populations in the migration destinations (Hedberg and Haandrikman 2014). Many of these migrants are relatively young compared to the existing population, and the migrant population features many young families and children who have migrated without their parents (Wernesjö 2015). While migrants from high-income countries may have similar health and care needs to the Swedish-born population, they do present challenges to the health and care system due to language and cultural differences, and because they often maintain relationships with services in their countries of origin, meaning that continuity of care is difficult to achieve. More dramatically, refugee migrants tend to have higher health and care needs that include short- and long-term mental health conditions and bio-physical issues that are rarely present in the long-term population (Hollander et al. 2016). In most places, international migration flows have become more impactful demographically than domestic migration flows. However,

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

179

domestic flows have also changed, with increased in-migration of women and people in later working age. Much of this migration has economic foundations, with sparsely populated areas providing opportunities for older workers in both lifestyle-related sectors (primarily tourism and the arts) (Carson et al. 2018) and a substantial increase in demand for social and service workers (including health, care and education workers and public administration professionals). Unlike past generations when workforce demand focused on jobs in resources sectors typically filled by young males, these service jobs tend to attract more women (Almstedt et al. 2014). At least some of these women arrive with children, or commence family formation when they are in the region. This not only creates contacts with the health system narrowly, but places demands on rural communities to provide child care and other social services that are sensitive to the needs of a changing workforce. The demography of sparsely populated areas has not just been impacted by long-term (residential) migration, but by increasing mobilities which bring a range of people on a seasonal or temporary basis (Carson et al. 2014). While the resource sectors (mining, forestry, fishing, energy production, oil and gas) remain important employers, increasing proportions of their workforces live elsewhere and ‘fly in and fly out’ to and from their places of work, or work across multiple sites in different regions (and even different countries) or work on a seasonal basis. Seasonal work is also common in tourism, and tourism of various types impacts the size, demography and spatial distribution of populations in these rural areas, with those characteristics often differing dramatically depending on the time of the year. Seasonal inhabitants may not access the health and care system regularly, but when they do, it is often in the context of emergencies, and the mobility of the populations makes it difficult for the system to respond (having limited knowledge of existing health conditions, medications and so on) and to follow up care that is provided locally. The demographic diversity of populations in sparsely populated areas clearly has important implications for health and care workforce development. Far from ‘rural health’ being viewed as a lesser career path for health and medical professionals, recent research has highlighted how ‘rural’ professionals need and make use of a wider range of skills and face more complex challenges than many of their urban counterparts.

180 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

Consequently, attention in many countries has turned to providing ‘specialist’ education, training and professional support for rural workers. In medicine, this has been encapsulated in the ‘rural generalism’ movement, which is focused on equipping doctors with skills not just to handle the diverse clinical demands of rural populations, but to be sensitive to cultural diversity (see Box 10.1), mental health challenges and working with populations which are highly mobile and constantly changing (Strasser et al. 2016). Elderly care is an important part of rural generalist training, but the generalism movement clearly recognizes the need to develop a workforce which can deliver equitable medical services for a wide range of population groups. Other parts of the health and care system are looking to the generalism approach, with examples emerging in mental health, nursing and welfare (Wakerman and Humphreys 2013). Box 10.1  A Health and Care Workforce for Indigenous Populations A major focus of health and care workforce development in other sparsely populated ‘norths’ such as in Canada and Australia is the preparation of service providers to work well with Indigenous populations (Clifford et al. 2015). As in Sweden, those populations have historically been marginalized in health and care system design, and there remain social and cultural barriers to accessing services and developing relationships with (typically non-­ Indigenous) service providers (Daerga et al. 2012). In Sweden, it is difficult to implement initiatives specifically for the benefit of Sami people because of various discrimination and equality policies developed nationally since the mid-twentieth century. While these policies are designed to ensure equal opportunity for all Swedish residents, they have been criticized for increasing the marginalization of Sami people by failing to recognize the processes of colonization and dispossession which took place in the north (Drugge 2016). However, there are some indications that attention to the specific needs of Sami people is increasing, with the development of health policies by the Sami Parliament, and the creation of 25 ‘Sami Management Municipalities’ across the north which have voluntarily agreed to provide specific resources to help Sami people engage with local government services. It is not clear whether or how these municipalities ensure that health and care sector workers have the capacity to engage with Sami people, but there is at least a foundation now for developing a health and care work(continued)

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

181

In addition to being sensitive to the needs of certain population Box 10.1  (continued)

force for Sami populations. Such development may learn from the positive and negative experiences of other countries. In northern Sweden, a trial project has been undertaken (2017–2019) to investigate the contributions that a Knowledge Network for Sami Health might make to improving cultural literacy of health and care professionals, developing and supporting Sami participation in the health and care workforce, and formulating strategies for continuing these initiatives beyond the life of the project. The project description largely mirrors approaches taken in other countries. In a review of research into mechanisms to improve the cultural appropriateness of health care services working with Indigenous people in Australia, Canada, the United States of America and New Zealand, Clifford et al. (2015) identified three primary strategies. The first was the provision of ‘cultural awareness’ (also called ‘cultural safety’, or ‘cultural literacy’) training for mainstream health and care workers (including professional and ancillary staff). The second was designing health programmes and services specifically for Indigenous populations. The third was investing in the development of an Indigenous health workforce. While many studies claim to have achieved success in achieving immediate goals of increasing awareness of Indigenous culture among health professionals, or recruiting Indigenous people into the health and care workforce, the long-term impacts on Indigenous health status remain unclear. Services designed specifically for Indigenous people tend to be accessed at a higher rate than mainstream services, and have higher proportions of Indigenous staff. However, because they sit outside of the core health and care system, they are often neglected in terms of funding, staff development and access to new health and care technologies and approaches. There is no doubt that an Indigenous health and care workforce can improve the delivery of services to Indigenous people, but there are very high levels of turnover among Indigenous health and care workers because they feel under-valued in the health care system and because they find it difficult to convince their non-­ Indigenous colleagues of the value of cultural (as distinct from medical) knowledge. McConnell and colleagues (2011) suggested that the situation may be improved by approaching health and care service delivery as a ‘team effort’ in which Indigenous participants (health and care workers, local leaders, service clients) assume a leadership role. It is not clear how this might be achieved in practice. The key learning, however, is that ‘Indigenous health’ encompasses much more than the bio-physical, and that culture, history and social organization need to be factored into health and care service delivery. This will mean, in the Swedish context, that Sami people need to assume more leadership roles in health and care systems, and those systems will need to overtly engage with Sami communities to deliver effective care.

182 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

sub-­ groups, the development of a viable health and care workforce implies a broader implementation of social accountability as a principle in medical education and practice (Ventres et al. 2018). Amongst other things, this would require an increased focus on community-based work where health promotion and primary-care initiatives are directed towards marginalized areas and groups. To become more socially accountable would thus necessitate improved strategic and collaborative partnerships between relevant stakeholders, a revision of accreditation in health professional education, a consideration of appropriate medical competencies and a focusing of resources to and evaluations of specific goals (Ventres et al. 2018). The social accountability literature usually implies (or even makes explicit) a health and care workforce that is co-located with its consumer base (in other words, health and care professionals live in the same communities as the people they service). However, there is increasing attention to how eHealth services which allow providers and consumers to be ‘at a distance’ to one another may become fully integrated components of a sustainable service model, including helping to address workforce recruitment and retention challenges. This builds partly on the broad potential of digital services in health promotion and information, diagnosis, communication, consulting, treatment and rehabilitation (Jędrzejczyk and Zarzeczna-Baran 2019) which overall comprise a variety of technical applications like videoconference, websites and mobile apps (McLendon 2017; Duncan et al. 2014). Based on this diversity, eHealth has generally been considered important for rural medicine because it can save time, reduce costs and improve access to services. However, it may also specifically help address disparities in service delivery and quality of care in rural communities. For example, by strengthening professional development, qualifications and capacity of local (and the distant—who might pick up some ‘rural skills’) clinicians, for example, through networking, collaboration and experiential learning, eHealth has the potential to improve rural medical workforce recruitment and retention (Moffatt and Eley 2010). In addition, if integrated into local systems and scheduled at convenient times, technological solutions could help providers deliver more culturally appropriate and customized care to marginalized groups, thereby making the services potentially more inclusive

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

183

(Robards et al. 2018; Wood et al. 2012) in line with the social accountability mantra. Nevertheless, while the World Health Organization suggests that digital technologies can help increase social accountability by connecting local and distant actors on terms that benefit local actors (Ahmed et al. 2019), it is not yet clear how this can be done in practice (beyond some consideration of health professional education approaches (Ventres et al. 2018)). There are concerns that an over-reliance on eHealth ‘de-localises’ health service delivery by shifting responsibilities to physically distant service providers, leading to local professionals who are less skilled in working with local populations, and who ultimately become less motivated to work in those environments. Addressing this eHealth conundrum will be essential to planning for sustainable health and care services, and a sustainable health and care workforce for the future.

The Inland North Other parts of this book describe the demographic trends and the demographic diversity of the inland north of Sweden. A feature of demographic development since the middle of the last century has been general population loss and ageing. However, there are a number of more recent trends that need to be accounted for when adopting a social accountability approach to health and care workforce development. Carson et al. (2019) identify the substantial in-migration of refugees to the region this century, and particularly in the past decade, increased ‘return migration’ of particularly young adult women (often accompanied by children) and increasing demands from a somewhat historically suppressed Sami population to have their voices heard in planning for the future of the region. Carson and colleagues focus their research on spatial distribution of the population, showing a growing difference between those who live in the main municipal centres and those who live in smaller villages and rural areas. Rural areas tend to attract new residents who are older, more likely to be Swedish or Western European in origin, and more likely to be male. In contrast, the larger centres have high proportions of young migrants of African and Middle Eastern origin.

184 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

Health and care workforce development needs to somehow account for the diversity of populations within small areas (with health and care ‘boundaries’ usually corresponding to municipal boundaries), as well as the diversity that exists between those areas. It must also be recognized that demographic, social and economic conditions can change very quickly. The chapter on ‘youth’ in this book shows a dramatic reversal in net migration trends for teenagers and young adults in just a decade between 2007 and 2017. That chapter argues that social systems in the north have been slow to update their perceptions of ‘youth’ as a population which leaves the region to embrace the ‘new reality’ of a growing youth population. Elsewhere, scholars have noted that even the ‘trend’ of population ageing needs to be understood in context of the dynamism inherent in small and somewhat isolated populations (Martel et al. 2011). Net out-migration of older residents is a consistent characteristic, and, observed both here and in similar places like the north of Scotland, that out-migration and a changing profile of in-migration can and has actually led to periods of ‘de-ageing’ (Skerratt et al. 2014). The critical message for workforce development, therefore, is not just that the inland north is ‘older and getting older’, but that it is diverse, contains a range of vulnerable and marginalized populations, and is subject to rapid and dramatic experiences of demographic change. In this context, there is relatively little published information (in the academic or grey literature) about how the health and care systems have attempted to prepare their workers for careers in the north. The final report of the Recruit and Retain project (Making it Work 2019) for the Swedish case study (which focused on the municipality of Storuman) suggested that there has been little coordinated and systematic activity directed at workforce development, and identified a small number of new initiatives arising from the project (which had two iterations encompassing the period 2011–2018) as innovations aiming to have widespread impact across both municipal and provincial health and care systems. The foundation for Recruit and Retain initiatives was purported to be ‘social accountability’, with the starting point being ‘assessing population service needs’. Five initiatives were described for the Swedish part of the project (the project was also active in Scotland, Iceland, Norway and Canada), three of which are specific to health workforce development, and two more

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

185

generally aiming to improve population growth and retention in the inland north. The landmark initiative is a new ‘rural stream’ within the medical education programme at Umeå University. While that programme was designed by the medical faculty at Umeå University (Carson et al. in press), Storuman is serving as the ‘test site’ for having medical students complete substantial components of their clinical training across nearly four years of their medical degree. This will expose some medical students (2 per semester, so up to 16 at any given time) to the nature of medical work in Storuman, although it is noted that the medical degree itself remains absent of curriculum around rural health, Sami health or community medicine. Recruit and Retain also proposed a new collaboration between municipal and provincial government around the employment of nurses. It is proposed (but not yet implemented) that nurses can be jointly employed by both levels of government, and can include a research component in their job descriptions. It is implied that such research would be focused on understanding the health needs of the communities in which these nurses work. The third health and care workforce-specific initiative is the relatively long-running website ‘U in north’ (uinnorth.se) which provides some very basic information about living and working in the inland north of Sweden, and some links to job advertisements from provincial and municipal governments. Currently, only medical and nursing jobs are included. A small section of the website identifies some of the main streams of health and care work in the north (particularly for nurses) including elderly care, mental health and emergency medicine. However, there is no information about the nature of the population (apart from suggestions of it being ‘elderly’) and the challenges and opportunities for health and care work with, for example, Sami, refugee or youth populations. Rather, the region is ‘sold’ as a destination based on what it offers outside of working hours (nature-based activities, lifestyle advantages). Finally, the two non-health-specific initiatives linked to Recruit and Retain were support for an ‘in-migration service’ for the Storuman municipality. The service provides a website (separate to Uinnorth) which links to job advertisements (mostly within the municipality), and dedicated staff time to assist local employers in recruiting and retaining staff

186 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

(https://www.storuman.se/Naringsliv%2D%2Darbete/inflyttarservice/). The service commenced in mid-2018, and it is not yet clear what impact it might have. Likewise, the Recruit and Retain project helped the municipality build an ‘alumni database’ of people who had previously lived in the municipality. The database is intended to be used to create a virtual community of ex-residents, and inform them about employment opportunities and other activities which might attract them ‘back to Storuman’. The final report indicates that this ‘alumni’ approach is core to the strategy to improve health and care workforce development, and builds on the internationally accepted premise that exposing people to rural areas makes them more likely to consider working in those areas later in life. Recruit and Retain can be positioned within a broader set of health and care initiatives which ultimately have improving workforce development as a goal. Many of these initiatives focus on the use of digital technologies (eHealth) to assist in the delivery of health and care services. The technologies are intended to address the challenges of delivering health and care across large distances—distances between patient and provider locally, and distances between local and specialist providers. Much of the attention remains on health care for older residents, with most training scenarios, for example, involving elderly patients (Koch 2017). There are three potential areas of concern arising from the critique of health and care workforce development approaches in the inland north. The first is the continuing challenges of coordination between municipal Box 10.2  A Health and Care Workforce for Youth Populations A (2017–2019) research project is assessing rural youth access to and experiences of health and social care according in northern Sweden (Goicolea et al. 2018). The study involves interviews with young people and professionals located in five different municipalities. In line with results from Australia (Robards et al. 2019), the study paints a picture of an unresponsive health system for young people, with tensions or discrepancies between services that youth want or need and ones they were offered or received. For example, while youth articulated the importance of flexible, person-­ centred, continuous and holistic approaches to care involving welcoming, respectful, emphatic and understanding encounters with professionals, in different regards the care neither aligned with their wishes nor corresponded to their needs. (continued)

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

187

and provincial government services—with a ‘patchwork’ of initiatives Box 10.2  (continued)

Firstly, the services appeared rigid and standardized, with aspects that extended beyond the specific reason for consultation often disregarded. Secondly, services were considered fragmented and disrupted, with the shortage of and high turnover in personnel meaning long waiting times, rarely getting to see the same professional twice and subsequently being forced to constantly ‘start again’ in telling their stories and asking for help. Thirdly, there was a perceived focus on bio-physical problems and medication at the expense of consideration of broader social and cultural issues as well as more complex mental health problems. Youth perceived this bias as both reductionist and marginalizing. Fourthly, while the youths recognized eHealth as a potential solution to problems of accessibility and anonymity, most youth still wanted and needed to meet a caring, considerate and compassionate professional face-to-face. Similar to the review by Robards et al. (2018) and as a partial response to the above issues, the professionals within the study, in turn, drew attention to a number of structural and organizational aspects that appeared to influence the provision and practices of care for youth. They depicted, for instance, how persistency and quality of care for young people would be difficult to ensure without adequate support from policymakers and managers as well as without sufficient cooperation within and between institutions. In this regard, the professionals described the problems of only being provided part-time employment and of subsequently being given a lack of time and resources for working preventively with and for youth. Additionally, they considered the firm institutional boundaries between and the different roles of the region (responsible for health care) and municipality (responsible for school health and social care) in Sweden, to be a major barrier to collaboration and as a source of inefficient services delivery for youth where priorities were neither consistent nor coordinated. The result is a complex, fragmented and bureaucratic system of care where young people needed help to communicate with, navigate among and understand the services provided. The Swedish research emphasizes the challenges in developing a socially accountable health and care workforce. Recognizing that there are different needs among different parts of the population (such as youth) is one thing, but building the capacity to respond to those needs is very difficult in an environment of high workforce turnover and staff shortages. When it comes to youth health at least, the response has been to reduce service provision to a necessary (but insufficient) core of medical services which provide limited opportunities for engagement between youth and service providers. A broader care system for youth is unlikely to be achieved unless and until workforce challenges can be met, thereby resulting in a classic ‘catch-22’.

188 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

developing across the region. Storuman municipality, for example, has been very active in workforce development, while other municipalities have not had the resources or connections afforded to Storuman. The second is the focus of ‘workforce’ being almost exclusively on medical professionals and nurses, despite recognition that other health and care providers are also critically needed. In fact, the developments in eHealth, which include ‘self-service’ health centres, ‘doctors at a distance’ and other mechanisms which physically separate patient and highly trained providers like doctors and nurses will place more emphasis on services provided by auxiliary workers such as home care assistants, nursing assistants, welfare officers and the like. It is also being increasingly recognized that the mental health care system is poorly equipped to deal with many of the local populations such as youth (see Box 10.2), migrants and Sami.

What Might the Future Hold? This book makes it clear that the diversity of the population of the inland north is likely to increase in the future, with sustained and growing flows of international migrants and increases in temporary and seasonal residents and visitors. From a political perspective, there is also likely to be increasing pressures from communities (and communities within communities) to have access to health and care services that meet their needs. From a workforce perspective, the international competition for skilled and professional workers will make recruitment and retention more difficult, but will also increase the potential pool of workers who might be attracted (or attracted back) to rural areas. In addition, the composition of the workforce is likely to change, with new jobs emerging in eHealth and particular aspects of community health (such as Sami health as described in Box 10.1). The workforce will also be increasingly comprised of lower-skilled ‘front line’ workers such as home care and elderly care assistants. Maintaining a social accountability focus will, therefore, be challenging to say the least. The Recruit and Retain projects demonstrate an increasing attention to developing the health and care workforce of the inland north, while the academic literature reveals the challenges associated with developing such

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

189

a workforce within a social accountability framework. While some innovative strategies have been implemented (including potentially world-­ leading initiatives in medical education and eHealth), the system still appears weak in terms of recognizing the diversity of populations needs, and recognizing the importance of non-medical or nursing workers in the health and care sectors. One possible, but undesirable, future is that certain populations continue to be marginalized, or become increasingly marginalized, in consideration of workforce development. We have highlighted youth and Sami populations in this chapter, but there should also be concerns about the capacity of health and care workforces to work effectively with various types of migrants (temporary and long-term), and the lack of skilled health and care workers in areas such as maternal care (as maternity services become centralized) (Larsson 2018) and mental health care. The social accountability approach championed by Recruit and Retain and particularly prominent in medical workforce development paradigms is one which demands the development of knowledges and skills that have not previously been considered mandatory for health and care workers across the spectrum. Demanding these skills is intended, under the ‘rural generalism’ model, both to increase the value rural communities place on health and care workers and to increase the attractiveness of rural locations for those workers. However, this tenet has not really been empirically tested, and there are some concerns that increasing the demands on health and care workers may dissuade some from entering the rural workforce (Hays and Sen Gupta 2018). In other words, even if the inland north implements coordinated and comprehensive workforce development strategies based on a social accountability paradigm, it may not lead to the stated ambitions of reduced workforce turnover and increased capacity to recruit qualified workers. The task may even become more difficult. Nevertheless, the social accountability paradigm is the best we have available right now to attempt to match health and care service design to community needs, and should be pursued because of its favourable impacts on population health. While we cannot expect that the wicked problem of recruitment and retention of rural health workforces will be ‘solved’ in Sweden (or anywhere else) in the near term, it may be possible

190 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

to make substantial advances in how health and care workers engage with rural communities, and what rural health and care services look like. A shared social accountability mindset may, for example, promote better cooperation and coordination across the various layers of the health and care system, and may open up new opportunities for the health and care system to work with other parts of the society (the education sector, sports and leisure groups, business and industry associations) to provide more holistic and more equitable services.

What Do Policymakers Need to Know? • A relatively old population profile, and a (generally) ageing population, does mean that attention needs to be paid to innovative ways of delivering health and care services to older people living in the inland north. • However, there are other populations with specific and often critical health service needs which may be marginalized within health service design, health professional education and developments in eHealth. • Some academic attention has been paid to the gap between health and care needs and health and care service delivery for youth and Sami populations, but we still need to learn more about how to implement effective services for these groups. • Developing a sustainable and effective health and care workforce in a region like this requires ensuring that service providers are aware of the diversity of population service needs and have access to training to meet those needs. • The continuing threats to workforce development include a lack of attention to providers other than medical professionals and nurses, a lack of cooperation between municipalities and a lack of coordination between municipalities and provincial governments, and a relatively narrow view of how the population is changing and the consequent changes in health and care needs. • There is a risk that demanding a more knowledgeable and better prepared health and care workforce will increase the challenges of recruit-

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

191

ment and retention, but this risk needs to be balanced against the benefits of having a ‘socially accountable’ workforce.

References Ahmed, S. S. T., Sandhya, M., & Shankar, S. (2019). ICT’s role in building and understanding Indian telemedicine environment: A study. In S.  Fong, S. Akashe, & P. N. Mahalle (Eds.), Information and communication technology for competitive strategies (pp. 391–397). Singapore: Springer. Almstedt, Å., Brouder, P., Karlsson, S., & Lundmark, L. (2014). Beyond post-­ productivism: From rural policy discourse to rural diversity. European Countryside, 4, 297–306. Ålund, A. (2003). Ethnic entrepreneurs and other migrants in the wake of globalization. International Review of Sociology/Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 13, 77–87. Carson, D. A., Carson, D. B., & Lundmark, L. (2014). Tourism and mobilities in sparsely populated areas: Towards a framework and research agenda. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 14, 353–366. Carson, D. B., Wenghofer, E. F., Timony, P. E., Schoo, A., Berggren, P., Charters, B., et  al. (2016). Recruitment and retention of professional labour: The health workforce at settlement level. In A. Taylor, D. B. Carson, P. Ensign, R. O. Rasmussen, L. Huskey, & G. Saxinger (Eds.), Settlements at the edge: Remote human settlements in developed nations (pp. 320–336). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Carson, D. A., Carson, D. B., & Eimermann, M. (2018). International winter tourism entrepreneurs in northern Sweden: Understanding migration, lifestyle, and business motivations. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 18, 183–198. Carson, D. B., Solbär, L., & Stjernström, O. (2019). Hot-spots and spaces in-­ between: Development and settlement in the “old north”. In E. C. H. Keskitalo (Ed.), The politics of Arctic resources: Change and continuity in the “old north” of northern Europe (pp. 18–37). Oxon: Routledge. Carson, D.  B., Wennberg, P., Hultin, M., Hedman, M., & Berggren, P. (in press). Umeå University’s proposed ‘rural stream’ – An effective alternative to the longitudinal integrated clerkship model for small rural communities? Education for health.

192 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

Clifford, A., McCalman, J., Bainbridge, R., & Tsey, K. (2015). Interventions to improve cultural competency in health care for indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA: A systematic review. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 27, 89–98. Daerga, L., Sjölander, P., Jacobsson, L., & Edin-Liljegren, A. (2012). The confidence in health care and social services in northern Sweden – A comparison between reindeer-herding Sami and the non-Sami majority population. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 40, 516–522. Drugge, A. L. (2016). How can we do it right? Ethical uncertainty in Swedish Sami research. Journal of Academic Ethics, 14, 263–279. Duncan, A. B., Velasquez, S. E., & Nelson, E. L. (2014). Using videoconferencing to provide psychological services to rural children and adolescents: A review and case example. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 43, 115–127. Goicolea, I., Carson, D., San Sebastian, M., Christianson, M., Wiklund, M., & Hurtig, A.-K. (2018). Health care access for rural youth on equal terms? A mixed methods study protocol in northern Sweden. International Journal for Equity in Health, 17, 6. Hays, R., & Sen Gupta, T. (2018). Developing a general practice workforce for the future. Australian Journal of General Practice, 47, 502–505. Hedberg, C., & Haandrikman, K. (2014). Repopulation of the Swedish countryside: Globalisation by international migration. Journal of Rural Studies, 34, 128–138. Hodge, H., Carson, D. B., Berggren, P., & Strasser, R. P. (2016). From Lancelot to Lapland: Implications of engaged rural universities. In P.  Blessinger & B.  Cozza (Eds.), University partnerships for international development (Innovations in higher education teaching and learning) (Vol. 8, pp. 123–139). London: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Hollander, A.  C., Dal, H., Lewis, G., Magnusson, C., Kirkbride, J.  B., & Dalman, C. (2016). Refugee migration and risk of schizophrenia and other non-affective psychoses: Cohort study of 1.3 million people in Sweden. BMJ, 352, i1030. Hulstrand, C., Carson, D. B., & Goicolea, I. (2019). “There is no reward penny for going out and picking up youths”: Issues in the design of accessible youth healthcare services in rural northern Sweden. BMC Research Notes, 12, 6. Jędrzejczyk, T. W., & Zarzeczna-Baran, M. (2019). What are the aims of the implementation of e-solutions in healthcare? Review of the literature. European Journal of Translational and Clinical Medicine, 2, 78–84.

10  A Socially Accountable Health and Care Workforce… 

193

Koch, A. (2017). Die Bedeutung von eHealth-Diensten für die Aufrechterhaltung persönlicher Lebenszufriedenheit und regionalökonomischer Leistungs-­ fähigkeit in dünnbesiedelten Regionen. Das Beispiel des Krankenhauses von Storuman, Schweden. Informationsgesellschaft zwischen Vernetzung und Exklusion, 12, 77. Larsson, E. (2018). (De)politicising pregnancy-related risk: Gender and power in media reporting of a maternity ward closure. Health, Risk & Society, 20, 227–240. Making it Work. (2019). Making it work: The Swedish case study report. Copenhagen: European Union Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme. https://rrmakingitwork.eu/?page_id=259. Accessed 26 Mar 2020. Martel, C., Carson, D., Lundholm, E., & Müller, D. K. (2011). Bubbles and craters: Analysing ageing patterns of remote area populations. In D. Carson, R. O. Rasmussen, P. Ensign, L. Huskey, & A. Taylor (Eds.), Demography at the edge: Remote human populations in developed nations (pp.  107–124). Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. McConnel, F., Demos, S., & Carson, D. (2011). Is current education for health disciplines part of the failure to improve remote aboriginal health? Focus on Health Professional Education: A Multi-disciplinary Journal, 13, 75–83. McLendon, S. F. (2017). Interactive video telehealth models to improve access to diabetes specialty care and education in the rural setting: A systematic review. Diabetes Spectrum, 30, 124–136. Moffatt, J. J., & Eley, D. S. (2010). The reported benefits of telehealth for rural Australians. Australian Health Review, 34, 276–281. Näverlo, S., Carson, D. B., Edin-Liljegren, A., & Ekstedt, M. (2016). Patient perceptions of a virtual health room (VHR) installation in rural Sweden. Rural and Remote Health, 16, 3823. Robards, F., Kang, M., Tolley, K., Hawke, C., Sanci, L., & Usherwood, T. (2018). Marginalised young people’s healthcare journeys: Professionals’ perspectives. Health Education Journal, 77, 692–704. Robards, F., Kang, M., Steinbeck, K., Hawke, C., Jan, S., Sanci, L., Liew, Y. Y., Kong, M., & Usherwood, T. (2019). Health care equity and access for ­marginalised young people: A longitudinal qualitative study exploring health system navigation in Australia. International Journal for Equity in Health, 18, 41. Skerratt, S., Atterton, J., Brodie, E., Carson, D., Heggie, R., McCracken, D., & Thomson, S. (2014). Rural Scotland in focus 2014. Edinburgh: Rural Policy Centre, SRUC, Scotland’s Rural College.

194 

D. B. Carson and F. Jonsson

Strasser, R., Couper, I., Wynn-Jones, J., Rourke, J., Chater, A.  B., & Reid, S. (2016). Education for rural practice in rural practice. Education for Primary Care, 27, 10–14. Swedberg, L., Chiriac, E. H., Törnkvist, L., & Hylander, I. (2013). From risky to safer home care: Health care assistants striving to overcome a lack of training, supervision, and support. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being, 8, 20758. Ventres, W., Boelen, C., & Haq, C. (2018). Time for action: Key considerations for implementing social accountability in the education of health professionals. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 23, 853–862. Wakerman, J., & Humphreys, J. S. (2013). Sustainable workforce and sustainable health systems for rural and remote Australia. The Medical Journal of Australia, 199, S14–S17. Wernesjö, U. (2015). Landing in a rural village: Home and belonging from the perspectives of unaccompanied young refugees. Identities, 22, 451–467. Wood, J., Stathis, S., Smith, A., & Krause, J. (2012). E-CYMHS: An expansion of a child and youth telepsychiatry model in Queensland. Australasian Psychiatry, 20, 333–337.

11 Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group Visions on Individual Sustainability Transitions Marco Eimermann, Charlotta Hedberg, and Mari Nuga

The Myth In this chapter, we use the term ‘downshifting’ to describe a process in which people become aware of the downsides of their hectic lifestyles, and to analyse modern society as a context from which this process arises. We call it a process to highlight that people gradually (rather than suddenly) realise that constant and high pressure to deliver on the work floor and in social life can lead to deteriorating wellbeing, lower quality of social relationships, extensive consumption and increased exploitation of global resources (U.N. 2015). Earlier studies have focused on the growing number of people who try to combat at least some negative social and environmental effects by changing their ways of life (Etzioni 1998; Tan 2000; Hamilton and Mail 2003). In sociology these changes have been

M. Eimermann (*) • C. Hedberg • M. Nuga Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_11

195

196 

M. Eimermann et al.

studied as part of transitions from modern societies to liquid (Bauman 2000), reflexive (Beck 2000) or post-modern societies (Giddens 1991). We focus on the 2019 Transition Conference in Umeå (Sweden), which attracted 180 people interested in individual and societal transitioning towards more sustainable lifestyles. A key concept for the conference was ‘inner transition’; a process to open the mind for impressions that can introduce alternative practices and ways of thinking than those based on the growth paradigm (Jackson 2005; Hagbert et al. 2018). We here understand practices as the participants’ everyday agency and interactions with local, national and global structures related with social and ecologic sustainability, e.g. through renewable energy usage regulations (U.N. 2015). We see the Transition Conference as one of many examples of people coming together to discuss societal and individual changes. We gathered our data during this conference because it connected lifestyle transitions with personal mental changes and the role of social networks in a time of increased questioning in society and politics of unsustainable lifestyles related to climate change and increasing social inequalities (Alexander and Ussher 2012; Lorenzen 2012; Kennedy et al. 2013). Box 11.1 illustrates individual practices and how they are part of lifestyle changes that we study in this chapter. David Jonstad was a keynote speaker and he told about his life after moving to county Dalarna. He presented how he and his family developed a relationship with their environment that he described as ‘grounded’ (Swedish: jordad). In other words: he felt strong and positive bonds with the place since it offered the opportunity to be close to nature, keep animals, grow vegetables and invite neighbours to an autumn harvest fest. He also tried to convince the people around him of the need for living more sustainably by giving them small plants that they could bring home, which he hoped could spur their interest for small-scale gardening. We respect and acknowledge that David Jonstad has migrated from an urban bubble to the countryside. However, in this chapter we nuance the popular myth that people need to move to the countryside to perform a downshift towards more sustainable lifestyles. More concretely, this chapter aims to examine the myth that downshifters and voluntary simplifiers must migrate, often from urban to rural areas, to practice their desired lifestyles (see Box 11.1). We first asked the focus group participants to share some socio-economic information in a fact sheet, before they related their visions on downshifting with their

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

197

Box 11.1  An Urban Bubble, a Country House and Place Attachment Marco Eimermann In Sweden as elsewhere, there has been a recent upswing in grey literature and public debate about leaving the rat race to escape high demands in hectic work and living environments (e.g. Axelsson 2019; Hedberg and Eimermann 2019; Lindberg and Lindberg 2019). Authors, influencers and others often relate this with differences between urban and rural living and at times, they advocate a move to the countryside. The myth is that such a move would facilitate ‘downshifting’, here understood as a voluntary lifestyle change to work less (and earn less) to be able to spend more time on meaningful activities such as growing vegetables and socialising with friends and family, which would contribute to more socially and ecologically sustainable lifestyles. One author has particularly linked this with migration from a flat in the Swedish capital Stockholm to a farm in county Dalarna: David Jonstad (2016). He describes the urban bubble in which he grew up as full of shops, pubs, clubs, cinemas, theatres and other amusement. As a young adult, and thanks to the city’s many meeting places, he encountered a person who had started a collectively owned farm in the country. Together with his growing insights that much of modern life is based on the extraction of fossil fuels such as oil and a consciousness that living closer to nature would be less destructive, this meeting was the beginning of his eventual move to Dalarna. In his book (2016), David develops his ideas of how to deal with socio-economic transformations after a predicted economic and social collapse of Western societies (outlined in Jonstad 2012). He reasons around the meaning of places: “Something that might disappear [in Western societies] is place attachment. Hypermobility rules: to be able to move swiftly, often and over long distances. […] Most people still have a place they call home, but many of the homes’ bonds with their environments have become weaker, especially in urban areas.” (Jonstad 2016: 216, my translation).

senses of rural and urban places (Castree 2006). The research questions were ‘how do the participants describe their desired lifestyles?’ and ‘how do they relate these lifestyles with their place perceptions?’. We study the participants’ views regarding whether lifestyle changes need to be accompanied by a migration from urban or to rural areas. But we first review literature on changes in society, the phenomena of downshifting and

198 

M. Eimermann et al.

Box 11.2  A Future Society Beyond GDP Growth: What Would That Look Like? Pernilla Hagbert and Eléonore Fauré The research program “Beyond GDP Growth: Scenarios for sustainable building and planning” (2014–2018), led by KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm) and gathering researchers from several universities, research institutes and societal partners, explored key issues and conditions for planning for a sustainable future Sweden, beyond GDP growth. The program was initiated as a response to a largely under-researched area, exploring what a sustainable society could look like, when environmental and social goals are in focus instead of expected levels of economic growth. To understand the transformation needed to approach a safe and just operating space for humanity within planetary boundaries, four goals were specified: two environmental goals regarding climate and land use and two social goals regarding power, influence and participation, and welfare and resource security. Four scenarios for Sweden 2050 were then developed, showing the alternative strategies that society could take to reach these goals, without having to build on the current economic logic: (1) Collaborative Economy, (2) Local Self-Sufficiency, (3) Automation for Quality of Life, and (4) Circular Economy in the Welfare State. All scenarios entail significant transformations, including the redistribution of resources. This might involve economic resources but could also relate to power and influence, or the possibility to use land for the production of food, materials and energy. This redistribution may be done in different ways in the scenarios, either through state governance or through various voluntary undertakings. The research also explored what these scenarios would mean for rural as well as urban conditions. Three case study municipalities offered different geographical, demographic and economic contexts: Övertorneå, Alingsås and Malmö. In studies within the municipalities, descriptions emerged of cognitive as well as structural barriers, and a weak capacity for transition among different actors. This is connected to expectations and general assumptions regarding growth, partly irrespective of the context. Municipalities and companies to a large extent plan for and expect a societal development that builds upon a further expansion of infrastructure, transport and consumption. Despite visions for sustainability, in practice this often leads to a reproduction of current unsustainable structures and ways of life. At the same time, empirical studies point towards stories of self-­ sufficiency, of regional upswings and that population size and wellbeing, rather than GDP, are more important at a local level. There is a multitude of examples of new sustainable practices that constitute seeds for change. (continued)

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

199

Box 11.2  (continued) Critique against planning for continuous growth is being taken more seriously and clearer political visions are demanded. New forms of organising the economy, society and welfare are also being developed. These ideas can be seen as windows of opportunity and the different scenarios indicate that there can be many possible ways to move towards sustainability. The scenarios should therefore be seen as a tool for discussion and analysis that can support planning for societal development beyond GDP growth. They challenge our notions of what is possible, what decisions need to be made and what changes can and should be made to reach a sustainable future.

voluntary simplicity, and different visions on social connections between rural and urban areas (Syssner 2018).

Thinking Beyond Modernity and GDP Growth This literature review starts with a brief sociologic frame on the construction of society before it turns to core literature on downshifting and voluntary simplicity, followed by a presentation of different notions of place. The idea of downshifting fits well with the ideas of Beck (2000) regarding the current transitions in society (see this sections’ introduction chapter). In particular, institutions are in a mode of changing, from the construct they took in the post-WWII society and towards what Beck et al. (2003) term the “second modernity”. Examples of institutions that are transitioning are the reliable welfare state, the nuclear family and fulltime work (Schierup et  al. 2006). These transitions occur in response to people’s changing attitudes that question post-war taken-for-granted structures like mass political parties anchored in class culture, the nuclear family consisting of one breadwinner, his housewife and their children (Ahlberg 2008), economic security webs interwoven with industrial regulation, life-long careers and full employment (Beck 2000). These changes go hand in hand with individualisation (Giddens 1991), changing gender roles (Carbin et al. 2017), emerging global economies that undermine nation states’ economies, and the global environmental crisis (U.N. 2015).

200 

M. Eimermann et al.

These transitions are part of reconstructing societal processes into a more dynamic ‘second’ modernity in which individuals critically reflect on their agency. We should therefore not absolutise social structures of the post-war order “as if they were the end of social history” (Beck et  al. 2003). Much of what ‘first’ modernity once saw as necessary looks contingent in the transition to ‘second’ modernity. Box 11.2 illustrates some scenarios ‘beyond growth’. We see close connections between the transitions mentioned in Box 11.2, second modernity (Beck et  al. 2003), scenarios beyond growth, downshifting (Saltzman 1991) and voluntary simplicity (Etzioni 1998). Defined in various ways, downshifters are often portrayed as deploying a long-term strategic lifestyle change to reduce work hours and to increase their quality of life (Larsson 2015). This leads to “more leisure time and, as a result, earning and spending less” than one’s potential level (Kennedy et al. 2013: 765). Voluntary simplicity is seen as a movement that goes further as it advocates a frugal lifestyle that “involves deliberate resistances to high-consumption lifestyles” (ibid.; Grigsby 2004; Lorenzen 2012). Studies of downshifting in Western societies, where people can renegotiate the work-life balance by regulating the level of consumption to less income, don’t include planned retirement (Hamilton and Mail 2003; Schor 1998, 2005). While downshifting may financially be more feasible for people with high status jobs (Tan 2000), it is debated to what extent downshifting is common among all social groups. Research in liberal democratic states like Australia and Great Britain suggests that all people except the poorest can perform a downshift (Hamilton and Mail 2003; Breakspear and Hamilton 2004). Human geographic research on downshifting and voluntary simplicity in Sweden has only recently been initiated so we can’t report results yet. The project (‘Geographical perspectives on downshifting and voluntary simplicity as sustainable ways of life’) on which this chapter is based aims at presenting more specific findings for Swedish issues in the coming years, and this sections’ introduction chapter provides more backgrounds. We do know that downshifting can manifest in many ways, e.g. selling expensive property and moving to a cheaper house, changing jobs, working less hours in the same job, refusing career promotions or giving up work entirely (Hampton 2008). Studies on downshifting describe and

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

201

analyse processes of voluntarily reducing income, or escaping the ‘rat race’, in the hope that this results in having more control over one’s time, while involving significantly reduced levels of consumption (Hampton 2008). Such new lifestyles may also address challenges of climate change that society is grappling to come to grips with. We are particularly interested in reasons for downshifting enclosed in the notions of a more balanced and fulfilling life (e.g. trying to solve clashes between personal and workplace values, or changing jobs to do work that is more in line with one’s personal values, Breakspear and Hamilton 2004). Social issues are also important beyond the work environment, since downshifting can be part of transitions towards living more in accordance with one’s social values, such as spending more time with friends and family (Juniu 2000: 71; Benson and O’Reilly 2009). On a broader level, downshifting is a path towards more balanced resource uses, e.g. when downshifters deliberately consume less energy (for travelling, eating, etc.) to try to limit their impacts on climate change (U.N. 2015). We included participants in our study who had changed or wanted to change their life paths to match the work they performed more with their individual values and preferences regarding personal, social and/or environmental sustainability. Many participants were considering to perform changes like working in other jobs (fulltime or part-time) that were more in line with their values, doing more creative work that earns less money but gives more personal fulfilment, or becoming an entrepreneur to offer innovative and more sustainable experiences. Finally, our study took an open approach, based on the participants’ perceptions of desired lifestyles (research question 1). We are thus aware that most participants wouldn’t necessarily call themselves downshifters, but their participation in the conference indicated that they were interested in sustainability transitions that could go hand in hand with downshifting. Moreover, the participants shared their visions about sustainable lifestyles with us. Syssner (2018) argues that visions consist of three aspects: views on today’s situation, valuations of desirable changes in society and actions to achieve those changes. Syssner focuses on visions of the Swedish countryside in changing rural-urban interrelationships rather than on areas as either rural or urban, e.g. based on population size, population density, proximity of the built-up area, political status, proportion of the

202 

M. Eimermann et al.

labour force engaged in non-agricultural work and presence of certain services and activities (Champion and Hugo 2004). In Sweden and elsewhere, interactions between rural and urban areas are increasing, and some places are developing in multiple ways (e.g. covering both food production, working from home and tourism). We can see a continuum of places and situations situated between people’s perceptions of the most rural and the most urban conditions (Champion and Hugo 2004; Lundmark 2010). Novel forms of populated areas are developing, and various visions of living there are emerging too. Syssner (2018) advocates an emancipatory perspective on visions’ political role to challenge discourses and social orders. Reflecting upon utopian societies has merit since this can contribute to transformative and emancipatory processes in which new ideas can emerge and give voice to subordinated groups. For instance, British scholars suggest replacing visions of ‘the rural idyll’ in “tranquil landscapes of timeless stability and community, where people know not just their next door neighbours but everyone else in the village” (Boyle and Halfacree 1998: 9–10) with the ‘good countryside’ (Shucksmith 2018), in which rural and urban areas are shaped through social networks within and between different areas. We connect this with transition processes towards more sustainable living, which some households prefer to perform in urban areas, and other households in rural areas. Being part of different social networks can explain much of the variation in environmental behaviours and the various intensities of households’ commitment to downshifting (Kennedy 2011). This implies that variables like household structure can be more relevant than particular place characteristics to explain downshifting (Kennedy et al. 2013: 776). Nevertheless, we base our analysis of the participants’ reflections on four visions of connected rural and urban areas (Syssner 2018). First, a ‘sustainable countryside’ views rural areas as taking a distinct role in sustainability transitions, as providing sites of residence that enable people to live their lives in more socially and ecologically sustainable ways. This relates to people’s perceptions that rural areas are more genuine and socially coherent, less stressful than cities, more apt to deal with social and environmental collapse, such as increasingly extreme weather situations and the provision of food and social support. This vision describes

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

203

rural areas’ and medium-sized cities’ advantages in today’s western societies, with the goal that more people should discover such advantages. This vision questions current production and consumption systems, and could for instance advocate actions like constructing eco villages or collective housing, based on critiques of normative economic growth. It has a strong position among activists, e.g. in transition networks, and it is inspired by ideas of participating democracies and engagement in in-­ depth debates on social justice and innovative futures (ibid.). Second, ‘the visiting location’ is often expressed in policy documents, and views rural areas as destinations for (urban dwellers’) recreation, experiences and tourism (Lundmark 2010). It describes tourism as saviour of depopulating areas and the norm is that locals can increase their income if they engage more in tourism (Syssner 2018). The actions are to stimulate economic sustainability through public-private partnerships in destination development (ibid.). A third vision, ‘the online location’, views the countryside as digital and innovative. This vision has broad support in society, and one reason may be that it connects with many people’s multilocal identity creation (Hedberg and Do Carmo 2012). A rather instrumental norm is that the means (technology) are more important than the particular location. The actions are to construct digital infrastructures so that even people in remote rural and sparsely populated areas can equally access the Internet. A final vision views rural places as ‘global locations’ with international migration contributing to their wellbeing and development. Based on the assumptions that people can both be mobile and connect with places, such places can shift in importance over people’s life course stages (Massey 1995). A valuation is that small villages are good places for welcoming new people, since locals and (grassroots) organisations often have strong engagements with a particular place and good collaboration skills (Syssner 2018). Actions aim at creating stronger senses of solidarity and community, e.g. through the organisation of language cafés, helping children with homework, study circles and cooking groups (Lindroth 2017). These visions are intended to contribute to an unbiased discussion (e.g. on rural-urban interactions) rather than to solve all society’s challenges (Syssner 2018). They often include people’s sense of place (Thrift 1999), i.e. how people “interpret and develop meaningful attachments to

204 

M. Eimermann et al.

those specific areas where they live out their lives” (Castree 2006: 170). We will employ these visions when studying how participants connect their desired lifestyles with visions of rural (and urban) areas.

Methods During the Transition Conference in Umeå, we organised a workshop in which we introduced the concepts of downshifting and voluntary simplicity together with notions of place in popular Swedish books about downshifting (Axelsson 2019; Jonstad 2016; Lindberg and Lindberg 2019). The participants formed six focus groups consisting of four to seven people, they completed a fact sheet, we informed them about their voluntary participation, and that we treat the gathered data confidentially (Hennink et al. 2011). We asked the participants to reflect on two issues: their desired sustainable lifestyle regarding social and environmental issues as well as less income, and the perceived connections between this lifestyle, their living places, and a possible migration. We connect this with Syssner’s (2018) three aspects of visions: the first issue indicates valuations and (indirect) views of today’s situations, while the second issue invites reflections around actions such as migration that may or may not be necessary to change current situations. During the discussions, we walked around in the room to help them if they had a practical question, and we observed whether the groups followed our instructions (e.g. to give each member enough space and time to contribute with his or her opinions, experiences and ideas). After 40 minutes, we asked them to present their main results in plenary. We tape-recorded the discussions (with informed consent), and we visualised the notes we made of their reports from group discussions on the screen to validate whether we had understood them correctly. As such, the main empirical part of this method consists of a thematic analysis of the audio-­ taped discussions combined with our notes of the final group presentations. We acknowledge that the conference theme and topics (e.g. inner transition, beyond GNP growth) have influenced the participants in their thinking and that other groups at other meetings or in society may have

205

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

different opinions about downshifting and voluntary simplicity. Further, we left the focus groups without moderators’ steering roles, as we were observing in the room rather than actively taking part in one or more groups. It was an advantage that participants were free to choose specific topics and ways to discuss them, but it was also a disadvantage because we were not able to dig into the depths of certain briefly surfaced topics. Still, that the methods we used functioned well for our purpose: to gain insights into this group’s interests in socio-economic transitions. This offered opportunities to explore downshifters’ and voluntary simplifiers’ reflections, while gaining experience and inspiration for conducting more in-depth interviews and analysis in coming studies. Table 11.1 shows the 33 participants in our workshop: 27 females and 6 males. The average age was 48 years; the youngest participant was 28 and the oldest 74. Almost all participants represented a white Swedish (upper-) middle class: 18 participants were house owners of whom seven lived in a rental apartment, six in a housing rights association, four in a country house, and two in a collective. Among participants were six entrepreneurs (who didn’t specify their workload), three researchers, three Table 11.1  Fact sheet of the focus group participants Group

Partic.

Gender

Age

Group

Partic.

Gender

Age

1

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

Female Female Female Female Male Female Female Female Male Male Female Male Male Female Female Female Female

54 31 54 62 44 42 28 74 43 37 38 35 66 48 46 38 38

4

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 –

Female Female Female Female Female Female Female Female Female Female Female Female Male Female Female Female –

33 39 71 62 48 68 33 62 31 60 46 51 42 46 52 51 –

2

3

5

6

–

Source: Information provided by the participants, 2019

206 

M. Eimermann et al.

retirees, a student, a consultant, a priest and a politician. Fourteen of them worked fulltime in wage-work, six worked part-time (25–80%) and two indicated they did not work (one described herself as a housewife, the other as being on sick-leave). Our overall impression of the participants is that they were informed and thoughtful citizens who were concerned with popular discussions in society. They kept up to date with relevant research that they often cited to support their arguments and to discuss the possibilities to apply this knowledge. The individual reflections about the topics were balanced with overall concerns about prevailing societal structures. We see this behaviour as an example of reflexive individuals in Beck’s (2000) “second modernity”.

Current Situations and Desired Lifestyles A general idea among the participants was that major social transitions (however defined) on both individual and societal level were needed in order to change the current growth economy, which they saw as contrary to sustainable living. In the first place, they said downshifting concerns individual lifestyle transitions, and they were convinced that everyone could modify their lifestyles through downshifting. They mainly saw downshifting as a contribution to increased sustainability through reduced consumption (Box 11.2). They saw a myriad of additional possible changes at the individual level, depending on the participants’ personal preconditions and life stage. The participants talked about being satisfied, grateful, and happy with the life, possessions and places they knew and owned, which they saw as the most important indicator for a desired sustainable lifestyle: I think the world pollutes everywhere. You can change your routines and think about what you need in life everywhere. […] You can always do something and even if it is not much, do it anyway! One should appreciate one’s everyday life and make changes at the spot rather than having unrealistic dreams. (Participant 2.2)

In addition to frugal lifestyles, the participants conversed about down-­ to-­earth practical solutions for a sustainable life with lower expenses.

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

207

One example was the ability to search for one’s ‘inner entrepreneur’ to contribute to the livelihoods according to their own and others’ actual needs. They connected this with being able to at least partly grow your own food or purchase it locally, but also to exchange clothes, furniture, books, tools and other commodities that are not for daily use. They found it equally important to be able to use sustainable transportation means such as local public transportation, bicycle and train for longer distances: Every type of sharing culture means that you lower your costs. In my collective house, we have fewer costs. We share the house, which means lower rent. We exchange clothes, we share a cargo bike, and one couple in the house have a car that others can rent. We grow the food together, which makes it cheaper than growing alone. (Participant 3.5)

The participants saw local networks and social connections as extremely important for a social basis to improve sustainable living. They would like everyone everywhere to know their neighbours, as part of a desired socially sustainable lifestyle in which people show support by producing food and performing services for each other. This confirms previous research, arguing that social networks can be more important than residence in a particular place for a household’s tendency to engage in transitioning (Lorenzen 2012; Kennedy et al. 2013). They would like to help organising childcare and repairing homes or shared goods: If you find a network of people, someone has cultivation and can sell at least partly to those who do not grow food, someone else is skillful at repairing clothes and things; if you have this kind of network then the place does not play such a big role. But the road to it can be difficult at first. How do you find each other and build up the structure and the security in the group? (Participant 5.4)

The balance between work, nature, consumption, and transport was another important part of the participants’ desired lifestyles. They were pondering how they could increase sustainable commuting through performing their work locally, from distance, from home and/or working

208 

M. Eimermann et al.

less hours (if at all). This connects to our next section on actions, places and maybe-migration.

Envisaged Actions and Place Perceptions The choice of place of where to live a more sustainable life needed to correspond to the individual’s preferences. The participants pointed to the vast variety of personal prerequisites, most importantly that a person has to feel good in her/his surroundings wherever this may be. They also indicated that, depending on the life stage, the same person could require different living arrangements for sustainable living. As such, simply moving around the furniture could also be a trigger for making other aspects in life more sustainable. Several participants in different groups pointed out that trying out different living arrangements through migration could be a workable strategy to find her/his place: A move may lie in the nature of a [sustainable] transformation: there is some kind of dissatisfaction with what you have right now. And you want to change. Whether you move from your farmhouse to a small rental apartment or vice versa, there is something in the change, in the relocation, that is very important. […] Still, the big change is happening inside a person. It does not depend on the location, but on what is essential. To relocate is a fresh start, but people need to change regardless of the move. (Participant 2.4)

The participants indicated pros and cons for residence in urban and rural places. A general advantage of living in rural areas was thought to be the proximity to accessible nature (although not all participants agreed). One person thought this was essential for mental wellbeing, for living in more sustainable ways and for the livelihood it gives by growing your own food and picking it from the forests. This participant (3.5  in Table  11.1) said that people from the countryside appear to be more grounded, that their weaknesses and strengths are known by the community, and everyone can count on each other on a more long-term basis. This resonates with Syssner’s (2018) first, “sustainable countryside” vision. Participants saw food production in the countryside as easier than

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

209

in cities, even though they saw options for urban farming as well. They indicated the advantages with living far away from blinking billboards and major shopping centres: although their country houses were equipped with internet, with accessible web-shopping, the distance to physical shops reduced the urge for consumption. In cities, they said, social ties could be weaker due to higher residential mobility, which meant that fewer people really become ‘grounded’: It is easier to live sustainably in the countryside. Forest walks are just as effective antidepressants as medicine. Better conditions for living in balance. Not the same rush and one is not tempted to buy that much stuff either. (Participant 3.1)

At the same time, however, the focus groups indicated that other practices can be easier to perform in a sustainable way in cities. One such practice was transport, where urban areas provide more alternatives for sustainable mobility: A problem with downshifting is that many think it is always better to live in the countryside. I hear it often. I grew up in the countryside and we drove terribly much by car between our home and the city.[…] In the city you don’t need a driving license or use a car, you can cycle everywhere, even out to nature and the countryside. Especially in the smaller cities and villages that are big enough to have enough services and you don’t have to drive far for shopping. (Participant 1.2)

Moreover, human capital for a circular economy and services, would, according to these participants, be more accessible in areas where people live closer together. They cited studies concerning a perfect town size to facilitate public transportation, social services and a sustainable economy. Many participants were realists and said that employment opportunities don’t grow from the ground like crops. They recognised that such opportunities develop in urban centres. One participant contrasted his family with his friends’ family. According to him, the two households both desired to produce their own food, consume less and have control over their own time. However,

210 

M. Eimermann et al.

whereas the participant resided in a rural area, the other family had decided to move out from there to an urban district: They have chosen to sell their house in the countryside and move into a rental villa in town because housing takes too much time of their life. It is much easier to control their time when they don’t have to take responsibility for their house, garden and fields. We have done quite the opposite, the city offers not enough territory for the activities we want to do at home. (Participant 2.6)

The focus group participants connected possible living places with structural concerns, recognising that individual actions as such could not create sustainable places and societies. Many saw urban-rural links, materialised in a need for more state-supported, small-scale farming and fossil-­ free forms of production in the countryside, e.g. to feed people living in cities. One participant (4.3) indicated that it is outrageous that current Swedish laws don’t allow farmland to be divided into smaller units, since this hinders small-scale farming, which her group commonly agreed upon. The same group attempted to figure out if there could be a way to limit the growth of urban settlements and who should take the responsibility. Participants in all groups related this with sustainable modes of transportation, which they thought the state should organise: For some people it is easier to live sustainably in a city. The most important thing is that the individual is happy and [that there are] structures that facilitate everyday sustainable living. It must be natural to make sustainable decisions. (Participant 6.3)

In sum, the focus groups based their reflections on processes of transition towards a more sustainable life on changes in individual understandings that appreciate simplicity and the natural environment. Migration to another place may be important to trigger such inner changes, but other issues were more important. They connected these issues with becoming grounded in local social networks, engaging in the local and own production of food, and feeling daily closeness to the nature (be it in their rural or urban surroundings).

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

211

What Policy Makers Need to Know This chapter started with the popular myth that migration to the countryside is needed for downshifting as a set of sustainable changes in lifestyle. In some studies, this has involved voluntarily reducing work hours which often means earning significantly less income (e.g. Schor 2005), changing the type of work performed to better match personal values (Breakspear and Hamilton 2004), and/or migration. In popular discourses, downshifting and voluntary simplicity are often portrayed as being directed to rural areas, as manifested in stories of individuals leaving their hectic, urban lives in order to engage in independent and community-­based lives in the countryside (e.g. Box 11.1). This chapter nuances this myth by concluding that people can change within their own place of living without migration. People thus transform places by their actions, rather than the other way around (Massey 1995). This study highlights personal values regarding sustainability. The participants discussed which social and ecological transitions would be needed to lead a sustainable life. An idea was that social transition starts with the individual, and the ‘inner transition’, where individuals change their own ways of thinking in order to live more sustainably, for example through reduced consumption and the growing of own food. This is in harmony with common ideas of what downshifting would imply. However, the chapter acknowledges that the transition of individuals needs to be accompanied with thoroughgoing, sustainable transitions on the structural level. These ideas of combined individual and structural sustainability also echoed in the participants’ reflections on migration and their ideas about desired places of residence. Rather than confirming visions of ‘rural idylls’, the study points towards the varying, and complementing, qualities of urban and rural areas, which in various ways enable sustainable living. Moreover, the participants advocated middle-sized cities as an ideal place of residence, harbouring many desired features. They preferred places with affordable houses with large plots of land (for animals and vegetables) and accessible public transportation, while forests, health care, services and work opportunities are nearby and commercialism far away. Despite the pros and cons of urbanity and rurality, such as living

212 

M. Eimermann et al.

close to nature versus accessible sustainable modes of transportation, the consensus of the workshop was around staying instead of migrating, and satisfaction with the current place of living. Rather than migrating, the inner transition, and the strengthening of social networks on a local basis where thought to improve socially and ecologically sustainable living. Moreover, the individual, daily life-puzzles have to make sense for the participants. They pointed at the importance of balancing the time spent at work, in nature, on transport and on consumption practices. They also pointed at the need to stop dreaming and take action – right here, right now. This connects with ideas of good countrysides (Shucksmith 2018) rather than rural idylls (Boyle and Halfacree 1998). On the structural level, the participants put the overall responsibility for facilitating sustainable transitions at the level of society, which should provide alternatives for individuals who desire to live sustainable lives both in urban and rural areas. We here see connections with Syssner’s (2018) visions for the countryside, as directed towards policy makers and planners. Focusing on rural lifestyles, the participants’ reflections showed most resemblance with the first vision, proclaiming ‘a sustainable countryside’ and the idea that rural areas could provide a site of sustainable living. This may not be surprising, since this vision was partly inspired by transition networks. From the view of regional planning, this chapter thus points at the idea that rural areas could attract new in-migration of downshifters. However, although rural values are attractive for many individuals wanting to shift towards a more sustainable life, these are not unique for rural areas. In order for the countryside to become an attractive living environment for these individuals, planners and policy makers should provide more alternatives for sustainable living. Enhancing the sharing economy in various ways, such as collective housing and improved modes of collective transportation, is essential to attract these new potential migrants. Our study emphasises one aspect that seems to be absent in Syssner’s (2018) visions for the countryside: the future role of the countryside as a food producer (also see Dubois & Thompson, this volume). The motivation of many participants to partake in small-scale farming, as self-­ sufficiency, a side income etc., should not be ignored among policy makers. This is in line with the Swedish new national food strategy (Swedish Government bill 2016/17: 104), which aims to increase food

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

213

production and food security. This policy goes hand in hand with the sustainability values that this chapter proclaims. Notably, this could be performed both in urban and in rural settings. More specifically, though, our study points at the need to remove obstacles in land ownership, and the ability to split landowner structures, in rural areas. Taken together, our study looks at the desire of individuals to perform sustainable, and in this sense downshifted, lifestyles. However, these lifestyles need to be accompanied by structural changes that are performed in sustainable directions in rural as well as urban environments. Policy makers can assure this by providing the alternatives that the individual needs. This is important, not at least seen from a perspective of peripheral regions, be they urban or rural, where population decrease is a major problem to be dealt with on a daily basis. Taking actions to improve sustainability thus becomes vital, both for the future of the planet (U.N. 2015) and for the regions’ ability to attract new inhabitants driven by motives of social and ecological sustainability. Acknowledgements  Many thanks to the participants and organisers of the 2019 Transition Conference in Umeå! We are grateful to Swedish research council FORMAS for financing the project “Money makes the world go round? Geographical perspectives on downshifting and voluntary simplicity as sustainable ways of life”, and to the Arctic Research Centre at Umeå University (ARCUM) and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for their support of the 2019 Lifestyle Migration Hub Meeting, during which we presented this research.

References Ahlberg, J. (2008). Efter kärnfamiljen – Familjepraktiker efter skilsmässa (Doctoral thesis, Örebro studies in sociology 11). Örebro: Örebro University. Alexander, S., & Ussher, S. (2012). The voluntary simplicity movement: A multi-national survey analysis in theoretical context. Journal of Consumer Culture, 12, 66–86. Axelsson, Å. (2019). Jag lämnar ekorrhjulet. Stockholm: Norstedts. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Beck, U. (2000). The brave new world of work. Cambridge: Polity Press.

214 

M. Eimermann et al.

Beck, U., Bonss, W., & Lau, C. (2003). The theory of reflexive modernization: Problematic, hypotheses and research programme. Theory, Culture and Society, 20, 1–33. Benson, M. C., & O’Reilly, K. (Eds.). (2009). Lifestyle migration; expectations, aspirations and experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. Boyle, P., & Halfacree, K. (Eds.). (1998). Migration into rural areas. Chichester: John Wiley. Breakspear, C., & Hamilton, C. (2004). Getting a Life  – Understanding the downshifting phenomenon in Australia (Discussion paper nr. 62). Manuka: The Australia Institute. Carbin, M., Overud, J., & Kvist, E. (2017). Feminism som lönearbete. Stockholm: Leopard förlag. Castree, N. (2006). Place: Connections and boundaries in an interconnected world. In S. Holloway, S. Rice, & G. Valentine (Eds.), Key concepts in geography (pp. 165–185). London: Sage. Champion, T., & Hugo, G. (Eds.). (2004). New forms of urbanization. Beyond the urban-rural dichotomy. Aldershot: Ashgate. Etzioni, A. (1998). Voluntary simplicity: Characterization, select psychological implications, and societal consequences. Journal of Economic Psychology, 19, 619–643. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity. Stanford: University Press. Grigsby, M. (2004). Buying time and getting by: The voluntary simplicity movement. New York: State University of New York Press. Hagbert, P., Finnveden, G., Fuehrer, P., Svenfelt, Å., Alfredsson, E., Aretun, Å., et al. (2018). Framtider bortom BNP-tillväxt. Slutrapport från forskningsprogrammet ‘Bortom BNP-tillväxt: Scenarier för hållbart samhällsbyggande. Stockholm: KTH Skolan för Arkitektur och Samhällsbyggnad. Hamilton, C., & Mail, E. (2003). Downshifting in Australia – A Sea-change in the pursuit of happiness (Discussion paper nr. 50). Manuka: The Australia Institute. Hampton, R.  S. (2008). Downshifting, leisure meanings and transformation in leisure (Doctoral thesis). Pennsylvania State University. Hedberg, C., & Do Carmo, R. M. (2012). Translocal ruralism. Dordrecht: Springer. Hedberg, C., & Eimermann, M. (2019). Två forskare om “downshifting”: fler fördelar än nackdelar med att växla ned. Aftonbladet, pp. 4–5. Hennink, M., Hutter, I., & Bailey, A. (2011). Qualitative research methods. London: Sage.

11  Is Downshifting Easier in the Countryside? Focus Group… 

215

Jackson, T. (2005). Live better by consuming less? Is there a double dividend in sustainable consumption? Journal of Industrial Ecology, 9, 19–36. Jonstad, D. (2012). Kollaps, livet vid civilisationens slut. Stockholm: Ordfront. Jonstad, D. (2016). Jordad. Stockholm: Ordfront. Juniu, S. (2000). Downshifting: Regaining the essence of leisure. Journal of Leisure Research, 32, 69–73. Kennedy, E. H. (2011). Rethinking ecological citizenship: The role of neighbourhood networks in cultural change. Environmental Politics, 20, 843–860. Kennedy, E.  H., Krahn, H., & Krogman, N.  T. (2013). Downshifting: An exploration of motivations, quality of life, and environmental practices. Sociological Forum, 28(December), 764–783. Larsson, J. (2015). Downshifting. In D. T. Cook & R. J. Michael (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of consumption and consumer studies (pp. 248–250). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Lindberg, O., & Lindberg, M. (2019). Ut ur ekorrhjulet: så blir du också ekonomiskt fri. Hägersten: Pug Förlag. Lindroth, K. (2017). Sammanhållning i lokalsamhället. In J.  Syssner, S. Häggroth, & U. Ramberg (Eds.), Att äga framtiden. Linköping: LiU Tryck. Lorenzen, J. (2012). Going green: The process of lifestyle change. Sociological Forum, 27, 94–116. Lundmark, L. (2010). Mobilising the rural: Post-productivism and the new economy. Proposal for Formas grant “research leaders of the future in the area rural development”. Umeå: Umeå University (unpublished). Massey, D. (1995). The conceptualisation of place. In D.  Massey & P.  Jess (Eds.), A place in the world? (pp. 46–79). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Saltzman, A. (1991). Downshifting: Reinventing success on a slower track. New York: HarperCollins. Schierup, C.-U., Hansen, P., & Castles, S. (2006). Migration, citizenship, and the European welfare state. Oxford: University Press. Schor, J. B. (1998). The overspent American. New York: HarperCollins. Schor, J. B. (2005). Sustainable consumption and worktime reduction. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 9, 37–50. Shucksmith, M. (2018). Re-imagining the rural: From rural idyll to good countryside. Journal of Rural Studies, 59, 163–172. Swedish Government bill. 2016/17: 104. National food strategy. Stockholm: Sweden’s Government. Syssner, J. (2018). Visioner och visionslöshet – idéer om framtidens landsbygd. In J. Syssner (Ed.), Nya visioner för landsbygden. Boxholm: Linnefors förlag.

216 

M. Eimermann et al.

Tan, P. (2000). Leaving the rat race to get a life: A study of midlife career downshifting (Doctoral thesis). Swinburne University. Thrift, N. (1999). Steps to an ecology of place. In D. Massey, J. A. Allen, & P. Sarre (Eds.), Human geography today (pp. 295–323). Chichester: Wiley. United Nations (U.N.). (2015). Sustainable development goals. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org. Accessed 20 Aug 2019.

12 Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming Alexandre Dubois and Michelle Thompson

The Myth/s: The Demise of Farming This chapter departs from the myth of the demise of small-scale farming at the periphery and aims to illustrate how new associations in the local food systems of remote rural settings have provided a lively new scene for producers to pursue their farm-based lifestyles and for consumers to adopt more sustainable and climate-friendly food consumption attitudes. Despite diminishing in overall number, the persistence of local agriculture in the Swedish northern inland forces us to investigate the ways that farmers have adapted their specific style of farming (Van der Ploeg 2000) to the requirements of contemporary food production and consumption. This style of farming embraces low intensity, small size, mixed farming,

A. Dubois (*) Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] M. Thompson Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_12

217

218 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

agroforestry and pluriactivity (Dubois and Carson 2019). What remains to be understood is how this style of farming may be pursued at the fringe of the dominant agricultural productivism regime, grounded on ever-­ increasing yields, scale and profits. In other places, “new associationalism”, a notion introduced by Marsden et al. (2002) to frame the examination of emerging actor networks originating from agri-food diversification, has illustrated how producers acquire new skills and competences and develop new ways of coordinating their operations. This notion has been put to fruition by rural scholars to show how small family farms in remote rural settings have proven to be highly resilient and that a much more “telling” story in the context is “the persistence, rather than the disappearance, of the family farm” (Shucksmith and Rønningen 2011, p. 276). What our previous research in the case of North Sweden has shown is how these producers have modified their business models in order to expand consumer outreach and marketing channels (Dubois 2018) and mobilize knowledge and communities (Dubois 2019). In our understanding, the traction of food sustainability policy radically changes the prospects for pursuing farming at the periphery. Under this new paradigm, all places need to contribute to the sustainability transition of the global food system and no agricultural asset, even from the less favoured areas, may remain untapped (Dubois and Carson 2019). The resilience of the global food systems relies on the development of more diversified agro-ecological systems enabling sustainable intensification (Pretty et al. 2018; Rockström et al. 2017). In this scheme of things, the potential of revamped local food systems and their impact on community development has been a focus of attention by rural scholars (Kneafsey et al. 2013). This changing context in contemporary agriculture provides a timely forum to challenge the myth of unhinged demise of farming at the periphery and reflect upon its place in future agri-food landscapes. We use three examples to illustrate the range of local experimentations deployed in the Swedish North to revitalize the local food system. Through the use of text boxes, we put into perspective these north Swedish experiences and discussions with inserts from the Australian context. Australian agriculture has operated under a regime of a

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

219

liberalized, market-oriented competitive productivism (Andrée et  al. 2010; Dibden et al. 2009). Family farms remain the pillar of broadacre and dairy farming and of rural communities in regional Australia (Bjørkhaug and Richards 2008). In light of the negative social and environmental impacts of productivist farming and faced with the “get big or get out” dilemma (Bjørkhaug and Richards 2008, p. 102) which tends to “‘squeeze’ farmers off the land” (Fielke and Bardsley 2015, p. 109), scholars have urged the necessity to “accommodate public-good values such as protection of biodiversity and sustainability of small communities” (Hamblin 2009, p. 1202) in agricultural policy. In that respect, although North Swedish experiences may not be directly transferable to the Australian context, it provides some new insights to understand how new styles of farming may be pursued in peripheral small places, which are common also in Australia.

 he ‘New Associations’ of Local T Food Networks The conventional food industry has induced an increased physical, sociocultural and moral distanciation in producer-consumer relations (Chiffoleau 2009; Dowler et al. 2009; Goodman and DuPuis 2002), and involving a high number of intermediaries (Murdoch et  al. 2000). Alternative Food Networks (AFN—see Box 12.1) address these concerns and propose various novel food supply models showcasing a high level of agency (Le Velly and Dufeu 2016) and allowing producers and consumers to “collectively gain autonomy from the industry” (Forney and Häberli 2016, p.  149). The emergence of AFN has been understood as a dual process of resocialization and respatialization of food practices (Jarosz 2008; Moragues-Faus and Sonnino 2012; Sonnino and Marsden 2006). Local food systems emerging through such new social practices contribute to the “recreation of place” (Feagan 2007, p. 30). Resulting new associations and communities coalesce around the co-production of new meanings of food based on agro-ecological values and practices, community cohesion and economic fairness (Chiffoleau 2009; Kneafsey et  al.

220 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

2013). Scholars have also emphasized the potential multiplier effect of these new relational arrangements for the local economy, for example, by promoting diversification, and especially agri-tourism (Kneafsey et  al. 2013), or enhancing the circularity of “food money” (Mundler and Laughrea 2016). Bos and Owen (2016) also suggested that online connectivity has been instrumental in promoting emergent virtual spaces of participation in  local food schemes offering a low cost, real-time and direct platform to maintain social interactions among producers but also between producers and consumers. Box 12.1  Australian Perspectives on AFN Fielke (2015) reported observations of “a small percentage of farmers us[ing] alternative food networks to survive, incorporate multifunctional ideals, and pursue more sustainable methods of production and marketing”. Andrée et al. (2010) summarized the three goals motivating farmers’ participation to AFN: (1) capture greater value in the supply chain; (2) make independent decisions and reduce overreliance on intermediaries and (3) protect or enhance the environmental sustainability by choosing to internalize the costs of these landscape values into the price premium paid by consumers. The development of farmers markets (about 150 across Australia) has been instrumental in enabling producers to exploit this niche (Fielke 2015; Fielke and Bardsley 2013). The organization of these markets is regulated at national level by the Australian Farmers’ Market Association which emphasizes the freshness of the produce sold, the importance of the market as a public venue for the community and the recognition of farm-­ origin and other value-laden information associated with the produce and recognizable by the consumer (Fielke and Bardsley 2013).Although concerning only a minority of (predominantly small) farms up until now, AFN has been significant by offering if not a salvation at least a viable alternative to generate “reasonable income” and maintain farm-based livelihoods for small-scale farmers “precisely at a point when competitive-productivism was forcing them to find new directions or get out of farming altogether” (Andrée et al. 2010, p. 312). However, critical issues for the development of AFN in Australia are the consideration of farmers’ markets more as a springboard to brand speciality quality food globally than to promote community-based food sustainability practices (Andrée et al. 2010). Another aspect is the limited range of food (fruits, vegetables and meat) currently produced thus representing a minor contribution to Australia’s overall food security (Dixon and Richards 2016). Finally, AFN are usually associated with “urban agriculture”, favouring producers located at the urban fringe, (Dixon and Richards 2016) and is thus not very well embedded in practices throughout most of regional Australia.

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

221

All these practices point to a renewed sense of belonging and the creation of epistemic communities around the notion of local food. Understanding how small peripheral farms undertake the agroecology turn thus requires examining the new agency of farmers, the emergence of new associations and the promotion of knowledge exchanges and innovative practices at the (geographical and institutional) fringe of the dominant agricultural regime (Dubois 2019). Previous investigations of local food arrangements in the Swedish North showed that trustful relations with consumers allow northern producers to undertake quasi-­ organic practices, that is, production practices that are organic in principle, but not formally certified as such, creating locally negotiated patches of organic values and unlocking new marketing opportunities (Dubois 2019). These producers tend to engage in motley and geographically distributed associations with fellow producers and food professionals in order to valorize food communities through the collective constitution of new values and meanings of quality food (Dubois 2019). Moreover, producers engaging in short food supply chains mobilize a variety of market arrangements, more or less spatially extended, at different points in time in order to sustain interactions and trade with consumers (Dubois 2018).

Trends in Farming in Southern Lapland Our case study area includes the municipalities of Dorotea, Lycksele, Malå, Sorsele, Storuman, Vilhelmina and Åsele in the County of Västerbotten, and Arjeplog and Arvidsjaur in the County of Norrbotten. This territory corresponds more or less to the southern half of the cultural region (landskap in Swedish) of Lapland, hence we call the case study region hereafter Southern Lapland. In the present section, we use official statistics from the Swedish Board of Agriculture (Jordbruksverket) to provide a descriptive analysis of the current state of the farming sector in Southern Lapland. Farming has very little bearing in the local economies of the Swedish North (Carson et al. 2017). The most common type of farms was, and still is, small-scale farming ventures. Figure 12.1 shows the evolution of the number of farms by size from 1981 to 2016. In 1981, the farm

222 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

structure showed a hierarchical structure: small farms (2–5 ha) were the most common type of farms, the following category (5–10 ha) being the next most common and so on. Farms larger than 50 ha were almost non-­ existent. Overall, small-scale farming was the predominant type of farming in Western Lapland. In 2016, small farms are still the most common type, but their actual number has drastically reduced since their 1981 level, which has led to a certain evening out between the various farm size categories. The surges in the number of registered smaller farm ventures around 1996 and 2005 were respectively due to the accession of Sweden to the EU in 1995, shifting Swedish agricultural policy from deregulation in the early 1990s to re-regulation in 1995 (Eriksson 2016), and to the introduction of the single payment scheme supporting farming income based on the extent of the farmed areas rather than production (Wästfelt and Zhang 2016). The quantitative analysis of the evolution of the farming structure displayed in Fig. 12.1 seems to support the myth of the demise of farming in Southern Lapland. In a recent contribution, Dubois and Carson

Fig. 12.1  Evolution of the number of farms, by farm size, in Southern Lapland from 1981 to 2016. (Source: Jordbruksverket)

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

223

(2019) showed that this evolution entailed less a process of restructuring than of thinning out (Dubois and Carson 2019), highlighting the asymmetric spatial effects of small farm decrease on the already scattered geographical distribution of small farms across the region. Historically, the long distances between farms in the region was linked to the availability of arable land, scarce under those climatic and topographical conditions, and the access to extensive woodland areas, which became a critical factor for the persistence of farming in the region due to the importance of forestry in farm settlements (Rudberg and Bylund 1959). Hence, although small-scale farming exists in all geographical settings, the characteristic feature of upland farming lies in the specificity of its social geography. As thinning out unfolds, the relative increase of the physical distance that separates producers from one another may hamper endeavours of coordinating actions with respect to production, distribution or value-adding activities and may, in time, constitute a risk of enhanced social marginalization of these farmers vis-à-vis their home communities. This is all the more important for communities themselves as farmers have traditionally been very engaged in local politics and governance. Multi-occupational lifestyles have been a defining trait of farming households in the Southern Lapland region, complementing farming revenues with off-farm work and diversification activities (Dubois and Carson 2019; Persson 1983; Rudberg and Bylund 1959). To get a better sense of the significance of such multi-occupational lifestyles in today’s Southern Lapland farming, we analysed the responses provided by Southern Lapland farmers to the triennial farmer survey conducted by the Board of Agriculture. Results are displayed in Table 12.1. In 2016, 12% of responding Southern Lapland farmers state having a primary off-­ farm occupation and another 62% have one as a secondary occupation (see Table 12.1 for total figures). In addition, 62% of the spouses (i.e. out of the households with a spouse) had a secondary off-farm occupation, while having a primary off-farm work being rare (below 5%). At national level, the 2016 survey responses revealed that 48% (40% in 2013) of responding farmers had an off-farm work as a primary occupation and 19% as a secondary one (Jordbruksverket 2017). At the national level, the proportion of spouses having a primary, respectively secondary, off-­ farm occupation was of 63% and 7% in 2016. Overall, these results

224 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

Table 12.1  Participation in off-farm work by members of farming households in Southern Lapland municipalities Other professional occupation in 2016

ARJEPLOG   Farmer   Spouse ARVIDSJAUR   Farmer   Spouse DOROTEA   Farmer   Spouse LYCKSELE   Farmer   Spouse MALÅ   Farmer   Spouse SORSELE   Farmer   Spouse STORUMAN   Farmer   Spouse VILHELMINA   Farmer   Spouse ÅSELE   Farmer   Spouse SOUTHERN LAPLAND TOTAL   Farmer   Spouse

No

Yes, as secondary

Yes, as main

9 9

– –

– –

9 17

25 27

11 –

– –

28 11

16 5

18 4

33 30

– –

– –

12 6

– –

19 19

34 22

– –

17 11

42 17

7 –

26 18

43 31

12 6

4 7

22 13

– –

Nr businesses surveyed 9

44

44

51

12

53

66

81

26

387 101 239 85 158

46 11

Source: Jordbruksverket

indicate that, unlike Swedish farmers, Southern Lapland farmers do not enrol in off-farm work and that the household primary revenues are generated by on-farm activities. Based on survey responses, we examine the extent to which farmers are able to generate other revenue streams, thanks to on-farm but

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

225

non-­ farming activities, that is, dealing with farm diversification. Figure  12.2 shows the other gainful activities that Southern Lapland farmers are engaged in. Some diversification activities seek to valorize further the commodity produced on the farm, such as food (17%) and wood (7%) value-adding (see Fig. 12.2). Other activities use the landscape qualities of the farm as a location. This is the case for tourism (18%) or renewable energy (7%). Finally, other activities focus on the diffusion and valorization of knowledge about the farmer’s lifestyle, whether directly related to farming or other interests. This is the case, for instance, for education (14%) or crafts (24%). The engagement in diversification activities aims at valorizing further ‘the farm’ as a means of commodity production, a place within a specific landscape or a lifestyle learning process. Overall, this engagement in various diversification activities across Southern Lapland contributes to a reflection about the role of farming/ ers in achieving sustainable multifunctional agriculture and rural

Fig. 12.2  Other gainful activities undertaken by Southern Lapland farmers (n = 399). (Source: Jordbruksverket)

226 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

livelihoods “at the edge” of the European Union, pursuing Ilbery et al.’s (2004, p. 332) vision to “reinstall ‘the farm’ as a central arena for delivering ‘socially managed’, sustainable rural development”.

New Associations in the North In their study on the perception of change in small villages, Peters et al. (2018) pointed out to the disparity between external assessment and internal perception of ‘shrinking’ as decline or change. We deem that the same applies to our myth: the overall reduction in the number of farms tend to accredit the myth of demise of small-scale farming, while the diversification strategies deployed reveal farmers’ ambition to pursue pluriactive farm-based livelihoods. In the second analytical section of this chapter, we examine three initiatives, A Culinary Region, REKO-ring Vilhelmina-Dorotea-Åsele and Inlandsmat cooperative, that show how Southern Lapland farmers are engaged in collective processes improving the prospects for selling their farm products. The discussion of each case is based on empirical material collected during interviews with key informants and complemented with information material available online. To emphasize the distinct logics behind each of our three cases, we used the categorization of different models of local food initiatives developed by Chiffoleau (2019) in the context of France as an analytical framework. The project model promotes stronger coordination among territorial actors at different positions of the regional food chain. The community model addresses the role of civic engagement as a catalyst for the co-creation between producers and consumers of local food initiatives. The business model characterizes novel cooperation networks among small producers set out to implement a joint marketing channel creating higher visibility and a more substantial and diverse offering, as well as splitting the costs of managing distribution. Table 12.2 provides the main characteristics of each case.

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

227

Table 12.2  Summary table of main characteristics of local food initiatives Chiffoleau (2019), adapted.

A culinary region

REKO-ring

Coordination Project Community model Reduce the costs of Aim Showcasing and transaction for valorizing regional selling small food speciality and batches quality food Increasing the use of Make the availability of local produce in the local produce hospitality sector known to residents Efficient food transportation Key actors Chefs and restaurants Consumers Marketing through Organization Regional cuisine closed Facebook Inter-­dependencies group between producers Delivery by and artisan food producers at and hospitality agreed place and professionals time Monthly pick-up meetups Municipal residents Visitors and urban Targeted residents market-­ Chefs, producers, base food stores

Inlandsmat.se

Business Cooperative of small producers Offering complimentary high-quality produce Promote value-adding Pooling resources and increased visibility Producers Internet shop Bulk retail by multi-­kilo boxes

Anyone supporting local agriculture in the north

Lapland: A Culinary Region We met the project coordinator on two separate occasions, in 2017 and 2019, for a semi-structured interview (about one hour each) aimed at discussing the goals, set up and activities of the project. This initiative is a three-year project that involves actors from the local food industry in seven inland municipalities of the county of Västerbotten and two (2) in the county of Norrbotten. The project is managed by the municipality of Vilhelmina and is co-funded through EU Agricultural

228 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

Policy funds. The regional branch of the Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF), the agricultural advisory service association Hushållningssällskapet, the Sami Parliament and the national rural lobbying organization Hela Sverige Ska Leva are key stakeholders of the initiative. Its overarching objective is to create a platform for promoting a living countryside, to offer a more diversified range of regional produce and value-added products to consumers and to valorize the tourism potential and visitors’ experiences of the region through high-quality, speciality food. In operational terms, the project focuses on promoting networking and filling in the ‘competence gaps’ of food actors in the region by organizing courses, seminars and events across Southern Lapland. The project organizes both physical meeting places and virtual spaces for continued exchanges between the participants. A critical issue that the project addresses is the generally low interest in food in the region. The focus on fine dining and high-quality speciality food is an attempt to develop a more holistic perspective on regional food by lifting up the entire regional food sector rather than not just the producers, as illustrated in the Australian example in Box 12.2. The project not only supports the production of high-quality food, but also promotes new outlets for consumers to experience it. The project targets three types of food professionals: chefs, food store owners and producers. The competence development activities seek to better match the supply and demand of speciality and high-quality food regionally. On the one hand, it promotes the use of native and speciality produce in regional cuisine, especially in fine dining restaurants and tourist resorts. On the other hand, it helps producers improve the overall quality and range of their products so that they fit into the standards and requirements of the hospitality sector. The project thus acts both as an external knowledge interface, mobilizing knowledge available ‘out there’ and adapting it to the regional context, and as a networking platform promoting a mutual dialogue and new coalitions among regional food professionals across municipal boundaries.

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

229

Box 12.2  TNQ Regional Food Network and the RealFood Network Similar to the Lapland case, a food initiative in north Queensland, Australia, also exemplifies Chiffoleau’s (2019) project model of a food initiative. The Tropical North Queensland (TNQ) Regional Food Network uses a short supply chain to enhance the distribution of local produce locally by promoting regional food products and experiences under the brand Taste Paradise. The types of foods available in the network include tea, coffee and tropical fruits, as well as cheeses, chocolates, vanilla, honey and liqueurs. The availability of regional foods is promoted via the network’s website, food trails and participation in food events with the aim of showcasing the region’s food offering to a visitor market in addition to the wider community. The promotion of local food experiences is a natural pairing of north Queensland’s two main economic industries—agriculture and tourism. To ensure the integrity of the brand, and the links back to local agriculture, any produce or value-added products promoted and distributed via the network undergo an accreditation process. Accreditation provides assurance to producers, suppliers and consumers that: the products have come directly from a local producer; value-added products are manufactured locally and feature local ingredients; and outlets promoting the network’s members under the Taste Paradise brand have authentically sourced the produce and value-added products from members through the supply chain. Source: https://www.tasteparadise.com.au/ The RealFood Network is similar to Chiffoleau’s (2019) community model exemplified by REKO-rings in Sweden (see below). Established over five  years ago in Tropical North Queensland, Australia, this Network is based on a community-supported agriculture model that empowers the regional community to take control of its food options. The RealFood Network connects community members with local food via its weekly market stall located at a central farmers’ market and the delivery of RealFood boxes filled with seasonal vegetables and fruits. The Network aims to create benefits for farmers, communities and families by supporting local farmers and assisting in their transition to organic farming practices, encouraging healthy eating habits through educational programmes and changing long-term consumption behaviour by growing consumer knowledge of how and where food is grown and sourced. Source: http://www.realfoodnetwork.com.au/

Overall, the project aims at supporting farmers in the region by creating new local outlets for their produce and thus by generating more revenue streams improving the profitability prospects of farming activities.

230 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

The food events organized by the project also offer some visibility and recognition for the farmers. As shown in a previous study, these temporary relational arrangements are a necessary starting point for developing stronger long-term producer-consumer relations (Dubois 2018). By showcasing not only regional produce but also the producers themselves in various food outlets, the project seeks to reconnect consumers with the social and ecological values of growing food. Finally, by providing collective courses and multi-actor fora with regional and extra-regional participants (i.e. outside the Southern Lapland region) instead of supporting hand-picked sectors or actors, the project seeks to promote what Aubrée et  al. (2018) labelled as a new culture of food and collaboration. In a previous study, the importance of heterogeneous networks as a trigger for innovative behaviour by North Swedish producers was already pointed out (Dubois 2019). The ambition of the project is to induce the emergence of Southern Lapland as a terroir (Barham 2003) by recoupling local agriculture and community development and by using food as a catalyst to create a renewed sense of belonging to the land.

REKO-Ring Vilhelmina-Dorotea-Åsele In April 2019, one of the authors interviewed one of the two producers from Vilhelmina who started this initiative and went on to take part, as an observer, to an information meeting that this person held in Storuman, the neighbouring municipality, right after. The aim of the information meeting was potentially to recruit producers from Storuman to expand the geographical outreach of the ring. We followed up this compilation of insights by looking at posts uploaded by producers and consumers in the Facebook group, as well as general information about REKO-rings found online. REKO-rings are consumer-driven collectives based on a model developed in Finland, itself inspired by the French Association pour le Maintien d’une Agriculture Paysanne (AMAP) arrangements. The ring promotes direct, honest and factual exchanges between consumers and producers. REKO-rings are operated through closed groups on social media (i.e. Facebook) based on geographic proximity. Working online facilitates

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

231

direct, real-time and personal interactions between participating producers and consumers at a distance, and simplifies the organization of the logistical and transactional aspects of buying food locally. Using social media as a communication platform transcends the ring as an epistemic community. Participating consumers and producers are free to get involved as they wish with no additional fee other than the eventual transactions. Whereas farmers’ markets are essentially supply-driven, REKO-rings are demand-driven as they allow consumers to choose what they want to buy beforehand. The most important task of the ring administrator is to validate the entry and membership of consumers and to ensure that producers follow the ethical requirements for selling foodstuff in the ring. The Vilhelmina-Dorotea-Åsele REKO-ring is one of the northernmost of its kind in Sweden. According to the dedicated Hushållningssällskapet internet page, other REKO-rings in the North can be found around coastal regional centres (Umeå, Skellefteå and Luleå). The ring is thus an interesting experiment of how local food initiatives may develop in small consumer markets. The network was initiated by two producers from Vilhelmina: one initiator also works at LRF and the other was in the local hospitality sector (owning the main conference hotel) before shifting to farming and value-adding. The ring has gained momentum in Vilhelmina and Åsele and gathers 1200 members in the Facebook group. The aim is to have up to 15 producers, and a more complete offering and future developments would be, at the time of the interview, to expand to the neighbouring municipality of Storuman, although the authors later on noted that a separate REKO-ring had started in Storuman since the interview. Pick-up dates are decided by the administrator on a regular basis and, in the case of this REKO-ring, they take place on a monthly basis on the same day for the three localities (Vilhelmina, Dorotea and Åsele). After the pick-up dates are set up, producers can post a message with the assortment and pricing of the products available for that specific occasion. Interested consumers then reply directly to the post and the transaction is organized directly between the producer and consumer. A consumer may buy different products from different producers and pick them up on the same occasion. On the pick-up date, producers meet consumers at

232 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

an outdoor location. For instance, in Vilhelmina, pick-ups are organized outside the municipal community centre, Folkets hus. REKO-rings are especially adapted to small-scale farmers that do not produce food that is ‘special enough’ to command a premium, that is maximizing revenue, in traditional venues like the farmers’ market. Instead, economic viability in marketing limited quantities and small market locations is improved by reducing the costs of transaction and transportation in money and time. The optimization of costs associated with food marketing is especially important to Swedish upland farmers in light of their pluriactive livelihoods: time saved from marketing and logistics can be used to generate income through other gainful activities. Participating in REKO-rings help producers better manage their business model. For instance, they are able to adapt the volume, type of production, packaging and distribution of foodstuff based on actual demand, to anticipate the revenues generated by each regular sales to the household economy and to avoid the financial losses engendered by food wasted on unnecessary transports, especially for vegetables and meat, as only products that are already paid for in advance by the consumer are shipped to pick-up locations.

Inlandsmat.se During the period 2015–2019, we performed semi-structured interviews with six producers (one producer was interviewed one year apart). Interviews with farmers addressed the different stages of farm development as well as their views about the context of farming in Southern Lapland and their take on the Inlandsmat initiative. Interviews lasted in general between an hour and an hour-and-a-half. Inlandsmat started as an association of small producers located in different municipalities of Västerbotten’s inland region. To date, the association consists of 15 producers involved in various types of food production and processing: beef, pork, lamb, vegetables, dairy products or wild berries. Member producers have also competences in other activities such as contracting, tourism, food marketing or meat processing. The association emphasizes the transparent origin (tydligt ursprung in Swedish) of the

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

233

product on the internet page. It is important to note that the offering does not include speciality produce, that is, food that is usually mentally associated by consumers with the North (e.g. reindeer, moose). Berries could be the exception, but they are not cultivated by local producers, rather handpicked in the wild by seasonal foreign workforce (cf. Hedberg 2013). The motivation for the creation of the association was less to market food as a collective than as a way to create a meeting place for fellow producers to exchange and inspire each other on farming or more mundane matters. The association thus functions as a community of practices mitigating the social isolation of producers resulting in the thinning out of Swedish upland farming (Dubois and Carson 2019). Long distances between producers and the short growing season also make it difficult for them to efficiently collaborate on production matters. The association members meet regularly (twice a year). Value-adding and high-quality are important characteristics in order for the association to find its niche in the current food landscape. In recent years, the association has taken the path of a joint platform for food marketing in order to better valorize the strong level of cooperation already existing between association members. The idea was first to create a REKO-ring. Many individual producers across the region already use social media, and Facebook in particular, for direct food marketing (Dubois 2018). The ring was launched in spring 2018 but did not succeed. One reason for this apparent failure was the precipitation in the process as a launching event was organized without having sufficient online visibility, that is a critical number of local followers. The association was recently granted EU-funding to develop a dedicated online shop. The online shop is expected to make it easier for the producers to sell in a format that is more convenient for them in terms of logistics, for example, either for larger retail (but not bulk) quantities, typically like 5–10  kg meat boxes, or for value-added products (marmalade, syrup, dried meat or fruits) that have a longer shelf life and are easier to ship by mail. The online shop will make it easier for private consumers to know in (almost) real-time product availability. It will also make the association’s offering more visible and better known to professionals from the hospitality sector, which has been a hindrance up to now. The ambition

234 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

of the online shop is also to reach out to more distant customers. For instance, the berry company already has developed a customer base around Falun and Örebro in Mid-Sweden. Setting up the online shop, which received EU-funding through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), is expected to help the association capitalizing on the changing attitude of Swedish consumers vis-à-vis quality and speciality food and tapping into the pool of consumers that are cognitively and emotionally connected to Southern Lapland as a region as those are more likely to want to pay a premium for authentic regional products.

Conclusions In this chapter, we sought to challenge the myth that the steady decline in the number of smaller farms in Southern Lapland over the last decades is an indication of the ineluctable demise of small-scale farming in Swedish upland areas. The first part of the chapter provided some quantitative markers based on the analysis of official agricultural data. The analysis showed that on-farm diversification, that is into forestry, tourism or value-adding, more so than pursuing off-farm occupations, for example in other local industries or services, is the driver of pluriactive farm-­ based livelihoods. Upland farms thus play a central role in achieving place-based rural diversification and a circular bio-based economy through the development of “‘short circuit’ rural economies” (Scott 2019). In a previous study (Dubois and Carson 2019), we raised the issue that agricultural thinning out is the main challenge for sustaining small-scale farming in upland areas in the future: farm abandonment increases the average distance separating operating farms, which makes it more difficult for remaining farmers to cooperate operationally. The combination of a short vegetation period and an extensive spreading of farmland limits their ability to share equipment and provides in-kind labour force as harvest times occur in relatively narrow windows. Another consequence of this thinning out is the increased sense of isolation of farmers (Dubois and Carson 2019). As their community of peers becomes smaller and as farms are typically located on the outskirts of small villages or towns, remaining farmers run the risk of becoming socially marginalized from

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

235

their surrounding communities (Smithers et al. 2005). For Smithers et al. (2005, p. 293), the revitalization of agriculture-community linkages aims at “preserving and elevating the social and economic importance of agriculture for communities” and further advanced two main avenues for doing so: better-integrating farms in the local service economy, for example through agri-tourism; and reconnecting producers and consumers through short food supply chains. Our views on this are that both avenues need to be more jointly approached in order to reinstate the role of local agriculture as an institution for community development (Bjørkhaug 2012). The categorization of our three cases using Chiffoleau’s typology helps us understand how different regional food initiatives contribute to the strengthening of agriculture-community linkages. The Culinary Region project provides a platform to establish new partnerships between quality food producers and tourism professionals. In doing so, farmers would indirectly benefit from the new opportunities from the booming Arctic tourism industry (Müller and Brouder 2014). The REKO-ring offers a virtual space enhancing the social embeddedness of food in the community (Bos and Owen 2016). The use of mobile payment applications and the scheduling of pick-up occasions reduce the transaction and transportation costs for farmers, but the latter also offers the possibility for temporary face-to-face interactions that are fundamental for the development of personal trust in local food (Dubois 2018). The Inlandsmat association shows how regional farmers are able to make use of digital platform to capitalize on their cooperation through joint marketing. We argue that the multiplicity of initiatives provides a smorgasbord of options for farmers in order for them to experiment with varied business models and find their niche within the local food system. However, this multiplicity may lead to tensions within the relatively confined local food system and counterproductive effects on community development. For instance, the Culinary Region project coordinator saw the expansion of the REKO-ring model as a threat for the survival of local food stores in remote rural localities by competing with their main offering, that is food. The closing of food stores would reduce the access to basic services in the locality and considerably affect the living conditions in the long

236 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

run. One solution that she expressed was that local food stores could serve as pick-up location. The illustrations of new associationalism in the North give us concrete pointers of how small producers change the way they organize themselves, individually and collectively, and how they liaise with new types of actors, near or far, in order to create alternative pathways towards food sustainability in such a specific territorial context. The development of a local food system in Southern Lapland requires new types of competences and skills more associated with business management than farming, including marketing, creating new products, food processing, packaging and distribution. A newly established beef producer from the Inlandsmat initiative noted that these ‘soft skills’ have become central for producers intending to run a successful local food enterprise. The participation to new associations and networks provides creative spaces for small producers to acquire such tacit knowledge and experiment with new products or solutions in collaboration with actors of the regional food chain, including upstream (e.g. charcuterie masters, cheesemakers etc), downstream (e.g. fine food boutiques, restaurants, private consumers) and sideway (with other producers both locally and in other places) relations (Dubois 2018, 2019). What about our myth? Is a demise of small farms ineluctable? There are clearly structural challenges for the further development of the local food system in Southern Lapland. Access to a regional abattoir, uncertain demand from consumers in the community, project fatigue or stringent hygiene regulations create friction points that make driving a small-scale venture difficult. However, there are opportunities that have only recently emerged: • The climate change crisis has raised the awareness of the public and, not the least, of public actors (state agencies, regions and municipalities) about the role of farming as a problem, but also as a solution, to the crisis • The high access to mobile broadband in the Swedish North compared to other remote rural places, given farmers and food actors the tool to coordinate their actions and organize the local food system ‘at a distance’.

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

237

• The public health concerns that promote healthy food diets and a more careful attention to the origin of food. Consequently, there are forces both promoting and retarding farming development. In any case, the persistence of farming in Southern Lappland to this point is perhaps the strongest indicator of the future, with the critical question more usefully considering not just persistence, but contribution to the economic, social and cultural fabric of the north.

References Andrée, P., Dibden, J., Higgins, V., & Cocklin, C. (2010). Competitive productivism and Australia’s emerging ‘alternative’ Agri-food networks: Producing for farmers’ markets in Victoria and beyond. Australian Geographer, 41, 307–322. Aubrée, P., Chiffoleau, Y., & Villarroël, A. (2018). Coopération entre agriculteurs et artisans commerçants dans les circuits alimentaires de proximité. Innovations Agronomiques, 63, 57–69. Barham, E. (2003). Translating terroir: The global challenge of French aoc labeling. Journal of Rural Studies, 19, 127–138. Bjørkhaug, H. (2012). Exploring the sociology of agriculture: Family farmers in Norway  – Future or past food producers? In D.  Erasga (Ed.), Sociological landscape-theories, realities and trends (pp. 283–304). Rijeka: Intech Open. Bjørkhaug, H., & Richards, C. A. (2008). Multifunctional agriculture in policy and practice? A comparative analysis of Norway and Australia. Journal of Rural Studies, 24, 98–111. Bos, E., & Owen, L. (2016). Virtual reconnection: The online spaces of alternative food networks in England. Journal of Rural Studies, 45, 1–14. Carson, D.  B., Carson, D.  A., Porter, R., Ahlin, C.  Y., & Sköld, P. (2017). Decline, adaptation or transformation: New perspectives on demographic change in resource peripheries in Australia and Sweden. Comparative Population Studies, 41, 397–406. Chiffoleau, Y. (2009). From politics to co-operation: The dynamics of embeddedness in alternative food supply chains. Sociologia Ruralis, 49, 218–235. Chiffoleau, Y. (2019). Les circuits courts alimentaires. Entre marché et innovation sociale. Liège: Editions Érès.

238 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

Dibden, J., Potter, C., & Cocklin, C. (2009). Contesting the neoliberal project for agriculture: Productivist and multifunctional trajectories in the European Union and Australia. Journal of Rural Studies, 25, 299–308. Dixon, J., & Richards, C. (2016). On food security and alternative food networks: Understanding and performing food security in the context of urban bias. Agriculture and Human Values, 33, 191–202. Dowler, E., Kneafsey, M., Cox, R., & Holloway, L. (2009). ‘Doing food differently’: Reconnecting biological and social relationships through care for food. The Sociological Review, 57, 200–221. Dubois, A. (2018). Nurturing proximities in an emerging food landscape. Journal of Rural Studies, 57, 1–12. Dubois, A. (2019). Translocal practices and proximities in short quality food chains at the periphery: The case of north Swedish farmers. Agriculture and Human Values, 36, 1–16. Dubois, A., & Carson, D. B. (2019). Die hard: On the persistence of Swedish upland farming. Journal of Rural Studies, 69, 41–52. Eriksson, C. (2016). Jordbrukspolitiken: Från överproduktion till bristande självförsörjning. In M. Öhlén & D. Silander (Eds.), Svensk politik och EU: Hur svensk politik har förändrats av medlemskapet i EU (pp.  59–78). Stockholm: Santérus. Feagan, R. (2007). The place of food: Mapping out the ‘local’ in local food systems. Progress in Human Geography, 31, 23–42. Fielke, S. (2015). Multifunctional agricultural transition: Essential for local diversity in a globalised world. In G. M. Robinson & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Handbook on the globalisation of agriculture (pp.  389–399). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Fielke, S. J., & Bardsley, D. K. (2013). South Australian farmers’ markets: Tools for enhancing the multifunctionality of Australian agriculture. GeoJournal, 78, 759–776. Fielke, S. J., & Bardsley, D. K. (2015). A brief political history of south Australian agriculture. Rural History, 26, 101–125. Forney, J., & Häberli, I. (2016). Introducing ‘seeds of change’ into the food system? Localisation strategies in the Swiss dairy industry. Sociologia Ruralis, 56, 135–156. Goodman, D., & DuPuis, E.  M. (2002). Knowing food and growing food: Beyond the production–consumption debate in the sociology of agriculture. Sociologia Ruralis, 42, 5–22.

12  Stayin’ Alive: New Associations in Southern Lapland Farming 

239

Hamblin, A. (2009). Policy directions for agricultural land use in Australia and other post-industrial economies. Land Use Policy, 26, 1195–1204. Hedberg, C. (2013). ‘Grapes of wrath’? Power spatialities and aspects of labour in the wild berry global commodity chain. Competition & Change, 17, 57–74. Ilbery, B., Maye, D., Kneafsey, M., Jenkins, T., & Walkley, C. (2004). Forecasting food supply chain developments in lagging rural regions: Evidence from the UK. Journal of Rural Studies, 20(3), 331–344. Jarosz, L. (2008). The city in the country: Growing alternative food networks in metropolitan areas. Journal of Rural Studies, 24, 231–244. Jordbruksverket. (2017). Sysselsättning i jordbruket 2016 [Farm labour force in 2016]. Jönköping: Jordbruksverket. Kneafsey, M., Venn, L., Schmutz, U., Balázs, B., Trenchard, L., Eyden-Wood, T., Bos, E., Sutton, G., & Blackett, M. (2013). Short food supply chains and local food systems in the EU. A state of play of their socio-economic characteristics. JRC scientific and policy reports. Sevilla: Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, European Commission. Le Velly, R., & Dufeu, I. (2016). Alternative food networks as “market agencements”: Exploring their multiple hybridities. Journal of Rural Studies, 43, 173–182. Marsden, Banks, J., & Bristow, G. (2002). The social management of rural nature: Understanding agrarian-based rural development. Environment and Planning A, 34(5), 809–825. Moragues-Faus, A. M., & Sonnino, R. (2012). Embedding quality in the agro-­ food system: The dynamics and implications of place-making strategies in the olive oil sector of alto Palancia, Spain. Sociologia Ruralis, 52, 215–234. Müller, D.  K., & Brouder, P. (2014). Dynamic development or destined to decline? The case of arctic tourism businesses and local labour markets in Jokkmokk, Sweden. In A.  Viken & B.  Granås (Eds.), Tourism destination development: Turns and tactics (pp. 227–244). London: Routledge. Mundler, P., & Laughrea, S. (2016). The contributions of short food supply chains to territorial development: A study of three Quebec territories. Journal of Rural Studies, 45, 218–229. Murdoch, J., Marsden, T., & Banks, J. (2000). Quality, nature, and embeddedness: Some theoretical considerations in the context of the food sector. Economic Geography, 76, 107–125. Persson, L.  O. (1983). Part-time farming  – Cornerstone or obstacle in rural development? Sociologia Ruralis, 23, 50–62.

240 

A. Dubois and M. Thompson

Peters, P., Carson, D. B., Porter, R., Vuin, A., Carson, D. A., & Ensign, P. (2018). My village is dying? Integrating methods from the inside out. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 55, 451–475. Pretty, J., Benton, T. G., Bharucha, Z. P., Dicks, L. V., Flora, C. B., Godfray, H. C. J., et al. (2018). Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification. Nature Sustainability, 1, 441–446. Rockström, J., Williams, J., Daily, G., Noble, A., Matthews, N., Gordon, L., et al. (2017). Sustainable intensification of agriculture for human prosperity and global sustainability. Ambio, 46, 4–17. Rudberg, S., & Bylund, E. (1959). From the bothnian gulf through southern and Central Lapland to the Norwegian fiords. Geografiska Annaler, 41, 261–288. Scott, M. (2019). Spatial planning and the rural economy. In M.  Scott, N. Gallent, & M. Gkartzios (Eds.), The Routledge companion to rural planning (pp. 219–236). Abingdon: Routledge. Shucksmith, M., & Rønningen, K. (2011). The uplands after neoliberalism? – The role of the small farm in rural sustainability. Journal of Rural Studies, 27, 275–287. Smithers, J., Joseph, A.  E., & Armstrong, M. (2005). Across the divide (?): Reconciling farm and town views of agriculture–community linkages. Journal of Rural Studies, 21, 281–295. Sonnino, R., & Marsden, T. (2006). Beyond the divide: Rethinking relationships between alternative and conventional food networks in Europe. Journal of Economic Geography, 6, 181–199. Van der Ploeg, J. D. (2000). Revitalizing agriculture: Farming economically as starting ground for rural development. Sociologia Ruralis, 40, 497–511. Wästfelt, A., & Zhang, Q. (2016). Reclaiming localisation for revitalising agriculture: A case study of peri-urban agricultural change in Gothenburg, Sweden. Journal of Rural Studies, 47, 172–185.

13 Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices as a Means to Promoting Entrepreneurship in Rural Sweden Natasha A. Webster and Gunnel Forsberg

 he Myth: There is Only Traditional Swedish T Food in the Countryside Sweden is one of Europe’s highest receiving countries of refugees and other migrants; more than 160,000 refugees arrived in 2015 in Sweden alone (Migrationsverket 2016; Aldén and Hammarstedt 2014). Given this context of rapidly increased migration, important questions of how to promote integration, the social and economic inclusion of newcomers, is now one of the most pressing issues for Swedish society. While migration has been primarily understood as mostly an urban phenomenon, migration to the countryside has become a significant area of growth driven by refugees, intermarriage, lifestyle migrants, labour migration and other factors (Eimermann and Carson 2018; Søholt et al. 2018; Forsberg and Stenbacka

N. A. Webster (*) • G. Forsberg Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_13

241

242 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

2016; Hedberg and Haandrikman 2014; Glesbygdsverket 2008). One significant migrant group in the contemporary countryside are Thai women who arrive in Sweden primarily through marriage to Swedish men (Webster and Haandrikman 2016). The question of finding good pathways to integration is an urgent topic in many rural areas. A growing body of research shows, rural areas are sites of increasing cosmopolitanism (Neal 2002; Woods 2007; Aguayo 2008; Milbourne and Kitchen 2014; Hedberg 2016). Specific municipalities in Sweden have found themselves in a situation of receiving new groups of immigrants—a change from earlier situations where most municipalities were characterized by in-migration of elderly or middle-aged and a significant out-migration of youth and, in particular, women (Hjort and Malmberg 2006). However, Swedish research on in- and out-migration to and from rural areas has identified an increased diversification of the rural population since the 1990s (Forsberg et al. 2006; Hedberg et al. 2012). Similar experiences have been identified elsewhere in Europe (Bayona-i-­Carrasco and Gil-Alonso 2013). This trend is both an opportunity (a population refill) and a challenge for new migrants to find accommodation and gainful employment. Given the multiplicity of the Swedish countryside manifesting through increasing food diversity, we explore the potential of food plurality in promoting social and economic sustainability, in particular through the lens of small businesses. Our aim is to explore the integration potentialities of food practices as a tool to connect new migrants’ and local populations’ knowledge economically and socially. By examining the relation between migrant food practices and local food traditions and production in rural Sweden, we investigate how food practices are emplaced and embedded in rural areas. We examine the potential benefits for both newcomers and established inhabitants. We rely on empirical material from individual interviews and official visits to integration project sites to examine the importance of food and its strategic potential for integration policies. Food practices follow a set of social relations (Haukanes 2007). Food constitutes an important part of the migrant’s everyday activities, especially for women. One can feel displaced when taken-for-granted household activities, such as preparing and eating meals, are suddenly disrupted. As Dyck and Dossa (2007) state “Food, then, is not simply a nutritional

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

243

issue but one of negotiation of cultural belonging” (p. 696). As one study participant described: “It was very hard to eat at first. Another culture – even the food was different. The food did not comfort you. The food needs always to be comforting.” Food is more about social practices than what is actually consumed (Haukanes 2007). Food unites social practices with physical needs through the body. Simonsen (2005) discusses the body not as a spatiality of position but as a spatiality of situation. This means that the body constructs the world around itself with the help of routines and learned schemes. Simonsen (2005) has formulated an understanding of the space-body relation with the example of urban milieus. Her point of departure is the theory of Lefebvre. She states his major contribution to the development of the embodiment literature has been to concretize the spatial aspect. While others in social sciences have conceived the body in space in a purely metaphorical sense, Lefebvre has conceived space from another perspective, with the body’s implication in a construction of a “sensory-sensual space” (Simonsen 2005). The body is seen as a practice-sensory realm, thus space is perceived through smells, tastes, touch, hearing and seeing: the spatial body. This is an important aspect of what role food plays in the feeling of comfort and spatial belonging. The opportunity for food practices is found within the co-constitutive nature of sharing and learning. Food may be a channel for integration as it bridges the abstract and concrete by symbolically, and materially mutually connecting identities while at the same time forging new spaces/ identities. Regardless of their origins, people universally have bodies that need nutrition and enjoyment (Longhurst et al. 2009; Simonsen 2005). Unlike some countries known for their national kitchens and cuisines, Scandinavian countries have a history of regional food specialities. However, Nordic countries have increasingly strived to be renowned for world-class cuisine by promoting regional food specialities internationally, and food cultures have increasingly become part of place branding strategies for specific Swedish counties like Jämtland, Gotland, the Archipelago and Värmland among others. Food is also becoming an integrated part of regional politics in these counties (Tellström et al. 2005; Heldt Cassel  and Petterson 2014) with food identified as an area of growth for migrant entrepreneurship in rural areas.

244 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

Box 13.1  Rural Pizzeria Operators with Refugee Backgrounds Marco Eimermann and Svante Karlsson This textbox highlights gender issues, reflections on social integration and urban-rural connections in the context of pizzerias. We visited Swedish-­ style rural pizzerias, which resembled kebab restaurants in other Nordic countries (Fig.  13.1, see Wahlbeck 2007). We approached 30 pizzerias in rural localities within commuting distance of urban centres, whose owners came from the Middle East or Northern Africa (MENA countries). After arriving in Sweden as refugees some time ago, their reflections on pros and cons of rural living were similar to those of local Swedes, European lifestyle migrants and others (Eimermann and Karlsson 2018; Eimermann, Tomozeiu & Carson, this volume). Contra our intentions, all interviewed restaurateurs were males. This indicates gender issues in the context of migration and rural labour markets, which is why it is relevant that the current chapter focuses on women food entrepreneurs. Although we did not interview spouses, the male restaurateurs referred to their importance in migration and business decisions. For instance, spouses could help in the pizzeria during busy periods, they could take care of the children when the men were working long days, or they would have a higher level education and better chances to a job with which they can earn steady incomes. Also the spouses were important in deciding where to live. The pizzerias were located in the countryside, but the restaurateurs and their families often lived in towns like Umeå. Amed said: ‘I’d like to live in

Fig. 13.1  Rural pizzeria in Northern Sweden. (Photo: Marco Eimermann)

(continued)

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

245

Box 13.1  (continued) the same community as where my restaurant is, since it’s a tranquil village with easy access to nature.’ However, his wife preferred living in a city due to the availability of facilities and employment, education opportunities for both adults and children, and a larger co-ethnic network. The interviewees often stated this line of reasoning, which centred on trust, family and co-­ ethnic ties. This shows how families with refugee backgrounds are juggling various motivations and realities connected with rural and urban working environments and living places, services and access to nature. Regarding the role of rural pizzerias as meeting places, Amed told us how he deliberately planned social activities on various evenings with the aim to ‘make neighbours meet’ at his restaurant, and he tried to make his pizzeria a welcoming place for social integration. Likewise, Rotan had organised a series of music evenings as a popular local alternative to spending an evening out in the city. This box thus shows that rural food operators with different backgrounds contribute not only to diversification of the countryside but also to bringing people together.

Food thus becomes a lens through which to understand migrant’s experiences of social and economic integration. Concurrently, food is becoming a topic in contemporary rural place marketing. When considering the increasing emphasis on entrepreneurship as a thrust of economic growth in rural areas, the connections to food become clearer. Rural entrepreneurs have traditionally been synonymous with the production of food—from farming to the growing eat-local movements. And it has implicitly been understood as masculine entrepreneurship while women’s entrepreneurship has remained an understudied part of rural economic development. However, migrant women entrepreneurs have increasingly shown that entrepreneurship is an important avenue of economic integration (Pettersson 2012). Food has not been expressly addressed in political strategies aside from discussions regarding agriculture as a production sector. This may be due to an understanding of food as a mundane, trivial—and possibly feminine—issue. Nevertheless, a growing field of human geography research sees the relation between food, bodies and spatiality as an important topic for analysis for integration.

246 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

Grip (2010) found that integration projects, contrary to intentions, led to manifestation of differences rather than similarities between migrants and Swedish-born inhabitants. In the integration programmes, the underlying norm of ‘Swedishness’, into which the migrants as a group deviate, is a guiding rule in most projects—integration, in these approaches, is understood as specific Swedish spaces immigrants have to enter into. In other words, normative practices dominate the social rules and regulation creating an unequal dynamic between dominant and newcomer populations. In rural areas, the need for migrants to sustain rural development is imperative and so the need to bridge between these communities is crucial for future rural development.

Migrants Meeting the Swedish Countryside “Newcomers are needed in the countryside” read a headline in a daily newspaper October 1, 2014 (Upsala Nya Tidning), in an article discussing how to attract international migrants to rural areas due to the challenge of immigrants’ lack of awareness to the possibilities and opportunities present in rural areas. In Swedish rural areas, accommodation is often more available (or less problematic), compared to urban areas, and employment opportunities could make rural areas an attractive option to newcomers in Sweden. According to the Swedish Board of Agriculture, there is a potential for increased migration flow to rural areas if appropriate connection arrangements are made (MIKLO 2013). County administrators in Sweden have considered the ways migrants contribute to resolving challenges—physical, social and economic—rural areas face stemming from depopulation. Entrepreneurship is generally a favoured strategy as it addressed these issues from many pathways. In order to draw on the potential competence and skills which immigrants possess, for example, skills required in the agricultural sector, integration projects are organized by various public organizations at the national, regional and local levels in various parts of the country. Connection advertisements such as “refugee seeks farmer” can be found

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

247

in the local media to connect labour demand and supply in the agricultural sector. In the Swedish Rural Development Programme (SRDP), administered by the Swedish Board of Agriculture, for the period 2014–2020, equal opportunity, integration and accessibility are the three horizontal objectives which should permeate the entire programme. The SRDP strives for profitable and viable companies, active farms that provide open fields for grazing animals, and an attractive countryside1 (National Rural Development Program 2007–2013). In order to fulfil the integration target, specific projects have been launched during the development programme. These policies demonstrate a growing link between food and economic development. Much of this growth will come from the rural food sector with food-related businesses growing. One of the most visible areas of growth is in the small restaurant sector (Eimermann and Karlsson 2018; Webster and Haandrikman 2017). While restaurants are often coded masculine (Hermelin et  al. 2017; Box 13.1), for many of these businesses, home culture, often in the form of food, is an essential resource for developing their businesses (Barberis and Solano 2018). In other studies, the process of starting businesses and local embeddedness has been demonstrated, for example, by creating social networks (Munkejord 2017). Social networks must be forged over shared interests and experiences, with food being an example of such an opportunity. Thus the links between promoting and supporting diverse food cultures and economic development are increasingly becoming clearer.

 The former Swedish Minister of Agriculture proclaimed the programme “Sweden – the new country of food!” with the idea to implement various projects and strategic programmes with the focus on local production, small-scale, traditional, entrepreneurial and heritage-oriented dishes. However, after the election in September 2014, the political majority changed and the new minister has decided to terminate the programme. 1

248 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

Empirical Data and Methods This chapter presents a set of findings focusing on food practices in daily and working life as linked to social and economic integration that emerged from three projects studying rural migration in Nordic countries, “When the World Goes Rural”, “Opportunities and Obstacles: Identifying hidden resources and skills to promote entrepreneurship among migrant women in Swedish regions” and “The multiethnic rural community: Exclusion or inclusion of immigrants?” The migrants interviewed (both men and women) came from a wide range of countries. These projects included a special emphasis on the Thai community—a significant rural migrant and gendered group in Sweden (for more details, see Forsberg and Stenbacka 2016; Stenbacka 2013; Najib 2013; Hedberg 2016; Webster and Haandrikman 2016). This study examines Swedish rural areas from the perspective of individual migrants and through community projects on integrating migrants through food production and processing. Both data sets examine the links between integration and potential entrepreneurship. Eighteen Thai women in rural areas were interviewed in their homes or workplaces and almost every interview involved eating or preparing food and, in some cases, shopping for food. The data for the policy analysis comes from interviews with participants and project leaders in two integration projects, conducted as both group interviews and individual interviews. The discussion with the migrants from various countries was quite open whereas interviews with project leaders were more structured and followed the history of the projects. Ten interviews were conducted with project leaders and participants. Names of all informants have been anonymized. Together, these aspects explore the relationship between individual experiences and rural development, thereby constituting a challenge and a potential for connecting migrants with the broader community (Fig. 13.2).

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

249

Fig. 13.2  Local food festival in rural Sweden featuring food from many countries produced by local residents. (Photo: Natasha A. Webster)

 mpirical Findings: Possibilities and Conflicts E within Migrant Rural Food Practices and (In)Formal Businesses Thai food culture is well-known globally, and its reputation has provided opportunities for many women to open their own businesses throughout the world (Kitcharoen 2007). Thai women are more likely than other migrant groups to settle in rural areas in Sweden as a majority arrive in Sweden through marriage (Webster and Haandrikman 2016). Moreover, many of the migrant women are from rural areas in Thailand (Chantavanich 2001). Despite the popularity of Thai food, appropriate ingredients for Thai cooking are often hard to find in rural areas. For many of the women interviewed, having to eat European food initially made them feel disconnected and lonely. Likewise, for their partners, it was a difficult transition to having a spouse who only cooked Asian food. Thus the preparation of food in the household required negotiation within the private sphere resulting in different household strategies. Ploy says:

250 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

So it’s [Thai food] always like proper food, not just a …quick…here’s a piece of bread or something. Now when I cook. [it’s] little less because Johan getting use to Thai food. And sometimes [I] cook European food and kids getting used with European food.

Food, as seen from Ploy’s experience, is constantly negotiated and central to her household’s daily social practices—affecting both her as a migrant and her partner as a member of the local population. Malee describes how food constructed social practices in her household. For her and her husband, Thai food became the primary diet in their house with her husband adapting to her food preparation and cooking. After work, he says if he takes food from work his stomach is not too good. He eats Thai food a lot. …He likes Thai Food. [Swedish food] heavy, heavy for him. No, no, he says, I don’t want it. I want to have your food [laughs] We not eat Swedish food. Too full in stomach for me. Author 1: a lot of fat? Yeah. And cheese. And butter.

These comments imply the gendered element of food preparation and dominant food culture, despite living in Sweden; it is the women’s cuisine that dominates the private sphere. From the above descriptions, the convergence of food and gender practices, as seen through food practices in the household, becomes clearer. Food is central to the process of becoming a translocal household, and the practices shaping this are often gendered. Since authentic Thai food is not always readily available in rural areas, the migrant women dedicate great effort in procuring their essential ingredients. Both Kaew and Ma-dee planned many of their trips to rural Thailand as food stock-up trips in addition to visiting family. The aim of their trips was to buy enough supplies of food to have a regular supply of Thai food throughout the year. Ploy says: To Thailand? Sure I make a list, I want have this, this, this, this, and this. Even some food I must go to Chiang Mai [a city in North Thailand]. I love some food in Chiang Mai. It is some kind of chili. I buy about 6 or 7 kilos [both laugh] and then back Chiang Mai I must [put them] in frozen and then back to

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

251

Sweden. It still not melts yet so I put [in] frozen again so I can eat about 1 time a month or something.

Ingredients, spices, sauces and other essentials are carefully rationed and shared amongst the women in rural areas. Some women described how the local Swedish grocery began to supply some basic Asian ingredients, but it was nevertheless necessary to travel to the nearest city. For example, husbands travel to urban areas pick up ingredients unavailable in the rural area. Malee says: “Yesterday, I tell my husband go buy this. This is one [name of a specific store] they can have [the good spring rolls]. He loves it!” Food is not passively purchased or consumed; it is a well-planned and thoughtful process. Sarai, who has lived in Sweden for 25 years, explains that Thai women were previously less connected to Thailand. Currently they can network differently due to the numbers of women living in the country, as seen through increased migration, and through the supplies available and the ease with which they can acquire these supplies in nearby urban areas. Sarai described how, as her material connections to Thailand grew greater in Sweden, the less she needed to travel to Thailand. This led to, she explained, a strange situation of having more Thai food and connections to her history in day-to-day life but having less connection to the actual place, Thailand. Thai women complained about the insufficient availability of Thai food locally. While urban centres may have Thai products readily available, long distances continue to be a challenge for many migrant women in gaining daily access to desired products. Stockholm, Malmö, Gothenburg and other regional centres have been drawn into the global translocal structure as intermediary sites or nodes for translocalism through the proliferation of Thai grocery stores. It is a challenge to integrate the rural areas into this translocal structure. Many of the women have accepted this challenge  by  building local networks and informal channels. Mook, Ploy, Raijin, Jaidee, Hansa have described extensive informal markets which exist in rural Sweden to supply Thai families with these essential products. One of the most interesting solutions to food scarcity are the informal mobile shops which play a vital role in providing food,

252 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

which are also a form of small business in rural areas. Thai food and products are delivered to rural migrants by bus or in some places, by boat. The Thai Bus posts on an anonymized private blog its locations and expected arrival times and Thai women gather awaiting its arrival. They board the bus to purchase items and then the bus moves on to the next village or town. According to the informants, the bus driver receives goods directly from Thailand at the beginning of the week and then drives the bus overland; custom orders are possible to meet the regional needs, such as specific seasonal fruits or ingredients from Issan, an important sending region in Northeast Thailand. The informal and personal nature of the bus or boat means translocal needs can be emphasized and customized, creating direct region-to-region interactions. Magazines, newspapers, soap, shampoo, DVDs, CDs and other goods are all available from the bus. These products are cheaper than in the formal and registered grocery stores. However, the bus has an element of risk attached to it. It has had to operate convertly since it has been periodically shut down by Swedish authorities, ultimately disrupting but not ending the flow of goods. Raijin complained when the bus was stopped it was inconvenient to get the supplies she needed; in the end she needed to travel to larger urban centres instead. This example demonstrates the ways migrants construct various support structures, formal and informal, to support their food practices. Increasingly informal solutions to acquiring food specialities in rural areas are threatening co-ethnic local businesses. In 2018, an established Thai entrepreneur, Krab, described how these informal businesses undermined her ability to run her business in rural areas: [The bus] goes all the way from Gothenburg. Saturday, Sunday, and stops in all municipalities. Selling goods for prices that we couldn’t sell for. If products are unmarked or expired, short dates, one week left, and the customers flock to them…We want to get rid of them and the municipality agrees. So bus comes here on a Sunday, half past ten. They are importers so they get different prices [than we do]. But if they had to pay for each municipality where they stand, then it will not be so economical to do this. [If they had to pay like we do] They would also lose customers. Every [local shop] loses customers and no one seems to want to challenge, if they have the right to go around and do this.

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

253

Krab describes how the mobile bus undercuts her business and is a threat to her sustainability as a business serving the entire rural community. Unlike the informal counterparts, Krab’s customer base in the recent years has increasingly been the Swedish community. As her business becomes more established, she faces new challenges. These examples show the ways in which food is connected to migrant entrepreneurship formally and informally. They show that food practices can be an important part of rural life but are increasingly complex. The examples also show conflict and intersections between entrepreneurs’ needs and migrant food practices in rural areas. In the following, we will discuss some possible ways to which this kind of conflicts can be solved—or at least be reduced. Some public organized projects show a possible way to improve the connection between locally produced food and incoming cooking knowledge as well as enhance food-related entrepreneurship in rural areas.

Building Future Entrepreneurs The stories presented in the previous section confirm the importance of food in the everyday lives of rural migrant women. They show bodily experiences constitute an integral part of the migrant’s lived daily experience. Individuals within a specific migrant group build food practices into their daily lives to create a sense of emplaced belonging. Already prior to the exceptional immigration situation in 2015, integration projects were launched with the aim of using food for integration support in rural areas. In the following section, we shall examine how specific public projects have attempted to make an impact through supportive initiatives.

Baking Bread in Heritage Wood-Fired Ovens Historically, rural Swedish women gathered in bakery houses to bake hard bread to last a whole season baking for one or two days to produce round breads which were hung on sticks below the ceiling to be dried. As part of an increasing trend in rural Sweden of resuscitating the handicraft

254 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

tradition of collective baking, a project was initiated to save old wood-­ fired ovens in their region. This heritage project was combined with integration goals. The idea of combining integration with heritage emerged at a day event where the soon-to-be project leader was demonstrating ovens. During the demonstrations, she noticed how shared interest in the oven brought people together. The programme was built upon the idea that bread (broadly defined) is central to everyone’s cultures, and working with bread can help tie people together while enhancing local cultural history. Many immigrants had dreams of starting up a bakery of their own or to work in one. “They wanted, for instance, to learn how to bake the typical Swedish cinnamon bread. They wanted to learn how to be Swedish”. Immigrants also wanted to learn how to make traditional Swedish meals as a way of becoming part of Swedish society. One participant from Iran wanted to be able to buy foodstuffs like Swedish people. He wanted to understand the ingredients in packages so he could eat more than rice. Knowing how to prepare local food was seen as a pathway, by many programme participants, to belonging to the local place in their day-to-­ day lives. According to the project leader, “baking is magical”. It engaged many immigrants and the shared activity was growing in the region, not least in places where there had been immigrant hostility. Through baking, immigrants started to tell stories about their lives and their traditions. The project leader travelled around the region and met with immigrant women demonstrating baking techniques for hard bread on the mobile electric hearthstone (stenhäll). She quotes an enthusiastic immigrant man who borrowed her hearthstone and arranged an “open baking day” in one of the small towns. “The women were kings that day! They manage to bake ‘their bread’ and the Swedes were queuing up to buy it. These women grew that day”. Through the course of the project, over 1000 people were engaged; among them, some 35 immigrants from different nationalities learned to bake bread in the wood-fired ovens. Thus the project succeeded (perhaps unintentionally) in avoiding the stigmatization prevalent in other integration projects as something only for immigrants, found by Grip (2010) in her analysis of past weaknesses in integration projects. Moreover, the

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

255

project attracted both men and women. Among the Swedes, the interest came mainly from women whereas many men in the immigrant group had been bakers. “The men are kings of baking at home” in some cultures, a participant said. Within the migrants the attitude towards baking varied depending on their background and their experiences in Sweden. This hints at the ways translocal practices shape approaches to food. The bread-making project served as a meeting opportunity event among rural migrants and Swedes. By adopting a “learning by doing” approach, immigrants and Swedes may develop friendships and acquaintances throughout the local community, for instance by simply introducing recipes in the projects for the benefit of both.

Food for Integration A county governor (landshövding) in middle Sweden put into practice the slogan Sweden – The new country of food as a vision for integration and ethnic diversity. The county committed to offering an innovative environment for migrants to secure and harness immigrant skillsets and to prevent depopulation within the county. A group of migrant women, from various countries in Asia, Africa and South America, were invited to participate in the project to merge Swedish agricultural food stuff and production with traditions from their home countries. This idea was concretized through an EU-funded project with the aim to establish a test arena for multi-cultural food production and implement quality assurance. The project was built upon the idea that everyone needs food and food is a shared experience across cultures. Food is a good entry point for integration since everyone needs food and can relate to it. The participating immigrant women showed both skills and entrepreneurial interest, brought with them knowledge about food preparation and wanted to use and develop their entrepreneurial skills within the local food industries. To cultivate and establish local food production and innovation culture, there was a focus on small-scale local production and heritage-­ oriented dishes. One illustrative ingredient is the well-known Skrädmjöl, a “Värmlandic specialty”, which is flour made from oats. It was once

256 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

developed and promoted on Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf ’s farm in Mårbacka, and local residents claim the flour is their unique product. While on an excursion, one of the migrant women became excited when visiting the mill where the flour is processed. She informed the other participants this flour was a commonly used product daily for meals in her home country: “It cannot be true that they do the same flour as we do at home? But yes, it was the same! Now I buy this ‘skrädmjöl’ all the time.” She then started a small business making dishes and cakes with this flour. She used recipes from her home country and transformed the dishes to a translocal new dish. Women producing and adapting dishes with local ingredients was an important outcome outlining the fluidity of tradition. Part of the project was to stimulate development of products, entrepreneurship and production of new foodstuffs for different cultures and to produce foods which were delicious and unique. The foodstuffs were new innovations to the area. One woman made Chinese dumplings which she sold to the grocery store in town. Aisha, skilled in baking, developed Moroccan pastries with both Swedish and local ingredients. She held a training position at a Café, where she baked and sold her cakes and she plans to develop this on a larger scale. The project was publicized through tasting events at markets, schools and newsletters. Some women developed business ideas that became viable enterprises. To help the initiative the project managed to arrange for permission for some participants to produce foodstuffs in their homes, to sell at markets, as well as cater for special events. In all, the project engaged 16 women from various continents and backgrounds who shared an interest in food-related practices and a desire to be self-employed. Despite the success of individuals within the project, questions arose concerning the effectiveness of the project. The project coordinators underestimated the length of time to get the project rolling and the difficulty in convincing the politicians of its viability. The politicians found it challenging to use the project effectively without measurable results. To be politically useful, it was stated that the project needed to be at least 300 times the scale of this project. This raised awareness of conflicts between individual needs versus societal needs when discussing integration. However, the projects showed the potential for integration that is built into food-related projects.

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

257

 Roadmap for Making Use of Food Practices A for Social and Economic Integration Purposes This chapter shows that diverse food cultures are present in the countryside shaping many aspects of rural life. We also demonstrate how food culture is linked to migrant entrepreneurship and small business potential. Migrants in rural areas, unlike their urban counterparts, must actively access the national, transnational or diasporic resources to meet their needs. Our results indicate that the geographical context is important to food practices and migrant experiences. Food is linked to sense of emplacement and belonging (Collins 2008; Dyck and Dossa 2007). Moreover, it is shown that food can create opportunities for both integration and entrepreneurship. The explored projects and the example of Thai migrants demonstrate the links between feelings of belonging and the desire to belong through establishing businesses. Demand for, and interest in, untraditional food is growing in both the local and newly arrived populations in rural areas representing a change in social-food practices. Food practices point to the importance of understanding the multiple relations existing in rural areas by multiple actors. Working through food can mediate the differences between people, as seen by the flour mentioned above, and highlights commonalities shared by people when eating and enjoying each other’s food. Both Swedish inhabitants and newcomers can learn and experience the opportunity to share food practices as well as shift power relations and create information flows (see also McFarlane 2009). The example of Thai women migrants demonstrates the extent and importance of food practices in daily life establishing and supporting their sense of well-being in rural areas. In other words, food practices, along with other social practices, shape lived experiences—socially and economically—in rural areas. Thai women migrant strategies are complex, well-organized and ongoing in establishing businesses in rural areas. The food projects and the food practices examined in this chapter emphasize the link between gender and food in rural social and economic spheres. Women were active agents in obtaining, procuring, preparing

258 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

and cooking food both in the public and private spheres. Formal projects also created opportunities for women and men to establish themselves as food producers in the public and economic spheres. Male migrant bakers were able to emerge from the private sphere in the food projects. These experiences were central to the social and economic integration practices, creating both experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Using food as a tool can create connections in both the private and public spheres. This was seen by all the examples where the lines between social learning and sharing and creating businesses were blurred (and in some cases, contested). Moreover, the links between gender and entrepreneurship opportunities in rural areas become visible when looking at food practices. Entrepreneurship needs to be understood as more than an economic activity; it is a social process. Food culture thus offers many advantages in rural areas such as social and cultural integration, labour market integration and rural development. One must, however, be aware of the possibility that food also can nourish prejudices and stereotypical preconceptions. This is why it is important to stress the similarities and commonalities of dishes to avoid exoticization of both traditional and untraditional food. Building on migrant food practices, alongside the demonstration that food-related projects are concrete and enjoyable for participants; food represents an opportunity for developing integration initiatives and supports which can benefit rural areas. This is an often neglected aspect of integration projects. If migrants are to stay in remote rural areas, a larger understanding of what is needed in the day to day will be required. Thus, projects with food emphasis could be of particular interest to rural policy makers as they address multiple policy targets simultaneously, such as the heritage project. This double-up of policy responses may help address some of the challenges in existing projects, by equalization food practices.

What Do Policy Makers Need to Know? • Rural food practices are changing, and there is a growing demand for diverse food in rural areas both by local and by newly arrived populations.

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

259

• This change could be key for supporting new food cultures and service economies. • Food programmes create spaces for rural communities to meet and develop shared experiences and bonds. • Integration is more than starting a business, and social embeddedness may also be a benefit from supporting food integration. • Businesses, individual identity and well-being are connected and may lead to more sustainable business models. • Migrant businesses, especially for women, should be supported in rural areas to promote social and economic sustainability.

Box 13.2  Recipe for Spicy Meatballs Natasha A. Webster, recipe thanks to an anonymous Thai migrant in Sweden. Mango Sylt (jam) –– 1 box frozen mango –– Sugar to taste Let mango thaw and bring to slow boil. Stir in sugar to taste. Cool and serve on the side. Spicy meatballs –– 500 g Minced pork –– ½ dl Ströbröd (breadcrumbs) –– 1 dl Milk –– 2 Eggs –– Thai bouillon (found in most Asian markets) –– Fried red onion –– Salt –– Garlic powder Fry onion until soft. Add Thai bouillon, salt and garlic powder. Mix with meat with “ströbröd”. Rest. Roll into small balls and fry until cooked through and crispy. Enjoy!

Acknowledgements  The authors wish to thank the following: The multiethnic rural community: exclusion or inclusion of immigrants? Agreement between Norsk Institutt for by- og regionforskning (NIBR), Oslo Norway and Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, Sweden, and the Swedish Research Council Formas ‘When the World goes Rural – International Migration Flows changing Swedish Countryside?’, reg.no. 2007–2019; and the

260 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

Swedish Research Council Formas  ‘Opportunities and Obstacles: Identifying hidden resources and skills to promote entrepreneurship among migrant women in Swedish regions’, reg.no. 942-2015-663.

References Aguayo, B.  E. C. (2008). Global villages and rural cosmopolitanism: Exploring global ruralities. Globalizations, 5, 541–554. https://doi. org/10.1080/14747730802500281 Aldén, L., & Hammarstedt, M. (2014). Integration of immigrants on the Swedish labour market – Recent trends and explanations (No. 2014:9). Växjö: Linnaeus University Centre for Labour Market and Discrimination Studies. Barberis, E., & Solano, G. (2018). Mixed embeddedness and migrant entrepreneurship: Hints on past and future directions. An introduction. Sociologica, 12, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8617 Bayona-i-Carrasco, J., & Gil-Alonso, F. (2013). Is foreign immigration the solution to rural depopulation? The case of Catalonia (1996–2009). Sociologia Ruralis, 53, 26–51. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.2012.00577.x Chantavanich, S. (2001). The migration of Thai women to Germany: Causes, living conditions, and impacts for Thailand and Germany. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University: Asian Center for Migration/International Organization for Migration. Collins, F. L. (2008). Of kimchi and coffee: Globalisation, transnationalism and familiarity in culinary consumption. Social & Cultural Geography, 9, 151–169. https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.1080/14649360701856094 Dyck, I., & Dossa, P. (2007). Place, health and home: Gender and migration in the constitution of healthy space. Health & Place, 13, 691–701. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2006.10.004. Epub 2006 Dec 4. Eimermann, M., & Carson, D. A. (2018). European lifestyle migrant entrepreneurs and their business networks in Swedish sparsely populated areas. In S. Kordel, T. Weidinger, & I. Jelen (Eds.), Processes of immigration in rural Europe: The status quo, implications and development strategies (pp. 243–269). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Eimermann, M., & Karlsson, S. (2018). Globalising Swedish countrysides? A relational approach to rural immigrant restaurateurs with refugee ­backgrounds. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift  – Norwegian Journal of Geography, 72, 82–96. https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.1080/00291951.2018.1450781

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

261

Forsberg, G., & Stenbacka, S. (2016). New ruralities: The influence of international migration on Swedish rural areas. In K.  Kobayashi, H.  Westlund, H. Matshushima, & S. Ohno (Eds.), Social capital and development trends in rural areas (Vol. II, pp. 35–46). Kyoto: Marginal Areas Research Group. Forsberg, G., Grimsrud, G. M., Jakobsen, L., Jansdotter, M., & Vangsgraven Stubberud, K. (2006). Gränsfall: Platsens betydelse för omställning och utveckling i en gränsregion. [At the Border: The importance of place for adjustment and development in a border region] Stockholm: Nordregio. Glesbygdsverket. (2008). Sveriges gles- och landsbygder 2008 [Sweden’s peripheral regions and countryside 2008]. Östersund: Glesbygdsverket. Grip, L. (2010). Likhetens rum, olikhetens praktik. Om produktion av integration i fyra svenska kommuner [Spaces of similarity, practices of difference. The production of integration in four Swedish Municipalities] (Doctoral thesis 2010:2). Karlstad: Karlstad University Studies. Haukanes, H. (2007). Sharing food, sharing taste? Consumption practices, gender relations and individuality in Czech families. Anthropology of food [Online]. http://journals.openedition.org/aof/1912. Accessed 8 Jan 2020. Hedberg, C. (2016). ‘Doing gender’ in the wild berry industry: Transforming the role of Thai women in rural Sweden 1980–2012. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 23, 169–184. https://doi-org.ezp.sub. su.se/10.1177/1350506815571143 Hedberg, C., & Haandrikman, K. (2014). Repopulation of the Swedish countryside: Globalisation by international migration. Journal of Rural Studies, 34, 128–138. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2014.01.005 Hedberg, C., Forsberg, G., & Najib, A. (2012). When the world goes rural: Transnational potentials of international migration in rural Swedish labour markets. In C.  Hedberg & R.  M. do Carmo (Eds.), Translocal ruralism (pp. 125–142). Dordrecht: Springer. Heldt Cassel, S., &  Pettersson, K. (2014). Women tourism entrepreneurs: Doing gender on farms in Sweden. Gender in Management, 29, 487–504. https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-02-2014-0016 Hermelin, B., Hinchcliffe, G., & Stenbacka, S. (2017). The making of the gourmet restaurateur – Masculine ideology, identity and performance. NORMA, 12, 48–64. https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.1080/18902138.2017.1284421 Hjort, S., & Malmberg, G. (2006). The attraction of the rural: Characteristics of rural migrants in Sweden. Scottish Geographical Journal, 122, 55–75. Kitcharoen, P. (2007). An ethnography of restaurant workers: Thai women in England. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 16, 555–576. https://doi-org. ezp.sub.su.se/10.1177/011719680701600406

262 

N. A. Webster and G. Forsberg

Longhurst, R., Johnston, L., & Ho, E. (2009). A visceral approach: Cooking ‘at home’ with migrant women in Hamilton, New Zealand. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34, 333–345. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00349.x McFarlane, C. (2009). Translocal assemblages: Space, power and social movements. Geoforum, 40, 561–567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. geoforum.2009.05.003 Migrationsverket. (2016). Nearly 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden in 2015. Norrköping: Migrationsverket. MIKLO. (2013). Jobb på Sveriges landsbygder? Ja tack!. [Jobs in Sweden’s countrysides? Yes thank you!] Stockholm: MIKLO. Milbourne, P., & Kitchen, L. (2014). Rural mobilities: Connecting movement and fixity in rural places. Journal of Rural Studies, 34, 326–336. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2014.01.004 Munkejord, M. C. (2017). Local and transnational networking among female immigrant entrepreneurs in peripheral rural contexts: Perspectives on Russians in Finnmark, Norway. European Urban and Regional Studies, 24, 7–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776415587122 Najib, B.  A. (2013). Immigrant small enterprises in rural Sweden: Local and transnational resource mobilization. In C.  Tamásy & J.  R. Diez (Eds.), Regional resilience, economy and society (pp. 131–148). London: Ashgate. National Rural Development Program (2008–2013). Landsbygdsdepartementet. Stockholm: Regeringskansliet. Neal, S. (2002). Rural landscapes, representations and racism: Examining multicultural citizenship and policy-making in the English countryside. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25, 442–461. https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.108 0/01419870020036701c Pettersson, K. (2012). Supporting women’s entrepreneurship in Nordic sparsely populated areas (Nordregio working paper 2012:1). Stockholm: Nordregio. Simonsen, K. (2005). Bodies, sensations, space and time: The contribution from Henri Lefebvre. Geografiska Annaler Series B: Human Geography, 87, 1–14. https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2005.00174.x Søholt, S., Stenbacka, S., & Nørgaard, H. (2018). Conditioned receptiveness: Nordic rural elite perceptions of immigrant contributions to local resilience. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 220–229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jrurstud.2018.05.004 Stenbacka, S. (2013). International  – Rural introductory spaces and refugee immigration as a resource. In C. Tamásy & J. R. Diez (Eds.), Regional resilience, economy and society (pp. 75–94). London: Ashgate.

13  Spicy Meatballs and Mango Sylt: Exploring Food Practices… 

263

Tellström, R., Gustafsson, I., & Mossberg, L. (2005). Local food cultures in the Swedish rural economy. Sociologia Ruralis, 45, 346–359. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.2005.00309.x Upsala Nya Tidning. (2014, October 1). Newcomers are needed in the countryside. Wahlbeck, Ö. (2007). Work in the kebab economy: A study of the ethnic economy of Turkish immigrants in Finland. Ethnicities, 7, 543–563. https://doi. org/10.1177/1468796807084016 Webster, N. A., & Haandrikman, K. (2016). Thai women in Sweden: Victims or participants? Social Science Asia, 2, 13–29. https://doi.org/10.14456/ ssa.2016.4 Webster, N.  A., & Haandrikman, K. (2017). Thai women entrepreneurs in Sweden: Critical perspectives on migrant small businesses. Women’s Studies International Forum, 60, 17–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2016.11.001 Woods, M. (2007). Engaging the global countryside: Globalization, hybridity and the reconstitution of rural place. Progress in Human Geography, 31, 485–507. https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.1177/0309132507079503

14 Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities for Tourism Linda Lundmark and Doris A. Carson

Introduction The previous sections of the book took us through some of the issues regarding the population who lives and works in the north. In common for permanent migration and more temporary mobility is sometimes that the motives for being mobile are the same or similar. As suggested by Raúl Lardiés-Bosque (Box 14.1), the amenities present in rural areas are an attraction to both temporary visitors and permanent migration, and the added value of new populations, be it permanent, temporary or semi-­ permanent (as in second-home tourism), is sometimes underestimated and undervalued. In the following chapters, the focus is on the temporary mobility to the north and the tourism industry. The aim of this introductory chapter is to set the scene for the section on ‘who visits the north’ by introducing the characteristics of tourism in

L. Lundmark (*) • D. A. Carson Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_14

265

266 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

Box 14.1  Quality of Life Among Lifestyle Migrants in Rural Areas of Aragon, Spain Raúl Lardiés-Bosque Introduction As in many other parts of Europe, northern Spain has lost a lot of rural population as part of past rural ‘exodus’. A survey conducted in 2012 with 331 new settlers who moved from urban to rural municipalities in the region of Aragon, Spain, is used here to discuss the ‘myth’ that one cannot live with quality of life (QoL hereafter) in northern rural Spain, a contention that is often used to explain why these rural areas are losing population. Lifestyle migration is an emerging form of spatial mobility whereby affluent citizens of all ages and with different family and work circumstances change their place of residence, either temporarily or permanently, to significant locations with the intention of finding good QoL (Benson 2011). Lifestyle migration has been conceptualised in various ways, such as second-­ home mobility, entertainment or leisure-based migrations, or consumer-­ oriented migration, migration to enjoy the environment or as privileged migration (Benson and O’Reilly 2009). The field of amenity migration is closely related, but it is generally less based on social theories. Nonetheless, Bedrich and Rainer (2013) found that social, cultural and political globalisation has contributed to an increasing flow of people moving for personal interests rather than needs. The case of Aragon Aragon’s population in 2017 was 1.3 million, and 10.2% were foreigners (133,237 people). The population is unevenly distributed and the region is highly urbanised with 58% living in the capital of Zaragoza. The 2000–2010 decade could be described as a ‘golden age’ of immigration, when the Spanish economic acceleration generated a lot of rural jobs and began attracting population to certain rural areas. After the financial crises in 2008, this effect faded. Immigrants have arrived in rural areas in an uneven process, and in low numbers. However, some areas are seen as recreational spaces for the middle class and certain elites, and as coveted spaces that attract more and more investment, and provide the peace and tranquillity so necessary for enjoying QoL. Almost all of the immigrants are Spanish and their reasons for settling in a rural area have clearly been economic. However, for many, the decision to move to a rural area is linked to the need to ‘disconnect’. It is not just a question of escaping city life, but of seeking ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ experiences that otherwise are beyond their reach, and individuals can again take up ‘idyllic’ rural life and leisure-related activities (Huete 2009). Services sector employment is predominant, and specifically in activities related to commerce and hospitality (32.7%), public services (22.1%), financial services (8.9%), tourism (3.2%) and transport (2.1%). The impression is (continued)

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

267

Box 14.1  (continued) that many people are pushed out of the city and pulled to rural areas with the intention to start up their own business (rural tourism, bars/restaurants, crafts, adventure sports); that is why 32.3% of respondents are self-employed. To conclude From this research it seems clear that many aspects of immigrants’ lives, including their overall QoL, have improved. This serves to refute the idea that one cannot live with QoL in rural areas in Spain. Furthermore, this means that some rural areas can keep on attracting immigrants from urban environments, who can live with QoL in these areas. Some policy-relevant insights are: • Measures could be taken to encourage immigrants to move to villages around the main cities, or a short/medium distance from them, making it possible to take advantage of the urban/rural complementarity. • People who move to rural areas bring demographic change as well as social, economic and cultural changes at their destinations, bringing new possibilities (Hoggart and Paniagua 2001). Because they differ from the traditional rural population in terms of their composition and characteristics, they also differ in how they relate to other people, and to the environment (tourist trips, trips to the city). • The arrival of new resident population from urban to some rural areas poses important analytical challenges and implications for municipal and regional governments; specifically, on the provision and use of certain equipment and services demanded by the new settlers, and also about the rural-urban interaction in relation to mobility and communications (not only physical) of this population.

northern Sweden, and the various circumstances affecting tourism in different parts of the region. Although tourism is often perceived and portrayed as an industry contributing to regional and rural development in sparsely populated peripheries, it needs to be emphasised that tourism in the north tends to be polarised and follows general patterns of uneven demographic and economic development. As shown in more detail below (Fig. 14.1a and b), it is predominantly the larger urbanised centres along with a few remote resorts and iconic attractions that have benefited from

268 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

Fig. 14.1  a and b Development of commercial overnight stays in Västerbotten and Norrbotten municipalities, 2009–2019 (including hotels, hostels, cabin parks and camping). (Source: Tourism in Skåne 2020)

tourism. These tourism ‘hotspots’ have experienced growth in key indicators such as overnight stays, visitor expenditure, employment and number of businesses, while a vast part of the northern inland has struggled to demonstrate similar tourism outcomes. This chapter considers why this might be the case, and what particular challenges and opportunities exist

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

269

for communities and industry stakeholder located in the ‘boring bits in between’ the rapidly urbanising coastal centres and the highly commercialised remote tourism hotspots (Koster and Carson 2019). This introduction ends with some insights into the future of rural tourism in the north.

 ourism in the North: Recent Trends T and Current Characteristics As illustrated in Fig. 14.1a and b, commercial overnight stays have grown in both Västerbotten (+47%) and Norrbotten (+42%) between 2009 and 2019. In Västerbotten, Umeå has been the dominant overnight destination, having increased its share of overnight stays to over 40% over the past decade and in particular after 2014, which coincided with the hosting of the European Capital of Culture. Together with Skellefteå, the urban coast in Västerbotten accounted for almost two-thirds of all commercial overnight stays in 2019 (up from about 59% in 2009). Across the remainder of rural Västerbotten, municipal shares of overnight stays have remained small, with only Storuman municipality (with the ski resort Hemavan-Tärnaby), Vilhelmina municipality (with the smaller ski resorts of Kittelfjäll and Klimpfjäll) and Lycksele (the third-largest town of Västerbotten) registering any significant proportions of overnight stays (between 7% and 9%) in 2019. It is important to emphasise that these figures (drawn from visitor statistics provided by SCB/Tillväxtverket, through Tourism in Skåne 2020) do not reflect all visitor nights in the region, as they are not able to capture nights spent in second homes, for example, which are particularly prominent in the mountain resorts. Yet, they provide some useful indication of the spatial distribution of commercial tourist activity across the north. The picture appears a little less polarised in Norrbotten, where three municipalities have dominated the region’s destination hierarchy in terms of overnight stays: the inland municipality of Kiruna, the county capital of Luleå and the coastal resort town of Piteå, which together have

270 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

accounted for just under 60% of all overnight stays in Norrbotten. While the urban coast of Norrbotten with Luleå and Piteå has had a relatively stable share of visitor nights over the past decade (between 18% and 20% each), it has been much less dominant as an overnight destination compared with the urban coast in Västerbotten. Kiruna has continued to be the most prominent overnight destination in the region, featuring ‘landmark’ attractions such as the Icehotel, Abisko, the ski resort of Riksgränsen and the working mine in Kiruna town. Outside of these hotspots, the municipal shares of overnight stays were again relatively small, with only Jokkmokk, Arjeplog, Gällivare and Boden attracting more than 6% of the region’s overnight stays. Among these, Jokkmokk appeared to have experienced the strongest and most consistent growth rates, essentially doubling its visitor nights between 2009 and 2019 (and growing its market share from 5% in 2009 to 8% in 2019). The two northernmost counties have also had different experiences when it comes to international visitor markets (Fig. 14.2). In Västerbotten, the percentage of overnight stays by international visitors has been hovering around 21–24% over the past decade. This international market is largely comprised of visitors from neighbouring Norway and Finland who accounted for almost two-thirds of all international overnight stays. 4500000 4000000 3500000 3000000

NB - export

2500000

NB northern NB domestic VB - export

2000000 1500000 1000000 500000 0

VB northern

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Fig. 14.2  Development of market composition in Västerbotten and Norrbotten (2009–2019), showing overnight stays by domestic, northern (Norway and Finland) and other ‘export’ markets. (Source: Tourism in Skåne 2020)

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

271

When excluding these ‘northern’ visitors, the international ‘export’ market only accounted for around 7–8% of all visitor nights. International overnight stays in Västerbotten were again highly concentrated along the urban coast, with Umeå and Skellefteå receiving around 64% of all international, and 71% of all ‘export’ market overnight stays in 2019. Export markets in particular appeared to concentrate in Umeå, which attracted more than half of all overnight stays in 2019 (up from 47% in 2009). Storuman municipality with Hemavan-Tärnaby was the third most popular destination for international overnight stays, the majority of which were from ‘northern’ visitors though. In most rural municipalities, local export markets were quite small (typically accounting for less than 8% of all visitor nights spent locally), with the notable exception of Sorsele (where export markets comprised over two-thirds of all international visitors and accounted for 17% of all visitor nights in 2019). This illustrates that much of rural Västerbotten has been lacking the sorts of attractions and industry clusters required to attract or grow external markets to any great extent. Instead, tourism in Västerbotten is very much regionally focused, drawing tourists largely from within the north of Sweden, northern Norway and northern Finland. This regional market comprises considerable cohorts of business tourists, visitors coming for shopping, education or visiting friends and relatives (VFR), and second-­ home owners. In Norrbotten, the share of international overnight stays has been continuously higher than in Västerbotten, with particular increases noticeable in the export market (from 11% in 2009 to 18% in 2019). The main hotspots for international export markets included Kiruna (attracting 33% of all export market overnight stays in Norrbotten), followed by Luleå (13%, although declining from 22% in 2009), Arjeplog (11%), Piteå and Jokkmokk (both 9%). In general, the reliance on international visitors appeared to be higher across Norrbotten than in Västerbotten, with almost all municipalities receiving more than a third of their overnight stays from international visitors. Again, it was Kiruna, along with Arjeplog and Arvidsjaur (both known for hosting the international car testing industry during winter) which had the highest proportions of international and export market overnight stays. While it could be argued that much of the tourism activity occurring in these places is driven by

272 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

non-leisure tourism, including business tourism in the mining or car testing sectors, a review of tourism providers and recent marketing efforts suggests that a number of growing leisure tourism clusters have emerged in these hotspots. These clusters prominently target international tourists with northern and Arctic signature experiences such as northern lights, dog sledding and snowmobile tours, particularly during winter when the region is also accessible through international charter flights (e.g. from the UK, the Netherlands and Germany to both Kiruna and Arvidsjaur) in addition to regular flights to Luleå. While the peak travel months for domestic and northern visitors continue to be during summer (June– August), key export markets (from e.g. Germany, the UK, France or the US) increasingly visit during the winter months (January–March, and December). This appears very much in contrast to Västerbotten, where export markets continue to visit predominantly during summer.

 ourism in the Rural North: A ‘Boring Bit T in Between’? The summary of recent visitor trends and changes in overnight stays illustrates that much of the rural and inland north has struggled to keep up with the regions’ urban centres and a handful of remote tourism hotspots in terms of tourism growth. The challenges for tourism in these rural peripheries are quite extensive and have recently been discussed by Koster and Carson (2019), who described these destinations as the ‘boring bits in between’. Drawing on examples from Canada, Australia and Sweden, the ‘boring bits’ are destinations that are neither located in close vicinity to major metropolitan ‘core’ markets, nor in more iconic and exotic pleasure peripheries that stand out due to their unique natural or cultural features. The ‘boring’ label was intended as a provocative term to emphasise that these places are often the peripheries that are forgotten when it comes to raising political, research, media or tourism marketing attention. Both academic and public discourses around rural tourism in the north tend to emphasise success stories, for example, connected to booming tourist resorts, the growing number of rich foreigners visiting exotic

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

273

destinations like the Icehotel or Treehotel, or the popularity of world-­ renowned events such as Jokkmokk’s winter market. Within such discourses, the experiences of rural places away from these exciting hotspots have largely remained under the radar, even though these places make up the majority of municipalities in the inland north. As explained below, they face different sets of challenges and opportunities for tourism development that need to be better understood and planned for by industry and public sector stakeholders. In general, the further away rural destinations are from urban core centres and infrastructure hubs, the smaller their potential visitor market becomes as tourists may access similar experiences closer to home (Hall 2005). In northern Sweden, the inland areas are not only located at a great distance from the national core centres and access gateways in the south, but they typically feature landscapes, attractions and resources that can also be found in areas closer to larger population centres further south. They are almost exclusively reliant on road-based travellers, most notably self-drive tourists, and this reliance is subject to limitations of distance decay, intervening opportunities and seasonality. The seasonality of tourism in the area is also creating a special set of characteristics of the labour market connected to it. In the absence of major tourist drawcards and landmark attractions, tourist markets visiting these places purposefully as their principal destination are usually small. There are nevertheless opportunities for these destinations to capture transit flows and ‘incidental visitors’ who are on the way to somewhere else (Ramsey and Malcolm 2018). Developing local benefits from such transit markets is possible but difficult, as travellers are typically on tight itineraries and there is often a lack of local services, activities and infrastructure that could convince tourists to stay another day before moving on (Carson et al. 2019). Transit drive markets, in particular tourists in their Recreational Vehicles (RVs), are renowned for being highly self-contained and for spending relatively little on common hospitality services. They are also highly seasonal in the north. They are prominent during the summer months (June to August), when large numbers of RVs and caravans from Sweden, the Nordic countries and continental Europe can be seen along various inland roads. However, this market largely disappears over the autumn and winter

274 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

months, and many facilities along these roads, such as camping sites, cafés and souvenir shops, are closed during the off-season. Although the ‘boring bits’ may offer access to natural resources and scenic landscapes for leisure and touristic purposes, these assets offer very few opportunities for differentiation and commercial development. Free access to nature is commonly considered a public right in the Nordic context, and the majority of tourists (who have traditionally come from the Nordic region) are quite experienced in consuming nature without the need for commercial services. This makes the development of an economically sustainable tourism industry difficult (Lundmark et al. 2010). Challenges for commercial tourism development are even more complicated in comparatively ‘dull’ areas that lack any particular scenic qualities or carry the visual burden of environmental damage or infrastructure legacies from previous industrial developments. These places often attempt to convert local heritage attractions into tourism experiences, as in the case of various mining or industrial tourism experiences across the north. Usually, such experiences cannot be maintained by private stakeholders and, thus, rely on continuous public funding and volunteer contributions to remain operational. The institutional legacies of pre-tourism industries also pose serious challenges to tourism development in the ‘boring bits’. With many rural communities having essentially evolved as places dependent on natural resource industries, tourism first has to find its place within the wider socio-economic fabric and psychological mindsets prevalent in such traditional resource settlements (Carson and Carson 2011). Local identities are often closely linked to traditional industries, and even when that connection has almost disappeared in terms of local employment, there are many visible signs of the resources sector still being important for people (Lundmark and Åberg 2019). Despite the efforts of local politicians or regional development agencies trying to ‘push’ tourism as a tool for economic diversification, it is often a slow process to get tourism accepted and embedded at the local community level. This process is usually challenged by a lack of local appreciation of tourism, a lack of interest in working in a new service industry, a relatively low level of knowledge and skills in tourism, as well as a lack of local self-confidence or imagination—much in the sense of ‘why would tourists possibly want to come

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

275

and visit our village that has just empty houses and no services?’ (Carson et al. 2019). This is perhaps in contrast to many remote resort towns and ‘exotic’ destinations where host communities have been exposed to tourism as a major industry for a much longer time, meaning that local stakeholders have had more time to recognise the value of tourism and what it takes to develop a successful destination and industry. The small, dispersed and highly seasonal nature of tourism in the ‘boring bits’, along with tourism’s role as a secondary industry or ‘gap filler’ in relation to traditional resource industries, means that local impacts on demographic and socio-economic indicators have been small (or invisible) within official data records. The number of new tourism jobs and businesses generated in rural destinations reliant on ‘free-to-use’ resources and infrastructure has remained low, and even access to well-known national parks and protected areas does not seem to stimulate any significant economic development outcomes away from the few well-­established tourist resorts (Lundmark et  al. 2010; Byström and Müller 2014). Similarly, there is little evidence that tourism has contributed to any population growth in the ‘boring bits’. Again, such growth experiences have remained limited to a few isolated resort communities like, for example, in Hemavan, where strong investment in tourism-related infrastructure and services has attracted new migration streams, including young workers, the ‘creative class’, amenity migrants and counter-­urbanites, and lifestyle tourism entrepreneurs (Lundmark 2006; Lundmark et  al. 2014; Thulemark et al. 2014). Such post-productive migration streams appear to have been far less prominent in the ‘boring bits’. Although some case studies of creative migrants and international tourism entrepreneurs drawn to ‘low-amenity’ areas in the north exist (e.g. Eimermann 2015; Carson et al. 2018), these seem to be highly localised exceptions rather than a common experience across the northern inland. However, there is hope for at least some of the municipalities in the north. Thulemark, Duncan and Möller (this volume) take on the seasonality of tourism to rural communities in the Swedish north with a special focus on youth. Importantly, they see the local community and municipality as key for successfully attracting and retaining young seasonal workers as potential in-migrants. This is especially important for municipalities struggling with a decreasing population base and diminishing services.

276 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

 hat Might the Future Hold? Emerging W Opportunities and Challenges for Tourism in the North Ongoing concerns around climate change, along with a growing international interest in the north as part of the Arctic, will likely have profound impacts on tourism in northern Sweden in the near future. How this will affect the spatial distribution of tourism, and the emergence of new destination winners and losers, is currently not well understood. While the growing popularity of winter or Arctic tourism experiences is already evident in certain parts of northern Sweden, particularly within Norrbotten, it remains to be seen whether this will ultimately further polarise tourism within a few prominent hotspots where clusters of products, services and access infrastructure already exist, or whether new industry clusters can emerge in the ‘boring bits’ away from the dominant resorts. Continuing changes in international visitation and seasonality patterns may ultimately further marginalise the ‘boring bits’, and in particular places relying on transit travel during the summer months, in terms of attracting more political, media and market attention. On the other hand, increasing international tourism concentrating in a few hotspots may lead to new issues of ‘over-tourism’, as discussed by Lundmark, Müller and Bohn (this volume). This has so far not been an explicit problem in northern Sweden, but has already started to emerge in other prominent Arctic destinations, meaning that the increasing hype around internationalisation and Arctification of tourism requires careful planning and management. As discussed in Box 14.2, the relationships between climate change and tourism in the north are multi-faceted and complex. While on the one hand, providing new opportunities for tourism development through increasing media attention and demand for ‘last chance’ tourism, it makes northern destinations also increasingly vulnerable as their alleged comparative advantage, such as snow reliability, is coming under threat (Demiroglu et al. 2019). Winter tourism destinations providing downhill skiing have been pointed out as winners by some, but as is discussed by Demiroglu there are no easy solutions and it is not time to consider the ‘case closed’ yet in terms of winners and losers here. All may be losers

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

277

Box 14.2  What Happens in the Arctic Does Not Stay in the Arctic O. Cenk Demiroglu According to the myth climate change will provide the Arctic with opportunities for future tourism development. However, the truth lies in the interlinkages between the tourism system and the climate change phenomenon (Fig. 14.3). Such complexities come alive especially in the Arctic case, as it not only has become a hot spot to last chance tourism but also enjoys a substantially increased media attention. Demiroglu and Hall (2020) identified around a hundred scientific articles on climate change and polar tourism. Their geo-bibliography (Demiroglu and Hall 2020) thematically depicted this emerging research paradigm according to the mutual interactions of tourism and climate in the forms of impacts and responses as well as their further combined and rebound effects. Impacts of climate change on Arctic tourism The vulnerability of the Arctic has led to increased visits to the region, especially through cruises along the Canadian Arctic coasts and around Svalbard. Besides being trendy, such development is made possible by improved nautical accessibility as the sea ice melts. Negative impacts are caused by unpredictability of sea ice conditions, coupled with the intensifying Arctic cyclones challenging the region’s popular cruise tourism. Add to that the intensifying flight turbulences, attributed to climate change

Adaptation (e.g. Spatial Substitution) Origin

Market Adaptation (e.g. Diversification) Awareness to Transformation

“Arctic” Destination

Carbon Tax

Emissions

Accessibility

Travel Flows

Rebound Effects

Climate Change

Fig. 14.3  Interrelatedness of climate change and Arctic tourism (continued)

278 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

Box 14.2  (continued) (Williams and Joshi 2013), the role of warming in determining travel to and within Arctic destinations has become more prominent. The cryospheric environment of the Arctic is one of its unique selling propositions. Many visitors also associate cultural elements of the region with a ‘disneyfied’ white ambience, be it about the indigenous lifestyles, attractions like the Santa Claus Village in Finland or the Ice Hotel in Sweden. The likelihood of sighting wildlife, polar bears, seals or reindeer is dependent on ice and snow, as are the many recreational activities such as skiing, snowmobiling and dog sledding. In a warming world all of this is threatened. Warming will result in fewer and less cold days, partly eliminating the extreme conditions in the wintertime and extending the summertime. Furthermore, projected increases in cloud cover indicate an unfavourable setting for viewing celestial Arctic phenomena such as the Midnight Sun. Impacts of Arctic tourism on climate change Early studies, mostly focused on the Antarctic, note the highly carbon-­ intensive cruise and overflight tourism as well as the long haul flights to their gateways. Albeit realised at relatively shorter distances, similar results are also showcased by polar bear viewing tourism in Canada. The global warming impact of these anthropogenic emissions is amplified due to the ice-albedo feedback mechanism, as disappearing ice and snow cover results in less reflection and more absorption of the solar radiation. Moreover, permafrost thaw is projected to contribute to the emissions, with net impacts depending on the vegetation development in lieu, by releasing more greenhouse gases, especially the methane with its high warming potential (IPCC 2019). Combined and rebound effects Complexity arises as one looks closer into the systemic responses to the mutual impacts. Tourists travelling long distances for a “last chance” to spot polar bears and thereby emitting extra to shrink the sea ice habitat and further disturbing the bears is one paradox to talk about, while advocating the transformative capacity of such tours towards a mitigation awareness that is almost never achieved is another. Such adaptation to the short term “positive” outcomes of climate change end up in negative impacts—becoming “maladaptation”. In the case of ski tourism, studies in Sweden note that levying carbon taxes on flights may risk the businesses of relatively remote subarctic and arctic destinations, who may be planning for capitalising on their relative resilience. Such indirect impact stemming from policy change may then be regarded as “malmitigation”. What about the origins? The origins—source markets—in the (Arctic) tourism and climate change interrelationships are the least studied components. Some research on the “backyard effects” highlight the importance of home weather conditions on trip decisions. In the case of Arctic Sweden, for instance, it is argued that the (continued)

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

279

Box 14.2  (continued)

Fig. 14.4  Snow and ice conditions at Umeå University campus on 17 February 2020. (Photo: O. Cenk Demiroglu) worsening snow conditions in urban areas (Fig. 14.4) may negatively impact the motivation to travel to the snow-reliable ski areas of inner Norrland. Regarding domestic emissions, however, we lack studies to understand how much of a tradeoff is made between the maybe scapegoated travel footprints versus the home and work time footprints. Here, what-if analyses are needed to undercover whether the domestic emissions are preferable or not.

and in destinations that are heavily reliant on tourist for basic service (Duncan, Thulemark and Möller, this volume), climate change could pose a real challenge to the municipality as a whole. As debates around ‘de-growth’ continue to intensify also in the context of tourism (Hall et al. forthcoming 2021), we will most likely see a stronger interest in ‘alternative’ tourism that is less dependent on carbon-­ intensive transport, infrastructure and consumption. While this will present challenges to ‘tourism as we know it’ in many of the remote tourist resorts in the north, especially those relying on high-intensity

280 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

downhill skiing infrastructure or fly-in transport, it may provide important opportunities for the ‘boring bits’ where development has been far less intense so far. As discussed by Zhang and Lundmark (this volume), one market that has become more important for the northern parts of Sweden are tourists who want to experience nature in simple ways. This has given rise to a group of entrepreneurs in the business of selling ‘greenness’. The supply of such green nature-based tourism products does not differ from selling other products, with distance to markets and relative proximity to infrastructure being important for success. Zhang and Lundmark point out, however, that there are indications that there might be some characteristics that differentiate more rural places from metropolitan areas. As suggested by interviews, factors that function as pull factors to rural areas are less competition and lower demand on profits, which makes it easier for new entrepreneurs to establish themselves. There is still a need to do more research into this topic and what it means for entrepreneurs as well as rural areas. Within the discussion of new tourism opportunities related to Arctification, internationalisation and alternative tourism, it needs to be emphasised that, in the short and medium term, the more traditional ‘northern’ markets and tourist flows will most likely continue to make up the majority of visitors to many rural communities in the north. Often, these visitors do not seem to be valued as much from an economic development perspective, or they are simply not recognised as tourist markets, and thus remain ‘invisible’ or forgotten when it comes to new tourism and marketing strategies. This is particularly the case with second-home owners, which make up a substantial proportion of the visitor market in the ‘boring bits’. Unlike in more developed resort destinations, many second homes in rural inland communities are in fact abandoned family homes (Back and Marjavaara 2017). Their owners tend to have long-­ standing connections to those communities and use their former family homes as weekend or vacation residences on a regular basis, often bringing along other family and friends. While their economic benefits to local tourism industries can be debated, they may be nevertheless important for local shops, cafés and other local clubs and community activities (Müller and Hoogendoorn 2013; Nordin and Marjavaara 2012). They may also be a potential market to encourage more permanent in-­migration

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

281

later on in life (Marjavaara and Lundholm 2016) and thus help maintain important community services and infrastructure. Marjavaara (this volume) points out that the second-home population is largely underestimated as a strategic asset for local communities due to old and outdated definitions of ‘inhabitants’ which fail to incorporate the importance of temporal mobility. A different method to calculate the actual inhabitants of a municipality would be a relatively easy and quick way to change this and give small rural municipalities more tax income to maintain service. Second-home tourists also have the potential to become important political game changers, particularly if new foreign markets continue to emerge or intensify as a result of increasing internationalisation of tourism supply and demand in the north. While second-home owners from neighbouring Norway or Finland have been quite common in northern Sweden, particularly in the border areas, they have so far caused few (if any) noticeable political or social tensions within local communities. However, higher international mobility from new export markets could lead to unexpected issues around nationality and borders. Hannonen (this volume) illustrates this by focusing on Russians as a new type of second-home owners in Finland. The issue that has been raised recently is regarding the potential threats that foreign-owned properties can impose in this case to Finnish national security, something which is unexpected also by the Russian second-home owners. Regulations are not being updated to include the event of foreigners purchasing property neighbouring objects or areas of national interest. Finally, one undervalued opportunity for the inland north that deserves more attention concerns the regional market originating in the northern cities along the coast. As discussed by Carson, Åberg & Prideaux (this volume), cities like Umeå have been growing at phenomenal rates and may, thus, become important source markets for the hinterland. These include business tourists, visiting public servants, university students, and generic visiting friends and relatives (VFR), in addition to second-­ home owners and city dwellers visiting the hinterland on short getaways or day trip excursions. While such regional markets may not generate the sorts of external or public attention required to shake off the stigma as a ‘boring bit’, they are certainly less volatile and more loyal over time, and therefore provide more realistic opportunities for creating a small but

282 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

viable local industry (Lundmark and Åberg 2019). Developing such efforts further on a larger scale will, however, require more systematic attention to urban-rural relationship building and a more explicit appreciation among local and regional decision-makers and political stakeholders that public support for rural tourism development does not always have to revolve around international or external export markets. In this section of the book some examples of the variations and characteristics of tourism will be presented. In the chapters that follow on this brief introduction to tourism in the North, the focus will be put on some special yet illustrative cases that we think are being contextualised by this introduction.

References Back, A., & Marjavaara, R. (2017). Mapping an invisible population: The uneven geography of second-home tourism. Tourism Geographies, 19(4), 595–611. Bedrich, S. M. G., & Rainer, G. (2013). Migración por amenidad y turismo: ¿dinámicas globales en el espacio rural?. El caso de Tafí del Valle (Tucumán, Argentina). PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 11(4), 571–582. Benson, M. (2011). The movement beyond (lifestyle) migration: Mobile practices and the constitution of a better way of life. Mobilities, 6(2), 221–235. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (Eds.). (2009). Lifestyle migration; expectations, aspirations and experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. Byström, J., & Müller, D. K. (2014). Tourism labor market impacts of national parks. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie, 58(1), 115–126. Carson, D. A., & Carson, D. B. (2011). Why tourism may not be everybody’s business: The challenge of tradition in resource peripheries. The Rangeland Journal, 33, 373–383. Carson, D. A., Carson, D. B., & Eimermann, M. (2018). International winter tourism entrepreneurs in northern Sweden: Understanding migration, lifestyle and business motivations. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality & Tourism, 18(2), 183–198. Carson, D. A., Prideaux, B., Porter, R., & Vuin, A. (2019). Transitioning from a local railway hub to a regional tourism system: The story of Peterborough, South Australia. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural

14  Who Travels to the North? Challenges and Opportunities… 

283

tourism geographies: Case studies from developed nations on the exotic, the fringe and the boring bits in between (pp. 173–196). Cham: Springer. Demiroglu, O. C., & Hall, C. M. (2020). Geobibliography and Bibliometric Networks of Polar Tourism and Climate Change Research. Atmosphere 11(5), 498. Demiroglu, O. C., Lundmark, L., Saarinen, J., & Müller, D. K. (2019). The last resort? Ski tourism and climate change in Arctic Sweden. Journal of Tourism Futures, early view. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-05-2019-0046. Eimermann, M. (2015). Lifestyle migration to the north: Dutch families and the decision to move to rural Sweden. Population, Space and Place, 21(1), 68–85. Hall, C.  M. (2005). Tourism: Rethinking the social science of mobility. Harlow: Pearson. Hall, C. M., & Demiroglu, O. C. (2020). Polar tourism & climate change geo-­ bibliography. Retrieved May 3, 2020, from https://tinyurl.com/polarcc Hall, C. M., Lundmark, L., & Zhang, J. (forthcoming, 2021). Degrowth and tourism. Oxfordshire: Routledge. Hoggart, K., & Paniagua, A. (2001). The restructuring of rural Spain? Journal of Rural Studies, 17(1), 63–80. Huete, R. (2009). Turistas que llegan para quedarse. Una explicación sociológica sobre la movilidad residencial. Alicante: Publicaciones Universidad de Alicante. IPCC, 2019: IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, N.M. Weyer (eds.)]. In press. Koster, R. L., & Carson, D. A. (2019). Considerations for differentiating among rural tourism geographies. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies: Case studies from developed nations on the exotic, the fringe and the boring bits in between (pp. 253–271). Cham: Springer. Lundmark, L. (2006). Mobility, migration and seasonal tourism employment: Evidence from Swedish Mountain municipalities. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 6(3), 197–213. Lundmark, L., & Åberg, K.  G. (2019). How modest tourism development becomes successful: The complementarity of tourism in Malå municipality. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies: Case studies from developed nations on the exotic, the fringe and the boring bits in between (pp. 221–241). Cham: Springer.

284 

L. Lundmark and D. A. Carson

Lundmark, L., Fredman, P., & Sandell, K. (2010). National parks and protected areas and the role for employment in tourism and forest sectors: A Swedish case. Ecology and Society, 15(1), 19. Lundmark, L., Ednarsson, M., & Karlsson, S. (2014). International migration, self-employment and restructuring through tourism in sparsely populated areas. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 14(4), 422–440. Marjavaara, R., & Lundholm, E. (2016). Does second-home ownership trigger migration in later life? Population, Space and Place, 22(3), 228–240. Müller, D. K., & Hoogendoorn, G. (2013). Second homes: Curse or blessing? A review 36 years later. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 13(4), 353–369. Nordin, U., & Marjavaara, R. (2012). The local non-locals: Second home owners associational engagement in Sweden. Turizam: međunarodni znanstveno-­ stručni časopis, 60(3), 293–305. Ramsey, D., & Malcolm, C. D. (2018). The importance of location and scale in rural and small town tourism product development: The case of the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre, Manitoba, Canada. The Canadian Geographer, 62(2), 250–265. Thulemark, M., Lundmark, M., & Heldt-Cassel, S. (2014). Tourism employment and creative in-migrants. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 14(4), 403–421. Tourism in Skåne. (2020). Statistik för gästnätter. Retrieved from https://tourisminskane.com/sv/statistik-analys-och-trender/statistik-for-gastnatter Williams, P. D., & Joshi, M. M. (2013). Intensification of winter transatlantic aviation turbulence in response to climate change. Nature Climate Change, 3, 644–648.

15 Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional Markets for Hinterland Tourism Destinations? Doris A. Carson, Kajsa G. Åberg, and Bruce Prideaux

 he Myth: Growth in the City Benefits Tourism T in the Hinterland Many sparsely populated peripheries of developed countries, such as Sweden and Australia, as well as across the Fennoscandian north and North America, have undergone rapid urbanisation in recent decades. Economic and demographic growth has mostly concentrated in a few mid-sized regional cities which have grown on the back of major infrastructure projects, an expanding public service sector and an associated housing and investment boom. In turn, the remainder of the

D. A. Carson (*) Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] K. G. Åberg Region Västerbotten, Umeå, Sweden B. Prideaux Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_15

285

286 

D. A. Carson et al.

regions—the rural and remote hinterland—has often struggled with declining populations and a loss of employment opportunities and local services. Tourism is often presented as a tool for new rural development in these peripheries, but there has been limited discussion within policy circles about how tourism itself might be impacted by the broader urbanisation dynamics affecting the north, and what this means for rural tourism development prospects in particular. Policy-makers tasked with economic (including tourism) development in northern peripheries often seem to focus on promoting further growth in the cities in an effort to make their regions more attractive to external investors and visitors. Typical flagship projects in regional development strategies may centre around large-scale infrastructure investments in the city, major events, and new branding or marketing campaigns emphasising the growing cosmopolitanism and world-class reputation of the city (Schmallegger and Carson 2010)—usually in stark contrast to the traditional backward image associated with lagging resource peripheries in the north. The hinterland is (usually implicitly) assumed to piggyback on the city’s success and to gain indirect benefits from such urban growth strategies. This rhetoric follows the logic of ‘growth centre’ theories which have increasingly resurfaced in the development policy discourses of sparsely populated jurisdictions in recent years (Copus 2018). The main underlying assumption is that cities can function as growth engines for the surrounding region, as the capital and resources accumulating in the city will eventually spread or ‘spill over’ to the hinterland, bringing new people, jobs, skills and demand linkages to rural areas (Parr 1999). Extending this argument to a tourism context, the expectation is that fostering tourism-related growth in the city will ultimately benefit destinations and tourism industries in the rural hinterland. Cities are usually portrayed as the main entry points and tourist gateways to the north (Hall 2015; Halpern 2008), suggesting that the hinterland relies on urban transport services and access infrastructure, and that strategies aimed at increasing passenger arrivals in the city are needed to increase visitation of the region as a whole. Urban destinations are also believed to be in a better position to attract important export markets as they are more likely to offer a variety and better quality of hospitality services, entertainment opportunities and events. This in turn generates higher

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

287

visibility in the marketplace; higher confidence among tourists, wholesalers and investors; and higher destination competitiveness on a national and/or international scale. The city can, thus, function as an attractive transport and service hub, offering tourists opportunities to visit the region by using the city either as a starting point or as a base to explore the hinterland.

 he Alternative View: The City as a Competitor T or Regional Market for the Hinterland? The alternative view suggests the opposite. An increasingly urban-centric focus in northern tourism development could mean that rural communities and industries may actually miss out on growth opportunities or get left further behind as they struggle to compete with the city for market attention and tourist spending. This view is in line with earlier criticism of the ‘growth centre’ perspective in regional development (Parr 1999; Partridge et al. 2007), arguing that investment in urban-based industries or population growth leads more commonly to further polarisation dynamics and negative ‘backwash effects’. This means that resources continue to accumulate in the city and even gravitate from rural areas into the city rather than spill over the other way. In the popular discourse, this has at times been referred to as the ‘sponge city’ metaphor (Argent et al. 2008), whereby the growth of people, jobs and services in the city is assumed to occur at the expense of the hinterland, with rural industries and populations being increasingly ‘sucked’ into the city to access better opportunities. Such negative externalities may also arise in tourism. Growth in urban-­ based hospitality services and visitor infrastructure may brand the cities as more desirable and as offering ‘better value for money’, while the opposite is associated with rural places (seen as expensive, risky and offering little choice or lower standards). As shown in the case of Cairns and Tropical North Queensland (Box 15.1), tourists may increasingly base themselves in the city and explore the hinterland on short daytrip excursions. Not only does day-tripping reduce the amount of time and money

288 

D. A. Carson et al.

spent by tourists in rural areas (Thompson and Prideaux 2019), but it is subject to fundamental distance decay, with excursions rarely going beyond an easy commuting distance from the city (Hall 2005). This means that more distant and less accessible destinations will inevitably lose out unless they manage to provide the scale, quality and uniqueness required to overcome distance and intervening opportunities closer to the core (Prideaux 2002).

Box 15.1  Daytrip Excursions and Satellite Resorts: The Challenges for Regional Tourism Spillover from Cairns to Tropical North Queensland Bruce Prideaux Cairns, the largest and most northerly city on Australia’s east coast, is the undisputed tourism powerhouse of northern Australia, attracting 2 million domestic and 0.85 million international visitors in 2018 (TRA 2019). Improvements to both air and road transport enabled the city’s tourism industry to capitalise on the growing interest in nature-based tourism in the 1970s and 1980s, allowing the city to promote itself as the ‘gateway’ to the World Heritage listed Wet Tropics Rainforest (WTR) and the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The opening of the Cairns international airport in 1984 helped to consolidate the dominance of the city as a leading Australian tourism destination. Effective control of the regions’ marketing organisation (Tropical Tourism North Queensland) has helped to consolidate the city’s dominance over surrounding regions. As a gateway, Cairns has a centralised system of transport, tour operators and accommodation infrastructure that encourages visitors to use the city as their holiday base. Tours to the GBR, WTR and the Atherton Tablelands (the rural and largely agricultural hinterland to the west) commence and finish in Cairns. The one exception to this centralisation is Port Douglas, a small coastal resort destination that emerged in the 1980s as both a competitor and a complementary destination to Cairns. The emergence of Port Douglas can be traced to one investor who gambled on building a large five-star Sheraton resort and golf course in the then small fishing village that had only a few cheap hotels and caravan parks but access to an excellent beach (which Cairns does not have), the GBR and the WTR. The building of the resort had a catalyst effect which attracted significant investment in other upmarket hotels and the development of an organic shopping experience in the downtown area (Prideaux 2000). Aside from Port Douglas, the dominance that Cairns is able to exert over its hinterland defines the relationship between the city and surrounding areas of tourism interest. Dominance in this sense includes the variety and (continued)

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

289

Box 15.1  (continued) quality of accommodation, cuisine, nightlife, shopping and tours which are not found in other hinterland areas. Theories claiming ‘spillover’ effects from urban ‘growth centres’ to surrounding areas often fail to take into account the disparity in resources available to tourists between cities and hinterlands. A typical tourist experience is based on the mundane of the everyday (revolving around sleeping, eating and attending to personal hygiene) and participating in ‘peak experiences’ including day tours, built attractions, nightlife and cuisine. Larger urban destinations offer a level of mundaneness that hinterland areas are unable to match; the five-star mundaneness of an international hotel in Cairns cannot be matched by a dated two-star motel in the hinterland. To develop a significant overnight tourism experience, a hinterland region must find a pathway to capitalise on its unique set of ‘peak experiences’. The catalyst effect that stimulated the growth of Port Douglas requires a level of vision, planning and capital mobilisation that is generally absent in hinterland regions. The alternative evolutionary approach (Prideaux 2004) based on a growth path commencing with local tourism before progressing through interstate to international tourism is difficult to achieve, particularly when overshadowed by a dominant tourism city nearby. Kuranda, a rainforest village located in the mountains west of Cairns, demonstrates the difficulties faced by hinterland towns. Kuranda has evolved as a unique rainforest experience based on novel transport access and shopping, but has been unable to develop an overnight sector despite its unique scenic location. The typical Kuranda day tour consists of a package of a rail journey through rainforest clad mountains and along a spectacular gorge, a cable car ride between the coast and the village through the rainforest, and a retail prescient that offers a unique blend of organic shopping opportunities. However, Kuranda has no restaurant culture and no overnight accommodation forcing visitors to return to Cairns after the excursion. A similar situation exists in other hinterland areas west of Kuranda and to the south of Cairns. It is unlikely that hinterland regions will be able to overcome the ‘sponge effect’ exercised by Cairns unless they are able to attract the scale of investment that enabled Port Douglas to establish itself as a separate satellite destination. However, there are storm clouds on the horizon as climate change emerges as a major threat to Cairns’ international market. Further coral bleaching of the scale that occurred in 2016–2017 may lead to a significant fall in international visitors (Prideaux et al. 2018), forcing the destination to look for alternative markets. The hinterland, and the Atherton Tablelands in particular, has the potential to offer a range of day and overnight experiences related to its agricultural landscape and producers (Thompson et  al. 2016), but this will also depend on Cairns stakeholders being willing to ‘share’ visitors with the region.

290 

D. A. Carson et al.

A certain ‘sponge effect’ could also occur when urban-based providers ‘appropriate the rural’ by offering typical rural experiences that are comparatively easy, safe and cheap to access within the city. Museums, heritage precincts, theme parks, wildlife parks, Indigenous art galleries or farmers’ markets may all be examples of urban-based attractions that promote experiences associated with rural and remote landscapes, industries, cultures or activities. While they may raise greater tourist awareness of the region’s rural appeal, they may also satisfy visitor demand for such experiences within the city rather than encourage visits to rural areas. This is best illustrated in the case of Reykjavík (Box 15.2) where a range of ‘indoor nature’ attractions has emerged in recent years, offering tourists opportunities to experience the iconic natural wonders of Iceland without ever having to leave the city.

Box 15.2  Reykjavík: A Gateway, Basecamp or Independent Destination? Changing Seasonality and Changing Destination Hierarchies in Iceland Gunnar Thór Jóhannesson and Johannes Welling Tourism in Iceland has experienced exponential growth in recent years, with international tourist arrivals increasing from around 490,000 in 2010 to 2.3 million in 2018 (Ferðamálastofa 2020). This tourism boom was triggered by the events following the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008 when the slump in local currency, along with competition in international aviation, made Iceland a relatively cheap and attractive destination, and tourism was quickly picked up by central government authorities as a key industry to rebuild the Icelandic economy (Jóhannesson and Huijbens 2013). Over the past decade, tourism has become a recognised pillar of Iceland’s economy, the single most important provider of foreign currency and the largest provider of jobs. As detailed in a recent report on urban Arctic tourism (Müller et al. 2020), the capital city of Reykjavík has been at the centre of this tourism boom. Almost all (98.8% in 2018) tourists to Iceland arrive via Keflavík International Airport, which is the only year-round functional gateway into the country. Its location (~50 km from the city) and connecting road infrastructure channels most foreign visitors into the city. Even tourists travelling on to other parts of Iceland via domestic flights or rental cars essentially need to drive through Reykjavík, making a city stopover a logical itinerary choice. Little (continued)

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

291

Box 15.2  (continued) surprisingly, then, the vast majority of international tourists (more than 92% in 2018) visit Reykjavík as part of their trip, either as a short stopover before visiting other nature-based destinations or as a basecamp from which to explore the surroundings on day excursions. The latter has been increasingly common in recent years, as the city has grown into a progressive and bustling hub that offers a growing range of hospitality, food, entertainment, shopping and culture experiences that do not exist elsewhere in the country. Iceland’s main touristic drawcards have traditionally been centred around its nature-based attractions that can be found across the rural and remote parts of the country, including various national parks, volcanoes, waterfalls, glaciers, geysers and its rugged coastlines. These attractions are commonly visited during summer (June–September) and on road-based itineraries (self-drive and guided tours) that often involve overnight stays in rural areas. Hence, during summer time, Reykjavík has played a clear ‘gateway role’ for tourists wanting to explore the island. During winter time, however, the city has become a destination in its own, as tourists are typically on shorter trips and tend to remain in just one location due to less favourable weather and road conditions (Huijbens and Jóhannesson 2020). Regional tourist dispersal during winter is limited, as tourists tend to undertake day excursions to various attractions in the vicinity of the city, such as visits to nearby spa areas, whale watching safaris in Faxaflói bay or the iconic ‘Golden Circle’ tour (visiting Þingvellir National Park, Gullfoss Waterfall and Geysir hot springs). Also Northern Lights tours have become increasingly popular during winter, taking tourists just outside the city borders to experience the aurora borealis and the winter darkness (Jóhannesson and Lund 2017). Another recent trend, and one that further consolidates Reykjavík’s emerging role as an independent destination, has been the development of major ‘indoor nature’ attractions within the city. Typical Icelandic landscape features and nature attractions are being showcased as part of permanent museums or interpretation centres that make such experiences easily accessible on a year-round basis and under all weather conditions. Examples include the whale museum (featuring real-size replicas of whales and other maritime species), a ‘Fly-Over Iceland’ landscape display and the ‘Wonders of Iceland’ nature exhibition at Perlan (featuring a range of high-tech exhibitions, including a planetarium with a Northern Lights show, and replicas of glacial ice caves and an iconic remote bird cliff). Although summer continues to be the main season for tourism in Iceland, winter tourism is clearly increasing in popularity and growing at a rapid (continued)

292 

D. A. Carson et al.

Box 15.2  (continued) pace, reflecting the strong global interest in Arctic destinations and their winter-related experiences in particular. A change in urban-rural destination hierarchies, with Reykjavík becoming ever more dominant as the main overnight destination (rather than functioning as a gateway promoting regional dispersal), is thus a likely outcome if current trends towards ‘Arctification’ and winter tourism continue to intensify. While this has clear drawbacks for rural tourism stakeholders from an economic perspective, changes in seasonality, travel patterns and tourist concentration may also serve to protect vulnerable nature areas from increasing environmental pressures caused by tourism. In particular, indoor nature exhibitions can redirect excessive tourist flows away from the island’s delicate natural sites. They can also serve as a form of tourism adaption, particularly as remote areas that are currently on tourist ‘bucket lists’ are likely to become more difficult to access in the future as a result of climate change and human land-use expansion.

The ‘crowding out’ of tourist markets from the hinterland could emerge as another backwash effect, as detailed in the case of Darwin and the Northern Territory (NT) below (Box 15.3). Economic and demographic growth in the city is likely to be accompanied by growth in non-­ leisure visitors, most notably business tourists. These markets tend to have less time and interest to travel to other areas, but may cause severe shortages in transport and accommodation capacities within the city, thus driving up prices and making travel to the region via the city less attractive for more price-sensitive markets. The city may even emerge as a direct competitor for the hinterland, particularly when urban-based industry and government stakeholders feel the pressure to protect local visitor numbers from leakage to rural areas. Their interest in ‘sharing’ visitors across the region and in stimulating travel beyond daytrip excursions, for example, as part of formal collaboration strategies, may therefore be limited (Thompson and Prideaux 2019). Another—and more positive—view on changing urban-rural tourism relationships concerns the role of cities as emerging generating markets for the hinterland (Lundmark and Åberg 2019; Carson and Carson 2019). Northern city residents are seemingly not recognised or valued as

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

293

Box 15.3  Boomtown Darwin: A Competitor for Tourism in the Top End of the Northern Territory? Doris A. Carson and Dean B. Carson Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory (NT) and, with a population of around 137,000  in 2016, the only large urban centre in a very sparsely populated territory. Darwin experienced phenomenal economic and demographic growth between the mid-2000s and mid-2010s, triggered by a series of major offshore gas construction projects which created a significant infrastructure and real estate investment boom in the city. During this ‘boomtown’ period, tourism in Darwin also grew substantially (from ~620,000 annual overnight visitors in 2006 to ~830,000 in 2016), with much of this growth attributed to non-leisure tourism, including business and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tourism (TRA 2019). During the boom, the city attracted an unprecedented level of tourism and hospitality-related infrastructure investment, including the construction of a multi-billion dollar waterfront precinct and several high-rise accommodation complexes (Schmallegger and Carson 2010). In contrast, the various nature-based destinations in the broader Top End region (including relatively iconic attractions such as Katherine/Nitmiluk National Park and Kakadu National Park) clearly struggled to keep up with Darwin in terms of visitor numbers, overnight stays, infrastructure investment and product development. With the exception of a couple of isolated resorts, many regional destinations have not been able to rejuvenate their increasingly ‘tired’ products and destination experiences (Carson and Carson 2019). The hinterland has been facing a substantial tourism crisis over the past decade, which was at its worst in the aftermath of the GFC (2009–2013). This downturn went largely unnoticed in Darwin where the local accommodation sector was filled to capacity with corporate travellers and non-resident construction workers who did not disperse much beyond the city. At the same time, leisure tourists were increasingly avoiding travel to the NT due to skyrocketing prices in the city (Carson 2013). For example, the international backpacker market (a key market in the past) almost collapsed between 2006 and 2016, and has not recovered since. This ‘crowding-out’ of tourism from the hinterland happened despite a number of major tourism-related infrastructure investments that were undertaken during the boom period to further boost the city’s image and capacity as a gateway to the north. These included, for example, an expansion of Darwin airport as an international airport hub (offering direct flights to Asia), the construction of a cruise terminal capable of hosting large vessels, the completion of the ‘Ghan’ railway line from Adelaide to Darwin (offering a stopover in Katherine) and various cooperative marketing campaigns aimed at attracting airlines or cruiselines to Darwin (Schmallegger and Carson 2010). Such initiatives seem to have primarily consolidated tourism growth in the city, with few (if any) regional spillover benefits (continued)

294 

D. A. Carson et al.

Box 15.3  (continued) noticeable in hinterland locations, apart from an increase in daytrip excursions to the immediate surroundings (e.g. Litchfield National Park, 100 km south of Darwin). Meanwhile, regional flights and train services connecting the hinterland to Darwin or interstate destinations were increasingly cut following the decline in demand, suggesting that the hinterland became more (rather than less) disconnected during the city’s boom period. The boom finally turned into a bust, starting in 2016 when most of the construction projects in Darwin had finished. With short-term workers leaving in the thousands, the city’s property market crashed and a large number of new hotel rooms and apartments stayed empty. Despite a sharp decline in accommodation prices, tourist numbers remained low as the domestic corporate market dropped away and international markets did not recover as expected (in fact, they declined at record levels between 2015 and 2018). Flights in and out of Darwin were cut, and many shops, restaurants/cafés and entertainment venues in the city went out of business. The NT Government has since started a range of initiatives to avert the crisis, with the search for new major construction projects dominating the discourse so far. Most proposals have concentrated on Darwin despite the crisis having significant implications for the NT as a whole. For example, a ‘Darwin City Deal’ (worth over AU$200 million) was announced to stimulate new growth. This included the construction of a new university campus in the city centre, the development of new commercial and cultural spaces, as well as the construction of a new water theme park and another waterfront re-­ development (featuring a major luxury hotel). In addition, consecutive multi-million ‘turbocharge tourism’ stimulus packages were rolled out in 2018 and 2019, primarily to increase international and interstate marketing and to attract new airlines, notably from China, to fly into Darwin (ABC News 2018). While the stimulus packages also included support for tourism projects in regional destinations (including Katherine, Tennant Creek and Litchfield), these were clearly dwarfed in size compared to projects proposed as part of the City Deal. More importantly, regional projects were mainly aimed at strengthening various existing nature- or culture-based activities or events, meaning that the focus on Darwin as the main access and accommodation hub has remained. There continues to be a large stock of surplus accommodation in the city that needs to be filled to retain important investors and brand names. In addition, some of the ‘too big to fail’ investment projects require ongoing government support to remain operational, thus leaving fewer resources available for development in the hinterland. This all places the city in a more competitive position to recover from the crisis. The hinterland is therefore likely to lose out as an overnight destination in the future if it does not manage to attract investment deals of comparable size or identify new development niches that do not face competition from the dominant city hub.

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

295

a target market for rural tourism development, mostly because industry and policy attention is primarily directed towards export markets, which are seen as more lucrative, prestigious and desirable in terms of building a world-class destination brand. This may be used to attract not only visitors but investors and political attention. With tourism held as a tool for regional development, the need to bring in external revenue is often a necessity rather than an image factor, and regional tourists are not usually seen as part of that equation. The unique growth trajectories of northern cities may provide particular opportunities for targeting urban dwellers as regional markets. Not only have these cities been growing at exceptional rates, but growth has largely been the result of increasing in-migration and short-term mobilities (including external students, short-term labour and their related visiting friends and relatives (VFR) (Carson et  al. 2010; Nyseth 2017). Northern cities are, thus, highly dynamic marketplaces with a constantly renewing pool of temporary residents who, just like tourists, might be drawn to the hinterland for recreational or learning purposes. The discussion above suggests that urban-rural, or city-hinterland, tourism relationships in sparsely populated northern peripheries may take a variety of forms. Managing such relationships for the sake of improving tourism outcomes for the region requires careful consideration of the factors and processes influencing potential spillover or sponge effects, as well as more attention to the changing nature of cities as emerging markets for the region. The following section examines the case of Umeå and the imbalance of tourism in the county of Västerbotten in comparison to the Australian and Icelandic cases presented earlier. The final discussion then considers how regional tourism geographies in the north may change as a result of their growing cities emerging as gateways, competitors or regional markets for the hinterland.

Umeå and the ‘boring bits’ of Västerbotten Västerbotten is the second largest county region in Sweden, comprising  almost 13% of the national land area and 15 municipalities. It is heavily urbanised, with around 72% of its residents living on the coast in

296 

D. A. Carson et al.

one of the two larger urban areas—Umeå (127,000 residents) and Skellefteå (72,500) (SCB 2019a). Umeå has been the fastest growing population centre in northern Sweden over the past few decades, with growth rates regularly surpassing the national average. It is a university city and the main centre for government administration and public services. The remainder of Västerbotten is quite sparsely populated and has declined substantially in population over the past decades, with some inland municipalities losing over a third of their residents since 1970 (SCB 2019a). The inland region has historically evolved around the resources sector (forestry, mining and energy), and this continues to dominate the economic landscape to date, although the number of locally based jobs has been declining for a number of years. Apart from public-­ sector employment (which has largely benefited the municipal centres), few industries have shown potential for successful economic diversification in the rural hinterland, and this has also been the case with tourism. There are very few locations in the hinterland where tourism has become an important industry of employment, and these are primarily the ski resort villages in the mountains, with Hemavan-Tärnaby being the most successful one in terms of visitor nights and turnover. In other parts of the hinterland, tourism growth has mostly remained low and has not generated any significant employment outcomes, business investment or overall population growth (Byström and Müller 2014). In fact, much of rural Västerbotten can be compared to what Koster and Carson (2019) referred to as the ‘boring bits in between’—places that are neither close enough to the urban fringe to benefit from proximity to a large urban market nor ‘exotic’ and unique enough to draw in tourists through outstanding attractions, infrastructure and service amenities. Nevertheless, they provide easy access to nature and are visited by tourists seeking non-­ commercial nature-based activities (e.g. hiking and fishing during summer, or snowmobiling and cross-country skiing during winter), as well as transit tourists on the way to somewhere else. In the absence of natural landmark attractions, many villages also promote local heritage experiences, including visits to mining sites, local history museums and Sámi heritage sites, which complement the relatively low-key tourism offer in rural areas.

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

297

Key markets in rural Västerbotten have traditionally included second-­ home owners (many of them coming from the urban coast) and self-drive tourists (e.g. in caravans or motorhomes) on regional touring itineraries. These markets are predominately self-contained and require relatively little in terms of commercial services. The resulting hospitality infrastructure has therefore been small and dispersed, usually consisting of seasonal camp grounds and cabin parks (catering primarily to the summer drive market), and the odd larger hotel (originally catering to business travellers). While winter has always been the key season for the mountain ski resorts, the ‘in-between’ places have more commonly relied on the summer months, coinciding with the main holiday period in the Nordic countries. More recently, however, several inland tourism stakeholders have started to capitalise on the northern winter as a new drawcard for international markets. This has resulted in new winter products (such as dog-sledding or snowmobile tours) emerging in areas away from major ski resorts (Carson et al. 2018). International visitors are also the target market for Sámi cultural tourism, which (unlike in  locations further north) has not been commercialised to any large extent in Västerbotten as yet. Overall, international export markets from outside the Nordic countries are small and concentrated in a few isolated pockets (e.g. the village of Granö or the area around Sorsele). In terms of commercial guest nights, international visitors make up a little more than 20% of the region’s visitor market, with more than half coming from Norway (RVT 2019). There have been charter flights to Umeå from Germany since 2010 and also direct flights to Skellefteå from the Netherlands since 2018, aiming to bring international fly-drive travellers to the region during summer. During winter, the regional airport of Arvidsjaur (in neighbouring Norrbotten) offers direct flights to Germany for the winter car testing industry, which has provided some spillover benefits for tourism businesses in the  far west. Overall, however, further plans to stimulate more international tourism in the inland by chartered flights have stalled due to a lack of access to rental cars outside of the larger coastal cities. Tourism in Umeå differs from the hinterland in most aspects. Although the city is still a relatively immature destination on a national level, visits to Umeå have grown over the past decade, leading to a significant

298 

D. A. Carson et al.

expansion of the city’s accommodation sector (with currently over 1700 hotel rooms). Commercial overnight stays have increased from around 366,000 in 2008 (or 45% of all visitor nights in Västerbotten) to 590,000 (or 52%) in 2018 (SCB 2019b). The main market is business travellers related to the activities of the city’s major employers (the university, the hospital and various government agencies). Accordingly, the local DMO Visit Umeå has directed most of its efforts at attracting more events and meetings and developing products for that market segment. As the largest city in northern Sweden, Umeå is an important destination for shopping and entertainment. Umeå’s shopping infrastructure has expanded dramatically in recent years, spearheaded by the establishment of an IKEA store in 2016 and a major new shopping precinct on the outskirts of the city. Another key motivation to visit Umeå includes VFR (Visit Umeå 2019). Umeå has positioned itself as a young and modern city, driven by the presence of the university and a growing student body (currently around 33,000 students). The municipality has also made an effort to develop Umeå as a cultural centre (with some of the highest public-sector spending on culture in Sweden), and the city regularly hosts a wide range of cultural events, music festivals, concerts, art exhibitions, and so on. This cultural focus has culminated in Umeå’s successful bid to host the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) in 2014 (Appelblad 2020). The event served as a catalyst for new major infrastructure developments and a rise in city hotel rooms. The public cultural centre Väven was built during this period, accompanied by new facilities for the Faculty of Arts of Umeå University, including a new Art Campus and the Bildmuseet, both located in the city centre away from the main campus. The ECoC, thus, gave rise to new attractions but also created some ‘over-capacity’ in the accommodation sector, with many hotel rooms remaining empty after the ECoC event (Västerbottenskuriren 2015).

A Gateway to the Hinterland? The stark contrast between tourism in Umeå and its hinterland suggests a range of opportunities and challenges when it comes to the city’s role as

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

299

a gateway for the region. Umeå has the required transport infrastructure to facilitate access to rural Västerbotten for external (including international) markets. It has the region’s largest year-round airport that is able to handle international flights (although most connections go via Stockholm). Its portal town of Holmsund shares a direct ferry connection to Vaasa in Finland, which has been instrumental in bringing visitors from the largely Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia region across to Sweden. While they mostly visit Umeå for business, shopping or educational reasons (Skutnabba 2014), the ferry is an important link to connect the mountain ski resorts to the Finnish market (Müller 2019). Umeå is furthermore a key node on the north–south coastal railway and highway (E4). It is relatively well connected to the inland through a network of highways and secondary roads, and so visitor dispersal from Umeå relies primarily on road-based transport (self-drive and bus). Umeå (along with the city of Luleå in Norrbotten) is also used as one of the airport gateways for tourists travelling further north to other Arctic destinations of Scandinavia. These tourists, however, tend to use Umeå as a short stopover before heading north along the coastal road and seldom choose the inland roads leading westward to get to the more ‘exotic’ northern latitudes. Umeå’s focus on business, shopping and cultural tourism suggests that a large proportion of visitors is  likely to remain within the city rather than disperse to the region. Nevertheless, there are a few examples of tourism providers in the vicinity of Umeå (e.g. in Vindeln and Bjurholm municipalities) who have established close collaborations with Visit Umeå and positioned themselves as complementary experiences within easy reach of the city, often combining meeting facilities for the business market  with a more ‘rural feel’ and nature-based activities. Yet, with higher-end accommodation still limited in the rural surroundings, business travellers commonly visit these locations on day excursions and return to the city overnight. There is also a small number of entrepreneurs within a daytrip distance from Umeå offering products around ‘Arctic’ experiences (e.g. dog-sledding and aurora borealis tours), especially for the international export market. This is currently, however, only a minor market for Umeå, which is drawing the vast majority of its visitors (~88%

300 

D. A. Carson et al.

in 2018) from the broader northern region (including  from Sweden, Norway and Finland). Urban-rural spillover of tourists in Västerbotten appears to be challenged to some degree by opposing seasonalities. Business-related tourism in Umeå is usually at its busiest when many rural destinations go through their quiet time. Accommodation providers and restaurants/ cafés in the inland are frequently closed during the autumn/winter months, particularly as road-based travel and regional touring are little attractive during the dark and snowy period. In contrast, Umeå’s city centre with its growing hotel and restaurant scene  often appears relatively quiet during summer when the university and public administration go on summer break. Thus, there seems to be limited capacity to ‘share’ visitors around at different times of the year, though the city’s ‘summer hole’ could be used more proactively to target external visitors with cheaper flights and hotel rates as part of regional ‘fly-drive’ packages. A recent visitor survey conducted by Visit Umeå in the city during the summer months indicated that just over half of all visitors did not have Umeå as their main destination, with a considerable proportion (over 28%) reporting to be on a larger tour of the region or transiting through (22%). This suggests that the city does feature on regional travel itineraries, at least during summer. In particular, international visitors were more likely to be on a tour across the region, while more than half of domestic visitors reported to be mainly visiting the city (Visit Umeå 2019). Umeå’s role as a regional gateway is also challenged by alternative transport projects and access routes. In addition to a few smaller regional airports (Lycksele, Vilhelmina and Hemavan) offering flights to Stockholm, there are plans to build a new international airport in Mo i Rana on the Norwegian side of the mountain range. This is expected to make the western parts of the region, and in particular the ski resorts of Hemavan-Tärnaby and Kittelfjäll, more accessible to international visitors. Furthermore, the old north-south railway ‘Inlandsbanan’, along with its accompanying road Inlandsvägen (E45), has become a popular alternative route for external visitors during summer. The Inlandsbanan railway is experiencing a recent revival due to increasing interest in environmentally conscious travel, at least within Sweden. These changes suggest that tourists departing in the south may enter the Västerbotten

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

301

inland through different access corridors rather than through Umeå and the coastal destinations.

A Competitor for the Hinterland? Opposing seasonalities and less competition for the same markets could explain why there are few palpable tensions between city and hinterland tourism stakeholders when it comes to regional destination marketing and funding allocations. This is despite the fact that most inland municipalities are part of DMOs that do not include formal collaboration with Umeå (e.g. Hemavan-Tärnaby maintains its own local DMO, the municipality of Sorsele has joined Norrbotten’s regional DMO ‘Swedish Lapland’, while companies in Malå, Lycksele, Norsjö and Skellefteå have joined the member-based DMO ‘Gold of Lapland’). There seem to be few reasons for concern that tourism activity in Umeå is crowding out visitors from the region through transport and accommodation bottlenecks. Higher city prices during the busier corporate travel seasons largely do not coincide with the peak seasons in the hinterland, and where they do, tourists can bypass the city and use different access points to visit the region. Though Visit Umeå does promote ‘easy access to nature’ as part of its marketing activities in collaboration with the city’s surrounding municipalities, nature-based leisure tourism is not a huge focus at the moment. As such, there have been few concerns raised in public that urban tourism stakeholders are appropriating typical rural experiences within city borders. Perhaps one exception to this emerged during the lead-up to ECoC2014 when Sámi culture (which is more typically associated with the inland) was extensively showcased in the promotion of the city and the event (Appelblad 2020). While Sámi cultural expressions were generously emphasised in the bid to make it stand out from its international competitors, there was criticism that Umeå itself has never been much of a centre for Sámi interests in the past, and that the city was taking advantage of the region’s Indigenous people for the sake of landing the bid. As part of the bidding process, the ECoC2014 committee also sought to broaden the scope of cultural activities beyond city borders to stage events in the wider region. However, the large majority of cultural activities,

302 

D. A. Carson et al.

along with major infrastructure and marketing funding, arguably concentrated in the city, with few (if any) enduring spillover effects visible in the hinterland (apart from, maybe, the municipalities included in Visit Umeå’s DMO).

A Regional Market for the Hinterland? In contrast to the Australian cases, the city of Umeå has largely benefited tourism in the hinterland through its role as a generating market. Many city residents still have a strong attachment to the region (with its natural resources and associated outdoor lifestyle) as they have ongoing family connections in the hinterland or maintain old family residences as second homes to be used during vacation. Second homes, including abandoned family homes and purpose-built second homes, amount to over 30,000 in Västerbotten (RVT 2019) and generate a significant part of regional overnight stays (though they cannot be officially recorded). As elsewhere in Sweden, there is a clear distance decay when it comes to second-home ownership, with municipalities closer to Umeå (e.g. Vännäs, Vindeln and Bjurholm) and along the coast (Robertsfors, Nordmaling, as well as rural parts of Umeå and Skellefteå) having higher rates of second homes owned by Umeå residents than those further inland (Back and Marjavaara 2017). Again, the ski resorts in the mountains are a notable exception, with Hemavan-Tärnaby and Kittelfjäll being popular hotspots for purpose-­ built second homes (not just for Umeå residents but also for Norwegians). The case of Malå (Lundmark and Åberg 2019), located halfway between the urban coast and the mountains, illustrates that even less well-known locations in the inland may capitalise on the region’s urban centres for tourism. Malå, a town that evolved from a traditional Sámi marketplace into one of the inland’s larger mining centres, is a prime example of a struggling rural town that is using tourism as a key to the future. The municipality owns and manages the local ski slope, recording the highest municipal per capita spending on tourism in Sweden (Lundmark and Åberg 2019). Visitors are predominantly from the urban coast, mainly Skellefteå (which shares historic industrial relationships with Malå), and are to a high degree loyal repeat visitors who keep their

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

303

camper vans at a semi-permanent camp ground all year round. These camping tourists, along with business tourists from the coast, make up the bulk of the local market and sustain a small but stable local industry. Malå is, thus, remarkably successful with its regional-oriented market focus and has become Västerbotten’s second largest skiing destination (in terms of skiing passes sold). Another important city-based market segment can be found within the various government authorities which employ a large number of public servants responsible for regional planning and administration, generating a high frequency of meetings held in rural areas. For example, the regional development organisation, Region Västerbotten, has a policy of organising meetings outside Umeå as often as possible, which has resulted in ‘Mötesplats Lycksele’, an annual two-day event held in Lycksele (about a two-hours’ drive from Umeå). Other small rural conference and meeting facilities also exist, typically within a 1- or 2-hour radius of Umeå, that benefit from a significant government and business market originating on the coast. Finally, Umeå’s expanding student body is another market opportunity for the hinterland, with a large (and growing) number of international and domestic students (from outside Västerbotten) coming to Umeå for short periods of time. The university’s student union club and sports club arrange regular bus trips to the ski resorts and hikes to the inland year round, especially catering for those with little experience of the activities and landscape. University students are also a significant factor in attracting VFR. While they seem to remain primarily with their friends/relatives in the city (Kamlin 2016), there are opportunities to promote more visits to rural areas. For example, both accommodation and nature-based activity providers in the vicinity of Umeå have reported a growing number of international students and their visiting families among their guests. Overall, however, tailor-made tour products or general promotion of regional destinations to city-based students has been a neglected field in the past (Pawlak 2013).

304 

D. A. Carson et al.

Conclusion This chapter has pointed out how urban-rural tourism relationships and destination hierarchies in sparsely populated northern settings can change as a result of urban growth within the region. Although tourism is often pursued as a popular development strategy for northern peripheries, the fact that most economic tourism benefits seem to concentrate within or close to the city has often been ignored in regional tourism development plans. Trying to maximise local benefits for rural industry and community stakeholders requires a more careful consideration of how particular urban-rural spillover or backwash effects emerge and what realistic opportunities exist for the hinterland to take advantage of tourism growth occurring in the city. These considerations are particularly important for the rural ‘in-between’ destinations that rely more strongly on their urban centres than the more prominent remote resorts that have evolved more independently. Our cases have emphasised that despite improved transport and access infrastructure in the cities, their potential role as tourist gateways promoting regional visitor dispersal has not been fully exploited to date. Direct spillover of tourists appears to be mostly limited to locations close to the city, and mostly in the form of daytrip excursions. In the cases of Darwin and Cairns, regional dispersal declined as the cities and their tourism sectors continued to grow—a change in destination hierarchies that has partly been facilitated by changing road-based touring patterns, the crowding-out effects exerted by non-leisure tourist markets and the fact that the hinterland has not been able to keep up in terms of product investment and service quality. Also in the case of Reykjavík, the city is becoming a more prominent destination in its own right. This transition has been partly facilitated by the increasing urban concentration of amenities and ‘indoor attractions’, and partly by the impacts of changing seasonality, whereby longer road-based touring itineraries during summer are being replaced by urban-based day-tripping during winter. In the case of Umeå, regional dispersal and the ‘sharing’ of tourists along urban-rural itineraries may have been more limited from the outset as Umeå as a business (and shopping or entertainment) destination has

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

305

always had a completely different market focus compared to its nature-­ based hinterland. At the same time, issues around ‘crowding-out’ of leisure tourists, which emerged in the case of Darwin, have been absent in Umeå and Västerbotten, partly because of the high capacity in the city’s accommodation sector and partly because of opposing seasonalities. Short summer seasons for regional touring, in combination with alternative access corridors, may explain why the role of Umeå as a gateway for drive tourists from outside the region appears to be a relatively minor one. The introduction of international charter flights, and also the growing interest in remote Arctic and winter-related experiences among international export markets, may well provide new opportunities for the hinterland to use the city’s increasing flight capacity and international visibility to their advantage. However, as demonstrated in the case of Iceland, this also needs to be interpreted with caution as tourist dispersal to the hinterland during the dark and snowy winter period may well be limited, meaning that spillover benefits will most likely accrue in the vicinity of the city rather than further inland. Competition from other urban centres further north is also a constraining factor that needs to be considered in this regard. Luleå and Kiruna in neighbouring Norrbotten county have similar gateway capacities and are considerably closer to the few iconic Arctic winter tourism hotspots in the northern inland, suggesting that Umeå may only ever be a secondary gateway to Sweden’s emerging Arctic tourism playground. While general spillover effects between city and hinterland seem to be limited, this does not mean that individual rural entrepreneurs or communities cannot benefit from urban tourism. Our cases have identified a number of successful examples of hinterland locations that have taken advantage of tourism growth in the city. However, this usually requires substantial private-sector investment in new product development (accommodation, entertainment and meeting venues) to match the sorts of quality standards available in the city, and this has been the exception rather than the common experience. Spillover or regional dispersal, thus, requires entrepreneurial action or government intervention in rural product development and should not be expected to ‘trickle down’ automatically by just increasing the scale of transport services or external marketing campaigns targeted at the city.

306 

D. A. Carson et al.

Issues around competition between the city and the hinterland have mainly appeared in northern Australia where ‘boom and bust’ cycles have dominated the economy (including tourism) and urban stakeholders have been challenged to protect their local industries during recent economic shocks. Similar crisis scenarios have not been experienced in Umeå and Västerbotten, where there has been far less reliance on fluctuating export markets and tourism as a major ‘staples-like’ industry (Carson and Carson 2017). Instead, the relative ‘success’ of tourism in Västerbotten can be found within a relatively low-profile but reliable regional market that has been less susceptible to external shocks. This internal market focus—including on second-home owners, business tourists or students—has been very much absent in the northern Australian context so far and suggests that there are some valuable lessons to be learnt from the Swedish case. While these markets most certainly won’t attract any flagship construction projects, international media attention or flights from China, it can help small and struggling rural towns to maintain essential services and infrastructure at the local level (Lundmark and Åberg 2019). The main challenge is to recognise and accept that this regional market is the most realistic one for ‘in-between’ destinations to develop and that new ways of engaging with that market need to be identified to encourage economic benefits in the hinterland as the cities continue to grow and change. Acknowledgements Work on this chapter was supported by the Swedish Research Council FORMAS for the project ‘Cities of the North: Urbanisation, mobilities and new development opportunities for sparsely populated hinterlands’. We also acknowledge the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Arctic Co-operation Programme for the project ‘Arctic Tourism in Times of Change’. This resulted in a workshop on Urban Arctic Tourism (Umeå 2019) from which parts of the Swedish and Icelandic case study emerged.

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

307

References ABC News. (2018, November 2). Northern Territory’s tourism figures worst in the nation but industry hopes China will soon fill void. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-02/nt-tourism-worst-in-nationchina-marketing-turbocharging/10460002 Appelblad, H. (2020). Cultural promotion of place as ‘northern’ space: The case of the Umeå2014 – European Capital of Culture event. In W. Cudny (Ed.), Urban events, place branding and promotion: Place event marketing (pp. 25–46). London: Routledge. Argent, N., Rolley, F., & Walmsley, J. (2008). The Sponge City hypothesis: Does it hold water? Australian Geographer, 39(2), 109–130. Back, A., & Marjavaara, R. (2017). Mapping an invisible population: The uneven geography of second-home tourism. Tourism Geographies, 19(4), 595–611. Byström, J., & Müller, D. K. (2014). Tourism labor market impacts of national parks. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie, 58(1), 115–126. Carson, D.  A. (2013, October 9–10). Tourism and urban development in the north: Experiences from Darwin’s ‘boomtown’ approach. Paper presented at the symposium Urban North: Dreams and Realities, Charles Darwin University, Darwin. Carson, D. A., & Carson, D. B. (2017). Path dependence in remote area tourism development: Why institutional legacies matter. In P. Brouder, S. Anton Clavé, A.  Gill, & D.  Ioannides (Eds.), Tourism destination evolution (pp. 103–122). Milton Park: Routledge. Carson, D. B., & Carson, D. A. (2019). Disasters, market changes and ‘the big smoke’: Understanding the decline of remote tourism in Katherine, Northern Territory Australia. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies: Case studies from developed nations on the exotic, the fringe and the boring bits in between (pp. 93–114). Cham: Springer. Carson, D. B., Schmallegger, D., & Harwood, S. (2010). A city for the temporary? Political economy and urban planning in Darwin, Australia. Urban Policy and Research, 28(3), 293–310. Carson, D. A., Carson, D. B., & Eimermann, M. (2018). International winter tourism entrepreneurs in northern Sweden: Understanding migration, lifestyle and business motivations. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality & Tourism, 18(2), 183–198.

308 

D. A. Carson et al.

Copus, A. (2018). Inter-dependencies between rural areas, small towns and urban areas: What could be the benefits to rural areas from Scotland’s city region deals? Retrieved from https://www.sruc.ac.uk/download/downloads/id/3809/342_ i n t e r - d e p e n d e n c i e s _ b e t w e e n _ r u r a l _ a r e a s _ s m a l l _ t ow n s _ a n d _ urban_areas.pdf Ferðamálastofa. (2020). Mælaborð ferðaþjónustunnar: Hagstærðir. Retrieved from https://www.maelabordferdathjonustunnar.is/is/hagstaerdir-1/hagstaerdir Hall, C.  M. (2005). Tourism: Rethinking the social science of mobility. Harlow: Pearson. Hall, C. M. (2015). Polar gateways: Approaches, issues and review. The Polar Journal, 5(2), 257–277. Halpern, N. (2008). Lapland’s airports: Facilitating the development of international tourism in a peripheral region. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 8(1), 25–47. Huijbens, H. E., & Jóhannesson, G. T. (2020). Urban tourism. In O. B. Jensen, C. Lassen, V. Kaufmann, M. Freudendal-Pedersen, & I. S. Gøtzsche Lange (Eds.), Handbook of urban mobilities. London: Routledge. Jóhannesson, G.  T., & Huijbens, E.  H. (2013). Tourism resolving crisis? Exploring tourism development in Iceland in the wake of economic recession. In D. Müller, L. Lundmark, & R. H. Lemelin (Eds.), New issues in polar tourism: Communities, environments, politics (pp.  133–147). New York: Springer. Jóhannesson, G. T., & Lund, K. A. (2017). Aurora borealis: Choreographies of darkness and light. Annals of Tourism Research, 63, 183–190. Kamlin, P. (2016). Studenters inverkan på besöksnäringen: En kvantitativ studie om hur studenterna vid Umeå universitet påverkar turismen i Umeå ur ett VFR perspektiv (Bachelor thesis). Department of Geography, Umeå University. Koster, R. L., & Carson, D. A. (2019). Considerations for differentiating among rural tourism geographies. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies: Case studies from developed nations on the exotic, the fringe and the boring bits in between (pp. 253–271). Cham: Springer. Lundmark, L., & Åberg, K.  G. (2019). How modest tourism development becomes successful: The complementarity of tourism in Malå municipality. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies: Case studies from developed nations on the exotic, the fringe and the boring bits in between (pp. 221–241). Cham: Springer. Müller, D.  K. (2019). An evolutionary economic geography perspective on tourism development in a remote ski resort: The case of Tärnaby/Hemavan in

15  Cities of the North: Gateways, Competitors or Regional… 

309

the Swedish Mountains. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies: Case studies from developed nations on the exotic, the fringe and the boring bits in between (pp. 137–157). Cham: Springer. Müller, D. K., Carson, D. A., de la Barre, S., Granås, B., Jóhannesson, G. T., Øyen, G., Rantala, O., Saarinen, J., Salmela, T., Tervo-Kankare, K., & Welling, J. (2020). Arctic tourism in times of change: Dimensions of urban tourism. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. Nyseth, T. (2017). Arctic urbanization: Modernity without cities. In L.-A. Körber, S. MacKenzie, & A. Westerståhl Stenport (Eds.), Arctic environmental modernities (pp. 59–70). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Parr, J. B. (1999). Growth-pole strategies in regional economic planning: A retrospective view: Part 1. Origins and advocacy. Urban Studies, 36(7), 1195–1215. Partridge, M., Bollman, R. D., Olfert, M. R., & Alasia, A. (2007). Riding the wave of urban growth in the countryside: Spread, backwash, or stagnation? Land Economics, 83(2), 128–152. Pawlak, A. (2013). Demand side of international students tourism market: Case of Umeå – Sweden (Master’s thesis). Department of Geography, Umeå University. Prideaux, B. (2000). The resort development spectrum. Tourism Management, 21(3), 225–241. Prideaux, B. (2002). Building visitor attractions in peripheral areas  – Can uniqueness overcome isolation to produce viability? International Journal of Tourism Research, 4(5), 379–389. Prideaux, B. (2004). The resort development spectrum: The case of the Gold Coast, Australia. Tourism Geographies, 6(1), 26–59. Prideaux, B., Carmody, J., & Pabel, A. (2018). Impacts of the 2016 and 2017 mass coral bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef tourism industry and tourism-­dependent coastal communities of Queensland. Report to the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre Limited, Cairns. Retrieved from https://www. rrrc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/RRRC-Impacts-2016-17-CoralBleaching-on-GBR-Digital.pdf RVT. (2019). Besöksnäringen är viktig för Västerbotten. Umeå: Region Västerbotten Turism. SCB. (2019a). Befolkning. Retrieved from https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/ statistik-efter-amne/befolkning/ SCB. (2019b). Inkvarteringsstatistik. Retrieved from https://www.scb.se/hittastatistik/statistik-efter-amne/naringsverksamhet/inkvar tering/ inkvarteringsstatistik/

310 

D. A. Carson et al.

Schmallegger, D., & Carson, D. (2010). Whose tourism city is it? The role of government in tourism in Darwin, Northern Territory. Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development, 7(2), 111–129. Skutnabba, E. (2014). Tourism and transport: How will improvements in the transport section change the tourism flows to a city? Case study of Umeå, Sweden and Wasaline (Bachelor thesis). Department of Geography, Umeå University. Thompson, M., & Prideaux, B. (2019). The Barossa tourism region: The catch 22 effect of a near periphery location. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on rural tourism geographies: Case studies from developed nations on the exotic, the fringe and the boring bits in between (pp. 17–40). Cham: Springer. Thompson, M., Prideaux, B., McShane, C., Dale, A., Turnour, J., & Atkinson, M. (2016). Tourism development in agricultural landscapes: The case of the Atherton Tablelands, Australia. Landscape Research, 41(7), 730–743. Tourism Research Australia (TRA). (2019). National and international visitor survey data. Tourism Research Australia online student database. Retrieved from http://traonline.australia.com Västerbottenskuriren. (2015, December 16). Vd: Hotellbranschen är mättad. Retrieved from https://www.vk.se/2015-12-16/vd-hotellmarknadenar-mattad Visit Umeå. (2019). Besökare i Umeå sommaren 2019. Internal document.

16 Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian Second-Home Ownership in Finland Olga Hannonen

 ussian Second-Home Owners in Finland: R A Security Concern (Based on Multiple Myths) Russian second-home owners are a specific group of visitors in the North. They entered the Finnish property market in the early 2000s and have become the biggest group of foreign property owners in Finland (Fig. 16.1). The peak of annual Russian property purchases was registered in 2008, reaching 780 properties. The global financial crisis in 2008 resulted in a decline of Russian foreign property purchases to about 400 properties per year. The collapse of the ruble, economic challenges in Russia due to drastically reduced oil prices and the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict in 2014 led to further decline of Russian purchases (Fig. 16.1). While still small in number, with about 4500 purchases from 2003 to 2015, Russian second-home ownership has been a source of

O. Hannonen (*) University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_16

311

312 

O. Hannonen

900 800

780

700 619

600 500

468 403 399

400

362

277

254

200

15

20

14

20

13

20

12

20

11

20

10

20

09

20

08

20

07

Russian purchases

20

06

20

05

155 127

121

20

04

03

68 66

20

02

20

01

20

00

20

20

34

14 5

0

20

100

16

300

427

Other foreign purchases

Fig. 16.1  Foreign property purchases in Finland. (Source: National Land Survey of Finland)

concerns, questions and contested social debate, in which estimations of and attitudes towards the phenomenon have been largely negative (Hannonen 2016; Pitkänen 2011). The diversity of perceptions and discourses does not create just one but multiple “myths” and narratives in relation to Russian second-home mobility in Finland, many of which have remained as fears since they have not been confirmed. With an overview of the variety of debates on Russian second-home ownership, this chapter focuses on the most recent concern. The latest debate in both the media and parliament focuses on potential threats that foreign properties can impose to Finnish national security, in particular the location of foreign properties next to areas of strategic importance. While foreign-owned properties in these discussions mean ownership originating outside the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA), they focus exclusively on Russian ownership. Entitled Strategic Objective?, this chapter concerns the strategic objective of the Finnish Parliament to restrict land ownership of a distinct national group on the one hand, while on the other hand, it ponders whether Russian secondhome purchases can be regarded as a strategic objective of any kind. It

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

313

does not support nor dispose of the latest debate, but presents it from two sides: the governmental and parliamentary points of view, and the perspective of Russian second-home owners towards these debates. The inclusion of the owners’ perspectives is of particular importance here since the media plays an important role in creating characteristics and images of the destination to the potential buyers (Müller 1999). While it is not yet possible to fully estimate the effect of these debates in Finland, this chapter demonstrates the perceptions of contemporary Russian owners and proposes some prospects on Russian second-home tourism in Finland.

F oreign Second-Home Owners in Nordic Perspective The majority of examples of interactions, perceptions and views on land development between locals and second-home owners in the Nordic context come from domestic cases (see Box 16.1). Academic scholarship on the perceptions of foreign second-home ownership is rather limited worldwide and particularly in the Nordic context. In media and local debates, second-home tourism is frequently linked to the developing stage of such phenomena and dominated by concerns related to the uncertainty of its development. Among other Nordic examples, one media publicity study on German second-home owners in Sweden in the early 1990s is worth mentioning. According to Müller (1999: 185), at that time, “the trend was new and the uncertainty regarding the future development of German second home purchases in the area was great.” The loss of access to particular properties with a subsequent displacement of local population, increasing property prices, the disruption of village social structures and the nightmare of seeing “a traditional red Swedish cottage under a German flag” (Müller 1999: 151, 2011) were among the concerns raised in Swedish media. With the development of German second-home ownership in Sweden, these debates have faded away, as many fears were never confirmed. By the end of the 1990s, the trend of second-home purchases by Germans was considered as rather positive (Müller 1999). The example of German second-home tourism in Sweden demonstrates that attitudes towards foreign second-home tourism are

314 

O. Hannonen

largely influenced by other activities in the area. In Sweden a property purchased in Småland by a German neo-Nazi organisation back in 1997 cast a shadow on the overall perception of German second-home ownership. Russian second-home tourism in Finland has also been affected by a dubious property purchase, which is discussed later in this chapter. German second-home purchases have also been subjected to wide media coverage in Finland. With the change of national legislation on property ownership due to Finland’s accession to the EEA in 1993 and the EU in 1995, a rush of second-home buyers from Europe was anticipated (Pitkänen 2011). The most acute debates took place before the actual enactment of the new legislation with a general fear expressed in many of the accounts directly or indirectly as the “rush of Germans” (Pitkänen 2011: 50). The congestion of shorelines, the degradation of fragile areas, decreasing availability of shorelines, the loss of the legal free right of access to nature, increasing property prices, land speculation, money laundering and dubious real estate business were among the concerns raised (Pitkänen 2011). Followed by a period of neutral media publicity after no rush of foreigners occurred, these debates made a comeback during the period of active Russian second-home purchases in the early 2000s. They are presented in the following section.

Russian Invasion? Russian second-home purchases have been the subject of lively coverage in the national press and have been coloured by increasingly nationalistic rhetoric (Pitkänen 2011). Russian ownership has been considered a challenge to national identity and raised fears related to foreign influence, which was referred to as a “Russian invasion” (Pitkänen 2011: 52). Foreign ownership has been viewed as challenging Finnish landownership rights, as foreign purchases threaten the national landscape by potentially turning lake shores into Russian “dacha” (second home) villages. Foreign owners have also been accused of challenging the traditional way of life through gentrification and the displacement of locals by pricing Finns out of the market and purchasing permanent residences in rural areas (Pitkänen 2011). These debates are similar to media discourses on

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

315

German property purchases in both Finland and Sweden in the mid-­1990s. However, debates on Russian second-home ownership have proven to be enduring. With changing socio-political circumstances, certain arguments have come to the forefront while others have dissipated. Box 16.1  Second-Home Owners as a Strategic Asset for Rural Communities Roger Marjavaara In Sweden, as in many other developed countries, rural and peripheral areas are suffering from depopulation and out-migration (Lundholm 2007). However, this does not mean that these areas are unattractive. On the contrary, many rural areas are desirable but only for a period of time as a leisure landscape manifested by second-home developments (Marjavaara 2008). Hence, in many rural localities, there is a temporal population that is present but not registered as permanent inhabitants. In Sweden, there are some 660,000 second homes (Back and Marjavaara 2017) and almost half of the population has access to a second home (Statistics Sweden 2020a), indicating the magnitude of the phenomenon. Sweden is also attractive to foreign purchases of second homes due to liberal legislation and relatively low prices. There are some 40,000 foreign-­ owned second homes in Sweden (Statistics Sweden 2020b). Most of the owners come from Norway (≈12,000) followed by Denmark (≈10,500) and Germany (≈10,000). The geography of foreign ownership follows that Norwegians primarily own second homes close to Norway, meaning in the western part of Sweden. Danes and Germans primarily own second homes in the southern counties. In Kronoberg County (southern part of Sweden) around 40% of all second homes have owners living abroad (Statistics Sweden 2020b). Some localities, such as attractive ski resorts, seaside communities and locations near population centres, contain a substantial amount of second homes, at times outnumbering dwellings for permanent use (see Fig. 16.2). The second-home population has partly been portrayed as problematic and displacing local inhabitants. However, the lack of empirical evidence disproves this in the case of Sweden (Hoogendoorn and Marjavaara 2018). Instead, second-home owners can be seen as a strategic asset for rural areas. Research done in Sweden supports this from a wide range of perspectives. First, research shows that the second home is the destination for migratory purposes among many families in Sweden (Müller and Marjavaara 2012). Some 11,000 individuals move to their second home annually, and in amenity-rich rural localities, this represents a substantial amount of in-­ migrants. It is also clear that owning a second home triggers migration to rural localities upon retirement (Marjavaara and Lundholm 2016). Another (continued)

316 

O. Hannonen

Box 16.1  (continued) example is that the second-home population can and do act as a knowledge block for the second-home community but also for local inhabitants and local firms in the destination (Robertsson and Marjavaara 2015). Here it is argued that the educational level and the business engagements among second-home owners are of benefit to local host communities through a knowledge spill-over process and engagement in  local business ventures. Furthermore, we know that the engagement in the local community among second-home owners is high (Nordin and Marjavaara 2012), meaning that this population wants to engage in the leisure destination and its well-­ being. This is different compared to other forms of tourism where the engagement in the local destination is often limited. Hence, second-home tourism is a special type of tourism compared to the “once-in-a-lifetimevisits” made by regular tourists. Second-home tourists invest in the destination through their property ownership, and they are loyal to the destination through their repeated visits. This means none or limited marketing investments for destination organisations. Second homes are also inherited within families, highlighting that loyalty stretches over generations (Müller et al. 2010). In conclusion, the second-home population can be a strategic asset for many rural and peripheral communities struggling with depopulation, reduced services, lack of job opportunities and poor innovative capabilities. However, this has not been fully utilised, due greatly to old and outdated definitions of “in-habitants” which fail to incorporate the importance of temporal mobility.

Media debates specifically concerning the location of Russian properties included accusations of purchasing the best lakeside sites, posing threats of developing into gated communities and Russian enclaves as well as displacing the local Finnish population from the property market. When juxtaposing these three lines of property location concerns with the spatial distribution of Russian properties in Eastern Finland, it has been revealed that lakeside location is the most desirable location for both Finnish and Russian second-home owners. However, their interest is directed towards different geographical areas, indicating that the level of Russian activities in the recreational property market has been very low in the areas that are the most popular among Finns (see Hannonen et al.

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

317

Fig. 16.2  Spatial diffusion of second homes in Sweden. (Cartography: Roger Marjavaara)

318 

O. Hannonen

2016 for details). This supports other studies of foreign second homes in the North and Europe, which show limited competition on real estate markets (see Müller 2011 for more details). Local and foreign interests usually focus on different areas, hence contesting the displacement argument. The distribution of Russian properties also shows that the increase of other Russian owners in the area negatively impacts the purchase decision, thus contesting the argument formation of gated communities and enclaves (Hannonen et al. 2016). The discrepancy in media reports and actual distribution of properties shows that certain impacts of Russian second-home ownership have been exaggerated. Nevertheless, media debates on Russian second-home purchases have been largely supported at the local level. Local inhabitants and Finnish second-home owners in Eastern Finland generally agree with the opinions presented in media, especially negative ones (see Honkanen et al. 2015 for details). On the contrary, positive statements about Russian ownership were not highly supported. Attitudes towards Russian ownership at the local level can be differentiated into three groups. The first group is composed of those who think that Russians are raising property prices and that Finns are selectively selling to Russians. The second group sees Russians as a source of opportunities for the area, while the third sees them as a source of problems (Honkanen et al. 2015). The issue of Russian property purchases in Finland has raised heated debates also in the Finnish Parliament. Attempts to restrict Russian property purchases in Finland have been made through three legislative initiatives and one citizens’ initiative (Legislative Initiative 35/2009; 45/2011; 77/2013; Kansalaisaloite 2015). They raised a number of concerns on foreign (i.e., outside the EEA) and especially Russian interest in Finnish properties that largely intersect with concerns in the press. The concerns raised in preliminary debates on the first two initiatives include an increase in property prices, violation of the purpose of property use, sale of areas of special value, potential for conflicts including those with racist connotations and the location of foreign properties that might be questioned from the perspective of security policy. They portray Russian interest in Finnish properties as a source of problems with the first

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

319

legislative initiative in 2009 resembling a call “to prepare for possible problems before they appear on a larger scale” (PTK 48/2009). Parliamentary discussions at that time were contradictive in their content. While the one side accuses Finns of having a racist perspective when suggesting nationality-­based restrictions, the other side talks about discrimination against Finns (PTK 48/2009). Legislative initiatives in 2009 and 2011 were aimed at protecting national assets, improving the regulations of property acquisition by foreigners and their societal responsibilities, determining the reciprocity principle in foreign property ownership, as well as keeping the benefits of a foreign presence on the Finnish property market through property rentals (Legislative Initiative 35/2009; 45/2011). In the subsequent initiative in 2013, the claims were supplemented with concerns about turning permanent residences into vocational use, money laundering and a lack of background information on the buyers: “Finland cannot become such a country where one can come and invest in property with criminal money” (PTK 10/2012). The absence of any reciprocity principle of land ownership by foreigners in Russia has been specifically raised (Legislative Initiative 77/2013) due to legislative changes in Russia that restricted land purchases by foreigners in Russian border areas (Decree N26 2011). Russian territories bordering Finland in the southeast have a special meaning for Finns, as former Finnish territories that were annexed by Russia after WWII, and are regarded as one of the most desirable areas for Finns. The absence of reciprocity rights is one of the main points that emphasises Finland’s deprived position and Russia’s advantage in trans-border second-home purchases (Hannonen 2019). None of the four initiatives proposes a complete restriction on property purchases by non-EU and non-European Free Trade Association (EFTA) citizens, but they do demand that they be subject to special permission. These legislative initiatives did not proceed further in parliament, but their frequency and content have demonstrated an on-going debate and a constant evaluation of possible consequences, risks and problems that Russian property purchases might bring.

320 

O. Hannonen

Box 16.2  Snowmobiling Causes Cultural Clash in Kilpisjärvi Seija Tuulentie A remote Finnish village, Kilpisjärvi, with only 100 permanent residents has over 100 second homes owned mainly by Norwegians. Despite its location in the corner of three countries—Norway, Finland and Sweden—the area has been important for Finnish national identity as one of the most spectacular landscapes in the country. It also has long traditions as a cross-­ country skiing destination for domestic tourists. The peculiarity of the place is that private construction was not possible until the 1980s. At the end of the 1990s, the first plots for second homes were sold. The demand was greatest in Norway, especially in Tromsø which is closer to Kilpisjärvi than the municipal centre of Enontekiö. Norwegians also have more than 200 caravans with “spikertelt,” that is, small wooden additions, in the two camp grounds of the village. In Kilpisjärvi, no such nationalist or security discourse is used as in relation to Russian cottage owners. Still, some local villagers described in our interviews that there is a big cultural gap between Norwegian second-home owners and locals (Hannonen et al. 2015). This is surprising since the cultures have always existed alongside each other in an area of open borders. However, in comparison to Russian owners, Norwegians have been the subject of a rather restricted concern. The main problem in Kilpisjärvi lies in the use of snowmobiles. Noise disturbs villagers, and locals feel that rules are not being followed. The snowmobile issue stigmatises all Norwegians although in our research it became clear that many Norwegian second-home owners also suffer from snowmobile riding. Many Norwegian cottagers emphasise that it is the caravanners and day visitors who cause disturbances and do not follow the rules. However, the Kilpisjärvi case also shows that foreign tourists and property owners are an important economic factor at the local level. Kilpisjärvi virtually lives on Norwegian consumption. The village shop is much bigger than it would be without Norwegians, and entrepreneurs emphasise the economic benefits of the presence of Norwegians. A new land use master plan for Kilpisjärvi has been waiting for its completion since 2012. Meanwhile there has also been a discussion on the possibility of creating a national park in the area. Many of the Norwegians and local Finnish entrepreneurs had doubts about the national park since it was expected to restrict snowmobiling and, thus, tourism development. Ultimately, local resistance led to the decision to not establish a park.

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

321

Strategic Objective: Contemporary Discourse Security concerns have always been connected to Russian property purchases. They were raised in the initial legislative initiative in 2009 as well as in governmental debates in the form of written interrogatories. At that time discussions on security issues were simply one issue among many and were treated as a suggestion to ponder the security aspect of property locations next to strategic areas and the purchase of large plots rather than an urgent matter to be addressed. The debates in the written interrogatories can be divided into two types of discourses: the “threat and fear” debate and “doubtfulness” (Haapasalo 2013). The “threat” part focuses on national security threats and the location of foreign properties next to strategic sites and objects. The “fear” debate outlines the potential russification of certain areas, the capacity of Russia to protect its citizens abroad as well as fears of increasing property prices and money laundering. The “doubtfulness” discussions concern the unawareness and uncertainty of Russian property purchases. This relates to the scarce and limited information that members of parliament have on Russian purchases. Uncertainty reveals itself in several security scenarios that range from increasing prices to military threats (Haapasalo 2013). The latter have been in the focus of media, governmental and parliamentary attention in recent years. Since the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict in 2014, security discussions have become more acute. The possible location of Russian properties next to areas of strategic importance in Finland has become the main focus in these debates. Addressed as a matter of security policy, Russian property purchases have been viewed as potentially posing a threat to Finnish national security due to the possibility of the Russian State protecting its citizens across the border (PTK 16/2014; Vihavainen and Laitinen 2018). Consequently, a Russian property purchase in close proximity to a military shooting range in Finland was cancelled in the summer of 2015 (Mälkiä 2015; Schönberg 2015) and property purchases next to strategic areas have been classified as an element of a hybrid war (Yle News 2016).

322 

O. Hannonen

Another significant event that has raised the security threats of foreign properties and forwarded legislative changes took place in September 2018 when police raided the Airiston Helmi Ltd. corporation premises located in the Turku archipelago in Finland. The corporation owns several properties including some for recreational or vacation use. At least ten properties in the archipelago are located next to Finnish deep-sea routes and two army exclusion areas that are defined as areas of strategic importance. The reason for the raid was suspected white-collar crime, in particular tax violations and money laundering. The corporation has an international background with previous ownership by Polish and Italian corporations. Its board members have wide connections to Estonia and Poland. However, since its establishment, the chair of the corporation has been a Russian national (Hänninen 2018; Luukka 2018; Tolkki 2018). This case of money laundering and tax evasion with numerous properties next to areas of strategic importance casts a shadow on Russian second-­home purchases in Finland, raising security awareness in relation to foreign properties. Though the Airiston Helmi corporate property ownership should not be equated with Russian second-home purchases, in the public and parliamentary discourses the two phenomena are viewed alike: “We unfortunately have recently ended up reading about how citizens of a foreign state own strategic properties of supreme importance, such as next to waterways in the Turku archipelago” (a direct reference to the Airiston Helmi case, SKT 144/2018 vp). The case has resulted in numerous discussions in parliament and the initiation of a new legislative change. Contemporary debates on Russian second homes have focused almost exclusively on security concerns and the location of properties next to strategic objects. Unlike contradictory perspectives towards Russian ownership in previous discussions on legislative initiatives, contemporary standpoints are unanimous. There are no disagreements about security issues and the need for urgent legislative changes in relation to Russian properties in the government nor in the parliament: During the last ten years, among others, old border guard properties have been sold. Back in the days we pondered who would go there to be eaten by mosquitoes. Nevertheless, the properties were sold. Also properties next

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

323

to telecommunication structures and waterways were sold. The impact of these property units on security are important to analyse meticulously, if not yet done. In relation to strategically and security important areas, expropriation should be possible. (KK 374/2018 vp)

In addition to security concerns, issues of money laundering and the absence of the reciprocal right of land ownership in Russia have also remained on the discourse agenda: It has been believed that property purchases directed to Finland from any cardinal point outside the EU have been linked to crime and money laundering. At the turn of the millennium hundreds if not thousands of these property purchases have been made. Dear Minister, how well aware is the government of the fact that these properties are not purchased with money originating from drug, human trafficking or illegal arms trade? (SKT 144/2018 vp)

There is no room to ponder and dispel the security concern as possibly a contested narrative in relation to Russian second-home ownership. These discussions have already anchored themselves into a legislative change that was enacted in January 2020. The strategic objective to restrict Russian property purchases has been met. Every property that is purchased by a non-EU and non-EEA national will be inspected in locations next to strategically important objects and areas. This change subjects each purchase to a licence issued by the Ministry of Defence. The main objective behind the legislative change is to develop contemporary legislation to better address security needs in regional planning as well as propose a means through which the State can intervene in property ownership that endangers Finnish national security. According to the government proposal (HE 253/2018vp), land ownership is one of the influential factors of the overall state security formation. Thus, property can be used as part of hybrid activities and influence. Property purchases in strategic locations can be an attempt to establish a foothold in Finland, weaken the operating conditions of officials, advance property use for illegal scouting or support the aims of a foreign state in some other way (HE 253/2018vp). While stressing the potential of property use for

324 

O. Hannonen

hybrid activities of a foreign state, the government proposal counts foreign property ownership in Finland as a rather insignificant form of threat to national security. All foreign property purchases in Finland comprise less than 1% of all Finnish purchases. The governmental proposal, however, notes that a worrying trend has been single property purchases next to strategically important objects, in which the actual controlling party is concealed through intermediaries, the owners could not be reached or the use of the property deviates from the usual one. The content of these discussions demonstrates the impact of the Ukrainian conflict and the Airiston Helmi case on perceptions of Russian property purchases in Finland. On the other hand, the debates about security aspects of Russian property purchases in Finland, and the location next to objects of strategic importance in particular, impact contemporary and potential Russian owners. Before the Airiston Helmi case made media headlines in 2018 and the new legislative change was initiated, I was able to ask the opinions of Russian second-home owners about the debates on property location next to strategic objects. These debates have raised a number of fears among Russian second-home owners, including the possibility of losing their properties: I read that if there is a strategic object nearby, then the State will expropriate properties. Do you know whether there are any strategic objects here? (male, St. Petersburg, Russia, summer 2017) We are especially concerned by the discussions about property expropriation from contemporary owners. We believe in sound Finnish reasoning. We would not like to lose our beloved second home. (female, St. Petersburg, Russia, summer 2017)

Uncertainty and confusion are another line of Russian opinions. Russian owners are puzzled by the notion of strategic objects and what kind of impact they might have on their second-home ownership: “Me: Do you know whether there are any strategic objects near your second home?”

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

325

“R1: We hope not.” R2: “If only berries.” (couple, St. Petersburg, Russia, summer 2017) I haven’t heard these discussions, but I personally would like to be as far as possible from any strategic objects, I don’t need them. Our whole street comes with children, do we really settle next to strategic objects? Are you kidding me? (female, St. Petersburg, summer 2017) I would understand the nature of these debates if the land would be next to strategic objects. There aren’t any objects around me, but you know, one can make up anything. Even a mobile phone station can be categorised as a strategic object. Of course, I am concerned, but I hope that Finland is a civilised country and if some decision is made, they wouldn’t take my property away, but offer some compensation. (male, St. Petersburg, Russia, summer 2017)

The legislative change that has subjected future Russian second-home purchases to a licence from the Ministry of Defence has made it very clear: Russian property purchases will be better monitored and their location will be controlled. It is, however, unclear whether and how contemporary properties in Russian ownership will be inspected. The reactions of Russian second-home owners show a wide gap between the security debates and their everyday lives. The empirical evidence shows that the main strategic objective behind the location of Russian-owned properties in Finland is related to the quality of leisure and personal security aspects (Lipkina 2013; Hannonen et  al. 2016). Among the main motives for Russian second-home purchases in Finland are safety, nature, cultural motives and prices. In terms of safety as a motive, Russians look for a calm and safe environment where they can spend their leisure time with family. Finland has the image of a safe destination in terms of both personal safety and safety of investment. A second home in Finland provides the possibility of owning a second home in pristine nature with personal lakeshore access. While shorelines in Russia are public property, in Finland they may be owned by individuals (Lipkina 2013). The image of Finland as a country of lakes attracts Russians. The study of the distribution of Russian properties shows that

326 

O. Hannonen

the majority of Russian property purchases in Eastern Finland are lakeside locations (Hannonen et  al. 2016). The benefits of second-home ownership in Finland mentioned also include a cheaper price, which is another important motive for the purchase of property (Lipkina 2013).

 ussian Second-Home Ownership in Finland: R To Be Continued? The future of Russian second-home tourism in Finland remains uncertain. It is yet to be seen whether security discourses and new regulations discourage new buyers from the Finnish property market. Unlike Finland’s restrictive stand in relation to foreign property ownership, other foreign destinations actively promote various benefits of foreign property ownership. Foreign real estate fairs in Russia show a rising trend in supplementary benefits tied to property purchases abroad, such as rental opportunities to get a return on the investment, residence permits based on property ownership and immigration opportunities.1 In this perspective Finland does not have a competitive advantage, as property ownership does not entitle foreign owners to more favourable visa conditions, and currently does not entitle one to a bank account in Finland. The enacted licence requirement prior to property purchase can hardly be treated as an attractive change. Recent debates on Russian second-home purchases in both the media and parliament can be regarded as disadvantaging Finland in comparison to other foreign destinations. One Russian owner reflected on the potential impacts of that change on future purchases: Finns do not give you a residence permit, like France or Latvia. There you can get a residence permit based on property ownership. Here [in Finland] there are no such possibilities […] If they restrict property ownership […] the attractiveness of the country decreases. One should understand that Russians spend about one billion euros annually in the border area, then I  Based on author’s observations at the foreign real estate fair in St Petersburg, Russia, in 2014 and consecutive interviews with real estate agents. 1

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

327

don’t understand how Finland would compensate that (male, St. Petersburg, Russia, summer 2017).

The citation also emphasises the importance of second homes for local communities. Both domestic and foreign second homes are regarded as an important source of economic inflow, especially in remote and depopulating areas of the North (see Boxes 16.1 and 16.2). The Ukrainian crisis has forwarded security discussions about hybrid forms of influence and intervention through property ownership. These debates have coincided with a sharp decline of the rubble and economic decline in Russia. This has significantly decreased Russians’ purchasing capacity. As the statistics show (see Fig. 16.1), Russian property purchases have been declining during the last years. According to real estate agents, only singular property purchase requests have been made after 2014. Thus, economic reasons have reduced the accessibility of the Finnish second-­home market for prospective Russian buyers. While foreign destinations are actively promoting additional benefits in connection to property purchase, Finland has introduced the new licence requirement for foreign owners. Will this negatively impact Finland’s attractiveness as a second-home destination? The actual impact of this legislative change on Russian second-home tourism in Finland is yet to be seen. This chapter has presented debates on Russian second-home ownership, ranging from discourses of a “Russian invasion” to a contemporary perspective of Russian property ownership as a security matter. Unlike other examples of negative publicity on foreign property ownership at the developing stage in the North, Russian second-home purchases have been the subject of on-going social debates that have shifted focus over time. The main focus of the most recent debates has been on potential security threats. The example of Russian ownership supports other examples in the Nordic context that show the influence of other activities at the property market on perceptions of foreign ownership. The tax evasion and money laundering case of Airiston Helmi has intensified security concerns in relation to the location of Russian properties next to objects of strategic importance. This concern has resulted in a legislative change that subjects each purchase to a licence. Studies have shown that some claims, such as the displacement myth and fears of ethnic enclaves, have

328 

O. Hannonen

not been supported by the distribution of Russian second homes. While an analysis of the actual location of Russian properties next to objects of strategic importance goes beyond the scope of this chapter, the only strategic objective of Russian second-home ownership that has been revealed so far is the quality of leisure, safe environment and personal recreational needs.

What Do Policy Makers Need to Know? –– Media discourses are often disconnected from the actual situation of Russian second-home purchases. –– Russian activity in the real estate market is too low to lead to displacement of locals. –– Russian second-home owners are concerned about their property status as they are unaware of the presence of strategic objects next to their property. –– There is no clear understanding how the new legislative change will impact current property owners, especially those whose properties might be next to areas of national security importance. –– In the current foreign real estate market that develops side benefits for potential property owners, Finnish media debates and the legislative change are likely to negatively impact the attractiveness of Finland as a second-home destination.

References Back, A., & Marjavaara, R. (2017). Mapping an invisible population: The uneven geography of second-home tourism. Tourism Geographies, 19(4), 596–611. Decree N26. (2011). Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 9 ianvaria 2011 g. N 26. “Ob utverzhdenii perechnia prigranichnykh territorii, na kotorykh inostrannye grazhdane, litsa bez grazhdanstva i inostrannye iuridicheskie litsa ne mogut obladat’ na prave sobstvennosti zemel’nymi uchastkami”. [Указ Президента Российской Федерации от 9 января 2011 г. N26. “Об

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

329

утверждении перечня приграничных территорий, на которых иностранные граждане, лица без гражданства и иностранные юридические лица не могут обладать на праве собственности земельными участками”]. Rossiiskaia Gazeta. Available at: http://www. rg.ru/2011/01/11/zemlya-dok.html. Accessed on 10 Jan 2016. Haapasalo, T. (2013). Arvoisa Herra Puhemies! Ulkomaalaisten kiinteistöomistuksiin liittyvät kirjalliset kysymykset vuosina 2000–2012 [Dear Mister Speaker! Written interrogatories on foreign property ownership in 2000–2012]. Lähde. Historiatieteellinen Aikakausikirja, 135–158. Hänninen, J. (2018). Jättioperaatio Turun saaristossa näyttää kohdistuneen julkisuudessa aiemminkin olleeseen kiinteistöyhtiöön – tällainen on Airiston Helmen kirjava tausta [The giant operation in the Tuku archipelago is linked to previously publicised property corporation  – This is a colourful background of Airiston Helmi]. Yle News. Available at: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10418932. Accessed on 1 Oct 2019. Hannonen, O. (2016). Peace and quiet beyond the border: The trans- border mobility of Russian second home owners in Finland. Tampere: Juvenes. Hannonen, O. (2019). Bordering mobilities: The case of Russian trans-border second-home ownership in Finland. Journal of Finnish Studies, 22(1&2), 241–264. Hannonen, O., Tuulentie, S., & Pitkänen, K. (2015). Borders and second home tourism: Norwegian and Russian second home owners in Finnish border areas. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 30(1), 53–67. Hannonen, O., Lehtonen, O., & Toivakka, M. (2016). Confronting the social debate: A study of the distribution of Russian recreational properties in eastern Finland. Norsk Geografisk Tiddskrift  – Norwegian Journal of Geography, 70(2), 95–111. HE 253/2018 vp [Governmental proposal]. Available at: https://www. eduskunta.fi/FI/vaski/HallituksenEsitys/Documents/HE_253+2018.pdf. Accessed on 10 Sept 2019. Honkanen, A., Pitkänen, K., & Hall, C.  M. (2015). A local perspective on trans-border tourism: Case study on the Russian second home ownership in eastern Finland. International Journal of Tourism Research, 18(2), 149–158. Hoogendoorn, G., & Marjavaara, R. (2018). Displacement and second home tourism: A debate still relevant or time to move on? In C.  M. Hall & D.  K. Müller (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of second home tourism and mobilities (pp. 98–111). Abingdon: Routledge.

330 

O. Hannonen

Kansalaisaloite. (2015). Kansalaisaloite eduskunnalle laiksi EU- ja EFTAmaiden ulkopuolisten henkiloiden ja yhteisojen kiinteistonhankinnasta [Citizens’ initiative on property purchase by persons and corporations outside the EU and EFTA]. Available: http://www.kansalaisaloite.fi. Accessed on 9 Jan 2016. KK 374/2018 vp [Written interrogatory]. Available at: https://www.eduskunta. fi/FI/vaski/Kysymys/Documents/KK_374+2018.pdf. Accessed on 10 Sept 2019. Legislative Initiative 35/2009. Laki ETA-maiden ulkopuolelta tulevien henkiloiden ja yhteisojen kiinteistohankinnasta ja vuokrauksesta. [Law on property purchases and rent by persons and corporations outside the EEA]. Available at: http://www.eduskunta.fi. Accessed on 15 May 2015. Legislative Initiative 45/2011. Laki ETA-maiden ulkopuolelta tulevien henkiloiden ja yhteisojen kiinteistohankinnasta ja -vuokrauksesta [Law on property purchases and rent by persons and corporations outside the EEA]. At: http:// www.eduskunta.fi. Accessed on 15 May 2015. Legislative Initiative 77/2013. Laki ETA-maiden ulkopuolelta tulevien henkiloiden ja yhteisojen kiinteistohankinnasta ja -vuokrauksesta [Law on property purchases and rent by persons and corporations outside the EEA]. Available at: http://www.eduskunta.fi. Accessed on 15 May 2015. Lipkina, O. (2013). Motives for Russian second home ownership in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 13(4), 299–316. Lundholm, E. (2007). New motives for migration? On interregional mobility in the Nordic countries. Umeå: Umeå University. Luukka, T. (2018). Airiston Helmistä tehtiin selvitys [Report of the Airiston Helmi]. Helsingin Sanomat 26.9.2018, A10. Mälkiä, H. (2015). Venäläiset ostamassa yhden Saimaan halutuimmista ranta-­ alueista [Russians are buying one of Lake Saimaa’s most wanted shore properties]. Available at: www.yle.fi. Accessed on 15 Aug 2015. Marjavaara, R. (2008). Second home tourism: The root to displacement in Sweden? Umeå: Umeå University. Marjavaara, R., & Lundholm, E. (2016). Does second-home ownership trigger migration in later life? Population, Space and Place, 22(3), 228–240. Müller, D.K. (1999). German second home owners in the Swedish countryside: On the internationalization of the leisure space (PhD thesis). Umeå: Umeå University. Müller, D.  K. (2011). The internationalization of rural municipalities: Norwegian second home owners in northern Bohuslän, Sweden. Tourism Planning & Development, 8, 433–445.

16  Strategic Objective? Contemporary Discourse on Russian… 

331

Müller, D. K., & Marjavaara, R. (2012). From second home to primary residence: Migration towards recreational properties in Sweden 1991–2005. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 103(1), 53–68. Müller, D., Nordin, U., & Marjavaara, R. (2010). Fritidsboendes relationer till den svenska landsbygden: Resultat av en enkät bland svenska fritidshusägare 2009. Umeå: Umeå University. Nordin, U., & Marjavaara, R. (2012). The local non-locals: Second home owners associational engagement in Sweden. Tourism, 60(3), 293–305. Pitkänen, K. (2011). Contested cottage landscapes: Host perspective to the increase of foreign second home ownership in Finland 1990–2008. Fennia, 189, 43–59. PTK 48/2009. Taysistunnon poytakirja [Minutes of the plenary session]. Available at: http://www.eduskunta.fi. Accessed on 15 May 2015. PTK 10/2012. Taysistunnon poytakirja [Minutes of the plenary session]. Available at: http://www.eduskunta.fi. Accessed on 15 May 2015. PTK 16/2014. Taysistunnon poytakirja [Minutes of the plenary session]. Available at: http://www.eduskunta.fi. Accessed on 15 May 2015. PTK 125/2018 vp [Preliminary debate, minutes]. Available at: https://www. eduskunta.fi/FI/vaski/PoytakirjaAsiakohta/Documents/PTK_125+2018+2. pdf. Accessed on 10 Sept 2019. Robertsson, L., & Marjavaara, R. (2015). The seasonal buzz: Knowledge transfer in a temporary setting. Tourism Planning & Development, 12(3), 251–265. Schönberg, K. (2015). Puolustusministeri Niinistö: Valtio voi pakkolunastaa maat ampuma-alueen naapurissa  – venäläinen ostaja kiinnostunut [The defence minister Niinistö: The state can expropriate land next to the shooting range – A Russian buyer is interested]. Available at: www.yle.fi. Accessed on 15 June 2015. Statistics Sweden. (2020a). Holiday travel and holiday homes by indicator, age and sex. Percentage and estimated numbers in thousands. Year 2008–2009  – 2018–2019. Available at: http://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se. Accessed on 3 Feb 2020. Statistics Sweden. (2020b). Norwegian ownership continues to increase. Statistical news. Available at: https://www.scb.se/en. Accessed on 5 Feb 2020. STK 144/2018 vp. [Oral question hour on foreign property purchases in Finland, minutes]. Available at: https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/vaski/ PoytakirjaAsiakohta/Sivut/PTK_91+2018+2.2.aspx. Accessed on 10 Sept 2019.

332 

O. Hannonen

Tolkki, K. (2018). Nämä 5 asiaa tiedämme Airiston operaatiosta: Rahanpesua ja kansainvälisiä talousrikoksia saaristoidyllissä  – kartta näyttää omistusten sijainnin [These 5 things we know about the Airiston Helmi operation: Money laundering and international white collar crime in the archipelago idyll – The map shows property locations]. Yle News. Available at: https://yle. fi/uutiset/3-10419987. Accessed on 10 Sept 2019. Vihavainen, S., & Laitinen, S. (2018). Hallitus haluaa rajoittaa maakauppoja [The Government wants to restrict land purchases]. Helsingin Sanomat, 26.8.2018, A8. Yle News. (2016). Venäläisten maakaupat uhkien joukossa – Turvallisuuskomitea listasi hybridisodan ilmiöitä [Russian property purchases in the list of threats – The defence committee has listed features of the hybrid war]. Yle News 14.2.2016. Available at: http://yle.fi/uutiset/venalaisten_maakaupat_ uhkien_joukossa__turvallisuuskomitea_listasi_hybridisodan_ilmioita/8664889. Accessed on 13 Feb 2016.

17 Selling Greenness Jundan Jasmine Zhang and Linda Lundmark

 ature-Based Tourism Entrepreneurship: N A Sustainable Way to Combat Rural Challenges? While tourism in many major cities in the world is being questioned as becoming an unsustainable avenue of economic activity and overtourism is more and more used to describe the unwanted flows of mass tourism (Milano et al. 2019), tourism is still advocated as the sustainable option in rural areas (Martínez et al. 2019). In many areas nature-based tourism has been encouraged as an option for entrepreneurs in rural or peripheral regions (Jordbruksverket 2020). Sometimes referred to as Europe’s last wilderness or the Arctic Europe northern Sweden is perhaps one of the best examples to illustrate this development (see also Lundmark, Müller and Bohn, this volume). The concern here is how and in what ways the natural environment J. J. Zhang (*) Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] L. Lundmark Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_17

333

334 

J. J. Zhang and L. Lundmark

can be commercialized and used for economic development in the rural areas? Two myths are presented: the first one holds that rural areas are better places for making ecological or green business, and the second one that the rural needs to be saved and can be saved by such green business. Traditionally the rural areas in the sparsely populated parts of Northern Europe have been economically dependent on resource extraction. However, with more effective and efficient production, far less people are employed in the primary sector. This has been one of the reasons for out-­ migration and further urbanization but has also been a prerequisite for those industries to be competitive on a global market (Lundmark 2006a). In the post-industrial era the effects on nature by traditional resource extraction has become not only a question for rural areas but an issue that also has concerned urban dwellers to a high extent (Bennett and Teague 1999). The image of rural areas as being sustainable includes ideas of the rural idyll with open landscapes, grazing animals and wildlife, and social sustainability where communities are well adjusted to living close to nature (Woods 2011). There is also an idea of another pace of living in rural areas than in urban areas that for some at least seems attractive. The economic prospects in rural areas are relatively few seeing that the distance to main markets and the sparse settlement structures do not allow for the same dynamics as in metropolitans and urban areas (Barnes et al. 2001). Creating an attractive industry from a resource that is for ‘free’ that also fits the image of the rural seems to be an easy option. While ‘the rural’ has always been stereotypically represented as backwards and acting mostly as the supplier for ‘the urban’ (Woods 2011), we observe recently that in news reports and social media there is a portrait of making ‘green business’ in rural areas in Sweden (see also Box 17.1). It has been described as a new ‘green wave’ in rural areas, one similar to the green waves in the 1970s but oriented more on gaining profits out of environmental friendly business operations and products. For instance, one news report from Sveriges Radio describes this new green wave happening in rural areas in recent years, mostly because the environments in these regions fit the increasingly popular perceptions of “green

17  Selling Greenness 

335

consumption” (Segerson 2017). The news report also implies that many entrepreneurs return or move to inland areas to make advantages of such public perception and develop their environmentally friendly products accordingly. So, to what end is greenness on sale? Economic growth? Social equality? Or sustainability in general? Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted with 13 entrepreneurs in 2017–2018, we examine the myths and questions stated above in a local context in northern Sweden and contribute to the ongoing discussion on rural development, ecological/ sustainable entrepreneurship and social innovation.

Nature as a Tourism Commodity Increased environmental awareness and the orientations towards services and knowledge are some of the preconditions affecting what development that takes place, not only in urban centres but also in rural peripheries. One important change has been that other values than the values we can produce and harvest directly from the rural landscape have become established and are now dominating policy as the ‘new rural paradigm’ (OECD 2006). The discourse of ‘post-productivism’ where the rural is a landscape for consumption and recreation in situ (Lundmark 2006b; Mather et al. 2006; Evans et al. 2002; Wilson 2001) has now replaced the idea of the rural as a production landscape. This change has important implications for rural development and restructuring in that it is creating new spatial relationships through flows of people and finance. Thus, despite popular perceptions, the urban dependency on the rural and the consumption of rural products and services has increased (Almstedt et al. 2014). In this respect there is a concurrent discourse in public policy about moving rural places away from primary production and towards the ‘new economy’ (OECD 2006), and there is an increasing focus on the countryside as a place of consumption (Lundmark 2006a, b) either through ‘attractive’ economies such as tourism and second homes (Hoogendoorn 2010; Hoogendoorn and Visser 2011) or as wider rural land use changes. Research from sparsely populated areas in Sweden (Almstedt et  al. 2016) suggests that an increased demand for rural

336 

J. J. Zhang and L. Lundmark

amenities is seen as contributing to the restructuring of the economy. Consequently there has been a shift of attention towards sustainability and environmentalism.

Box 17.1  Ecolodge Tjarn Marco Eimermann This box is the result of an AIMday organized at Umeå University. “AIMday is centered on small group discussions where a question raised by an organisation is highlighted, and penetrated during one hour by scientists and experts from different disciplines” (AIMday 2019). In March 2017, the AIMday theme at Umeå University was ‘Tourism’, to increase our understanding of challenges for tourism as a phenomenon and the way in which (small) tourism firms operate. This day also created novel possibilities to develop collaboration between tourism firms and tourism research in northern Sweden through knowledge exchange. This text box is the result of one such collaboration, and it reports from a study visit in which a tourism entrepreneur welcomed two human geographers and their group of five Master students. The entrepreneur could also be seen as an eco-preneur, since he runs a tourism firm called Ecolodge Tjarn, consisting of a nineteenth-century country house and related buildings that accommodate a maximum of 30 guests (see Fig. 17.1). At 10 km from the centre of Nordmaling, in a secluded place near a river and meadows in the forest, the purpose of Ecolodge Tjarn is to offer tranquil surroundings that facilitate good meetings for board members, committees or business groups. For instance, at a relatively slow pace and amidst natural surroundings, the six- to seven-minute forest walk from the main parking lot to the house is a good introductory activity. During our study visit, the entrepreneur explained that although it is possible to park your car closer to the lodge, the short walk is a deliberate start of the visit as it offers ‘a concrete way to feel how work-related stress is starting to decrease’. Lodge meetings can include an overnight stay and informal settings in which valuable ideas can emerge and develop spontaneously, during a walk in the fields and woods or during an open conversation at the campfire. Other optional outdoor activities also contribute to diminishing hierarchies between the participants that may normally exist during a day at the office. According to its website (Ecolodge Tjarn 2019), “the group disposes of the entire estate itself, with staff and guides available around the clock”. Focus is on social and ecological sustainability, for example, electricity is generated from solar energy, local firewood is used to heat the water and prepare the meals, most food is locally produced and social activities are arranged to increase the right type of informal atmosphere to stimulate novel insights and good decisions. Shortly after converting the house in the (continued)

17  Selling Greenness 

337

Box 17.1  (continued) tourism firm it had no Internet at all, but this was soon provided in the main meeting room since modern business meetings do require such facilities. Ecolodge Tjarn was nominated to the Swedish National Grand Tourism Prize as the Nordic most inspiring meeting environment, which encouraged the eco-preneur to continue developing his product. This text box exemplifies how an entrepreneur might use nature as a way to generate revenue based on his ideas of sustainable development and a sustainable way of life. Furthermore, it shows how modern interpretations are integrated in the human/nature relationship and not just how people ‘are going back to nature’.

Fig. 17.1  Ecolodge Tjarn, November 2017. (Photo: Marco Eimermann)

Sustainability has, since it was first discussed in the report of World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 (also known as the Brundtland report), been adopted by governments around the globe

338 

J. J. Zhang and L. Lundmark

to deal with increasing problems of environmental decay, poverty and inequality. To achieve sustainability, it is required a series of transitions in production models, technological development and social perceptions which are played out in different ways at different geographical locations. Research shows that the movement between rural and urban plays a big role in the changing pattern of livelihood, employment and mobility of the rural communities, and contributing to the view of a rural-urban spectrum (Carson et al. 2014; Paniagua 2002). Based on the above understandings, we could conclude that it would be a good avenue for tourism businesses to be involved in selling greenness. However, research so far has not shown conclusive evidence of such a positive connection in Sweden. Firstly, Lundmark and Müller (2010) contend that accessibility and difficulties to provide appropriate products limit the possibilities for nature-based tourism and that geographical dimensions will determine success. Secondly, it has been argued that nature protection holds the potential development for tourism in peripheral and sparsely populated areas. Differing from the cases in other contexts such as the UK and the US, it seems that factors connected to the development of a tourism labour market in Sweden instead are dependent on population growth and proximity to other tourism infrastructure such as ski lifts (Lundmark et al. 2010). This background to overall discourses on a macro-level raises the question of how entrepreneurs themselves reflect on their business in relation to the environment, sustainability and the hard work of doing business and live on it.

Method Thirteen entrepreneurs in total were interviewed during the period of November 2017 to April 2018. The interviewees were selected through purposive selection and snowballing. As the aim of the study is to understand how it is to run an environmentally friendly/green business, specifically eco-tourism business in rural areas in northern Sweden, we looked for tourism operations that are identifying themselves as ecologically driven in one way or another. This can, for instance, be perceived through

17  Selling Greenness 

339

self-labelling and marketing on their business websites or through other ecological-focused certifications and organizations that they are associated with (e.g. Nature’s Best Sweden, Swedish Ecotourism Society and Destination Management Organizations such as Swedish Lapland and Gold of Lapland). Businesses the interviewees run range from ecological lodge and holiday accommodations to wild camp and outdoor activities. Questions and thoughts discussed include how the entrepreneurial ideas started, how they evaluate the geographical aspects of their business and how they perceive the ecological aspects of their business. We asked the entrepreneurs questions such as what is it like to start up and to maintain a more ecological business in rural areas? Have ecological elements become an essential part of rural entrepreneurs’ business operation and profile? If the ‘greenness’ is the selling point for rural entrepreneurs, what are the opportunities and challenges for them? We also asked the interviewees to reflect on their own narratives and how they link these narratives to bigger pictures such as climate change and environmental injustice.

 ourism Entrepreneurs in Rural T Northern Sweden Previous studies have shown that running tourism business in rural and peripheral areas is not an easy solution for diversifying local economy that has relied on exporting natural resources (Carson and Carson 2011). The narratives from interviews with tourism entrepreneurs in this study show that the same can be said on the myths of selling greenness in the rural areas in northern Sweden. The combination of ‘the rural’ and ‘the green business’ is not as easy or trendy as it appears. As the interviewees’ backgrounds varied from long-term local residents in rural areas to entrepreneurs who recently immigrated from other EU countries, the interviews presented diverse stories. While the ‘greenness’ is a common element in the business of all interviewed entrepreneurs, other insights emerged, indicating a more complex picture of how it is to run a green business in a rural context.

340 

J. J. Zhang and L. Lundmark

Whilst the myths or assumptions pointing to an ideal solution of saving the rural by selling greenness, the interviews remind us that there is a bigger picture to all of this. The discourse of capitalizing nature in rural areas indeed derives from an ongoing effort of balancing different aspects in sustainability, namely the social, environmental and economic sustainability. Saving the rural by selling greenness can thus be seen as a wishful thinking similar to the one like ‘making money by saving the environment’. Green entrepreneurship has had a long history, but only in the recent decades achieved legitimacy and scale, and is gradually seen as an innovative way of making new businesses (Jones 2017). However, in a rural setting balancing social responsibility, economic profits and ecological maintenance might be more challenging, as one interviewee mentioned: Finding the balance between different things is challenging. We must accommodate our operation to our size, to find new ways all the time to adjust to changes. Sometimes it means we have to be less flexible with the tourists. (Informant 9, December 2017)

Here it was implied that as a small-sized business operator, the informant had limited resources, and to maximize the outcome, they had to adjust to the limitation. This was expressed more explicitly by another informant, referring to the importance of social and economic sustainability: Actually, the social sustainability is the central part (of the business), but I even want to lift the entrepreneurship in the rural area. But economic sustainability is a challenge, when we are unsure how to put a price on what we do. (Informant 3, November 2017)

Evaluating and estimating values of nature-based or experience-­ oriented products requires certain knowledge and competence in business operating. Yet, the peripheral areas often have difficulties attracting and keeping competent workers or building strong networks with the economic hubs. Similarly, limitation in collective transport and more environmentally friendly transport options in these areas leads to

17  Selling Greenness 

341

challenges for entrepreneurs to realize or maintain the combination of ecological and economic sustainability. One respondent lamented the inner conflicts caused by the transport dilemma: I don’t like flights coming in, or the taxis. I have a bit of problem here that I prefer them in another way, but I know it’s not possible. It’s difficult to limit the carbon emission from the vehicles. You could add tax on the flight tickets. But it will decrease the tourists’ number and affect local economy. (Informant 4, December 2017)

These narratives tell a realistic and challenging situation, in which entrepreneurs may find that it is difficult to meet the principle or demand of an all-around sustainable business, and the rural setting makes it even harder. Although many entrepreneurs believe it is important to maintain or improve the ecological profile of their business, it differs among the interviewees how they position the ecological aspects in relation to other aspects of their business, such as economic profits. While some of the entrepreneurs had a very strong environmental ethics from the very beginning, they were all clear on the point that the environmental friendliness was not considered as the major selling point even when ‘nature’ itself is the main product (e.g. in eco-tourism). Nevertheless, there needs to be better infrastructure and local business support to enable a better entrepreneurial condition and environment. However, when the focus of discussion shifts to the rural area as a place, a few respondents talked about it in a more positive tune, describing the rural as a place where one can implement one’s ideas and ideals more freely. And it is about changing perspective, or lowering expectations, in order to balance the economic, environmental and social aspects of their business. For instance, one entrepreneur said, Here (in the rural area) you can create your own life based on what you want. It’s not as expensive to be an entrepreneur here as in Stockholm. Sure it is difficult to earn profits, but if I would have a business in Stockholm there would be much bigger competition as well, so it’s not certain that would go better. The place is not so important, what you do is more important. The biggest possibility

342 

J. J. Zhang and L. Lundmark

here is that I can decide myself when and how to have my time at and off work. (Informant 3, November 2017)

And another one described, It feels like we have found a good balance between profits and environmental effects. We are very small and local, so we take one step at a time. When it comes to tourism, our principle is not to have loan. Because we want to work for fun, not feel forced to work. (Informant 6, November 2017)

For some, the rural as a place with natural amenity has been the main reason for them to start their business: We moved here because the condition of natural resources and beautiful environment are much better for our business. Here you can do activities in the forest and it is only nature who can say no to you, not other people. For instance when there’s a fallen tree on the road you have to go around. In that way nature forbids you itself, and we must follow nature’s rules. (Informant 7, December 2017)

Furthermore, a few entrepreneurs observed that the discourse of sustainability has become more known in recent years, which leads to a change of consumption behaviors. In turn, it has improved the possibility to carry out a more ideal green business: For us it has been easier to balance the ecological concerns and profits. The last years have become much better, maybe because economy in general is better. But also for people in general have become more conscious about the environment and are more ready to pay for a little higher for ecological products. Since we got certificate it became clear that people really buy that. The ecological profile is what we go for and it is the quality we compete. (Informant 8, January 2018)

For these entrepreneurs the rural setting and the small scale of their business are preconditions rather than hurdles, especially in a context where customers’ preferences are changing to the ‘greener side’. Together with the earlier comments, they show a complex picture of doing green business in rural areas that both challenges and possibilities exist for

17  Selling Greenness 

343

balancing different aspects of a sustainable future, namely the economic, environmental and social. While the rural certainly played a role in the entrepreneurs’ product development, it appears that the rural is talked about more as a ‘place’ than a set of ‘ideas’; therefore, the discussion of rurality is transformed to a discussion of locality. For instance, one respondent argued: Our product is not only nature, but also this place. Tourism is in the end the only sustainable way to ensure that the thing you sell is here, because the place can’t move. The place is what holds money locally. It’s not this or that ecological certificate making us strong. It is that we act locally and have a strong identity. (Informant 9, December 2017)

Against the context of global warming, another entrepreneur reflected on the rural both as a place far away from major tourism destinations and as a set of assumptions and ideas that are different from the urban, and how it is always a paradox to use the locality and nature to attract tourism: The more we talk about climate change the more tourists want to take the last chance and travel to places with snow before it all disappears. So maybe it speeds up the process. I think the threat lies in how we use the location and how we exploit it. We must think over that, if our area grows to be a city then our products will disappear as well. (Informant 9, December 2017)

So in general, the myth of rural areas providing an ideal environment for entrepreneurs to develop eco-friendly products can be said as over-­ romanticizing. Although the entrepreneurs interviewed here are mostly based in tourism sector, they do reflect some common issues of doing business in rural and peripheral areas. This over-romanticizing might have to do with the general discourse of a ‘decaying’ rural that is facing problems such as ageing population and out-migration, which is leading to the perception that the greenness is what they have left to use and sell. While in some cases this background indeed led to the birth of some business, in most other cases the entrepreneurs’ motivation is often more genuine or more personal.

344 

J. J. Zhang and L. Lundmark

Interestingly, the discourse and idea of the rural as idle and slow paced, and easy to build one’s unique style and profile, have nevertheless influenced or become reflected in individual entrepreneurs’ choices and actions. Here, we argue that this can also be seen as a sign that the individual entrepreneurs are willing to play a certain role in shaping the discourse of what the rural is and how the rural can be developed. For example, one entrepreneur claimed, There are circumstances that I cannot change or influence, but with tourists I think I can influence the world directly. Or at least I can do that and then they can decide how much the influence is there. (Informant 9, December 2017)

 elling Greenness: Sustaining Lifestyle, S Developing Community It is now time to return to the myths and questions proposed in the beginning: the first one being that rural areas are better places for making ecological or green business, and the second one that the rural needs to be saved and can be saved by such green business. These two myths encompass both individual motivations and ambitions with the entrepreneur but also ambitions on part of politics or society at large on what individual entrepreneurs can accomplish. The issue here is to address to what extent the individual ambitions are in concurrence with those expectations and visions from a societal point of view. Based on the interviews it is clear that there are different levels of engagement and motivations driving the entrepreneurs that might not directly be linked to those driving political ambitions to create structural change. Why are the entrepreneurs in the business of ‘selling greenness’? On the one hand, interviewees argue that there are personal motivations for being an entrepreneur—it is fun and flexible, and it gives them freedom to do business the way they want to. On the other hand, there is the awareness that selling nature and the rural experience to tourist also come with a drawback in terms of the travel to the area and that does not necessarily mean that they contribute to overall sustainability. Geography however seems to be part of a reality that just has to be accepted. So, the

17  Selling Greenness 

345

first myth is busted: even at the individual level, environmental ethics might be something important for individual entrepreneurs; environmental sustainability at the tourism systems level is not considered by them as part of their responsibility; however, there are other sustainability goals that are more important. If sustainability at a structural and tourism systems level is not a priority for these entrepreneurs, other sustainability goals such as social, cultural and more surprisingly economic sustainability at a personal level, are much more considered. However, these entrepreneurs are not profit maximizers. This means that economic growth as personal or societal goal is not considered as a motivator for starting up or continue their business. The above analysis has implications for how this type of business is considered in policy as well as in research. What a sustainable goal for society at large might be might not hold true in different sectors and different types of business. When evaluating and reflecting on the success of business, the growth paradigm needs to be questioned, and the outcomes of entrepreneurship on rural development and overall systems and structures such as national sustainability goals need to be assessed more on social and cultural grounds than on economic and environmental grounds, regardless of motivations among the entrepreneurs themselves. Another important point to make is that selling greenness does not differ from selling other tourism products: the product itself is not solving any of the other start-up problems or problems of running and managing a business. In terms of the entrepreneurs here, there are indications that there might be many push factors that are involved in deciding where the business should be located. These factors have not been directly targeted in this study. Examples of this are competition and profit, as was mentioned by some interviewees, and that is not part of the rural business landscape as much as it is part of the metropolitan business landscape and these factors were mentioned as push factors. Another important issue with respect to the difference between rural and urban areas was the idea of being able to contribute to society in a more tangible way in rural areas, for instance, enhancing the local attractiveness by developing a successful business. Finally, to the implications of the above insights for entrepreneurs, local government and relevant organizations, further research into the

346 

J. J. Zhang and L. Lundmark

local meanings and implications on rural areas and populations is needed. And it is clear that for these green businesses to be viable in the rural areas, many measures can be taken by municipalities, planners and society at large in terms of built infrastructure, tourism infrastructure and general development. While the issues of improving environmental sustainability have been discussed in national strategies for rural development (Regeringskansliet 2006), and nature-based tourism has been advocated as an important tool for sustainable development in rural areas, the policy-makers may consider to put forward more focused questions on whether a ‘green business profile’ could be useful for the rural communities to the discussion of rural development. Acknowledgements  This chapter is based on research funded by a grant from the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas): the grant Research leaders of the future in the area Rural Development (project: Mobilising the rural: Post-productivism and the new economy).

References Almstedt, Å., Brouder, P., Karlsson, S., & Lundmark, L. (2014). Beyond post-­ productivism: From rural policy discourse to rural diversity. European Countryside, 6(4), 297–306. Almstedt, Å., Lundmark, L., & Pettersson, Ö. (2016). Public spending on rural tourism in Sweden. Fennia, 194(1), 18–31. Barnes, T. J., Hayter, R., & Hay, E. (2001). Stormy weather: Cyclones, Harold Innes and Port Alberni, BC. Environment & Planning A, 33, 2127–2147. Bennett, M., & Teague, D. W. (Eds.). (1999). The nature of cities: Ecocriticism and urban environments. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Carson, D. A., & Carson, D. B. (2011). Why tourism may not be everybody’s business: The challenge of tradition in resource peripheries. The Rangeland Journal, 33(4), 373–383. Carson, D. A., Carson, D. B., & Lundmark, L. (2014). Tourism and mobilities in sparsely populated areas: Towards a framework and research agenda. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 14(4), 353–366.

17  Selling Greenness 

347

Ecolodge Tjarn. (2019). Tjarn: Möten i tiden. Retrieved August 23, 2020, from http://tjarn.se/ Evans, N., Morris, C., & Winter, M. (2002). Conceptualizing agriculture: A critique of post-productivism as the new orthodoxy. Progress in Human Geography, 26(3), 313–332. Hoogendoorn, G. (2010). Second homes and local economic impacts in the South African post-productivist countryside. (Doctoral dissertation). Faculty of Humanities, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Hoogendoorn, G., & Visser, G. (2011). Tourism, second homes and an emerging South African postproductivist countryside. Tourism Review International, 15(1–2), 183–197. Jones, G. (2017, April 20). Profits and sustainability: A history of green entrepreneurship. Oxford University Press. Retrieved February 20, 2020, from https:// w w w - ox f o rd s c h o l a r s h i p - c o m . p rox y. u b. u m u . s e / v i e w / 1 0 . 1 0 9 3 / oso/9780198706977.001.0001/oso-9780198706977 Jordbruksverket. (2020). Investeringsstöd för infrastruktur för rekreation och turism. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from https://nya.jordbruksverket.se/stod/service-och-satsningar-pa-landsbygden/infrastruktur-forrekreation-och-turism Lundmark, L. (2006a). Restructuring and employment change in sparsely populated areas. Examples from northern Sweden and Finland (182p). GERUM report series 2006:2, Dissertation. Lundmark, L. (2006b). Mobility, migration and seasonal tourism employment. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 6(3), 3–17. Lundmark, L., & Müller, D. K. (2010). Tourism Review, 58(4), 379–393. Lundmark, L., Fredman, P., & Sandell, K. (2010). National parks and protected areas and the role for employment in tourism and forest sectors: A Swedish case. Ecology and Society, 15(1), 19. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/ iss1/art19/. Martínez, J.  M. G., Martín, J.  M. M., Fernández, J.  A. S., & Mogorrón-­ Guerrero, H. (2019). An analysis of the stability of rural tourism as a desired condition for sustainable tourism. Journal of Business Research, 100, 165–174. Mather, A. S., Hill, G., & Nijnik, M. (2006). Post-productivism and rural land use: Cul de sac or challenge for theorization? Journal of Rural Studies, 22, 441–455. Milano, C., Cheer, J. M., & Novelli, M. (Eds.). (2019). Overtourism: Excesses, discontents and measures in travel and tourism. Wallingford, UK: CABI.

348 

J. J. Zhang and L. Lundmark

OECD. (2006). The new rural paradigm. Policies and governance. Paris: OECD Publications. Paniagua, A. (2002). Urban-rural migration, tourism entrepreneurs and rural restructuring in Spain. Tourism Geographies, 4(4), 349–371. Regeringskansliet. (2006). Nationell strategi för landsbygdsutveckling. Stockholm: Ministry of Environment.  Segerson, D. (2017). Populärt att driva företag på landet. https://sverigesradio.se/ sida/artikel.aspx?programid=106&artikel=6723276 Wilson, G. A. (2001). From productivism to post-productivism … and back again? Exploring the (un)changed natural and mental landscapes of European agriculture. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 26, 77–102. Woods, M. (2011). Rural. London: Routledge.

18 Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely Populated Areas Linda Lundmark, Dieter K. Müller, and Dorothee Bohn

Introduction There is no doubt that the ‘Arctic is hot’ (Roussel and Fossum 2010: 799), and it is now believed that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe (IPCC 2014). Political and economic interests in the circumpolar North are rising due to the quest for exploiting the region’s natural resources. Advancements in technology in addition to increased access to land spur new investments in extractive facilities and infrastructure, while container and cruise shipping benefits from a prolonged ice-­ free season (Dodds and Hemmings 2018). Increasing global interests also include the transformation of Arctic Europe into a global playground for adventure tourists (Pedersen and

L. Lundmark (*) • D. K. Müller • D. Bohn Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_18

349

350 

L. Lundmark et al.

Viken 1996; Müller 2011; Müller et al., 2019; Lundmark and Müller 2010). In the context of globalization, peripheries are often identified as potential destinations for tourists (Müller 2015). Even in Sweden, public stakeholders have put substantial effort into promoting tourism development, simply because access to pristine nature has been seen as an advantage in the competition for tourists in a global economy. The effects of globalization are so extensive that ‘even the most remote spaces are exposed to global competition and are forcing firms, localities and regions to react and adjust to the new economic conditions’ (Pike et al. 2006: 4). Tourism is a significant force in today’s globalized world as ‘one of the largest industrial complexes and item of consumption in modern Western economies’ (Britton 1991: 451). The rapid increase in international tourist flows, particularly in the last twenty years (UNWTO 2019), has become a reason for concern. Statistics from Eurostat (2019) claim that within Europe (EU 28) the number of overnight stays increased by 27% between 2004 and 2017, which is most likely an underestimation of the real numbers since day-trippers, cruise ship travellers, people visiting friends and relatives (VFR) or stays at privately organized accommodation, such as Airbnb, are not included (Ioannides et  al. 2018; Oskam 2019). This trend has also been seen in Arctic areas that experience not only increased visitation but attempts by national, regional and local governments to expand the sector. For instance, Sweden’s and Finland’s Arctic strategy documents address tourism as a target sector that can foster growth and employment in sparsely populated Arctic areas ridden by economic problems and outmigration, while also boosting the countries’ image as legitimate Arctic players (Government Offices of Sweden 2011; Prime Minister’s Office Finland 2013). Both countries therefore encourage investments in the tourism infrastructure and support through public funding for tourism research and development. However, this common conception of huge possibilities for economic revenue and social and community development through tourism is increasingly questioned (Lundmark and Åberg 2019), particularly as issues around overtourism are likely to emerge as tourism continues to intensify in the delicate natural and sparsely populated areas in the North. One recent event involved a tourist entrepreneur taking tourists out on dogsled rides being attacked

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

351

by a reindeer herder who had had enough of tourists around the reindeer (svt news: Politikern jämför turister med terrorister). Previous studies on overtourism do not address rural areas that touristically are relatively unknown and unexploited but to which a significant amount of people travel to. This proliferation has happened because (1) geographic distance has decreased both through organization of tourism services and geographical imaginations, (2) improved accessibility in terms of infrastructural development as well as social and economic possibilities for larger groups of people availability and (3) people’s choice of destination is not only guided by traditional media and travel agencies anymore but via social media. Departing from the assumption that remote and sparsely populated areas should rejoice at the prospects of new opportunities for tourism growth, this chapter addresses the myth that there can never be too many tourists in remote and sparsely populated places.

Arctification The increasing visitation to Arctic rural places has many reasons, but one that has increasingly gained importance is the role of Arctification. Saarinen and Varnajot (2019) point out that Arctic tourism not only may refer to the physical visitation of the region above the Arctic Circle but can be approached through produced and experienced dimensions, which are intrinsic to tourism. The produced Arctic refers to the creation of tourism products or destinations that draw upon cultural signs and meanings linked to the circumpolar North, while the experienced Arctic denotes subjective place experiences of travellers (Saarinen and Varnajot 2019). This extended idea of Arctic tourism also resonates with the notion of ‘Arctification’ in Nordic tourism. Müller and Viken (2017: 288) observe that this process entails not only the production of specific tourism experiences which are based on coldness, winter or the aurora borealis, but the creation of ‘new geographical imaginations of the north of Europe as part of the Arctic and consecutively new social, economic and political relations’.

352 

L. Lundmark et al.

Climate change has been and can be expected to be an important driver for tourism development. As is discussed in Box 18.1, melting sea ice is creating new opportunities and obstacles for tourism in the Arctic. Partly, public attention for the Arctic, and its vulnerability to climate change, has increased tourist interest in visiting this region, a phenomenon that has been described as ‘Last Chance Tourism’ (Lemelin et  al. 2010). Partly, political actions such as taxes on airplane fuel, in combination with increasingly unpleasant temperatures in lower latitudes, are expected to entail a regionalization of tourism, making Arctic Europe a convenient intervening opportunity for the European market (Hamilton et  al. 2005). This development can be seen as double amplification of Arctic tourism. The recent growth of tourism allowing more people to access even remote places has led to new challenges characterized as overtourism (Muler Gonzalez et al. 2018). This materializes in an Arctic context on a place-based microscale, where small communities can experience relatively large numbers of tourists often for a very limited time period. In Box 18.2, two examples of cruise tourism are given showing different cases of negative and positive effects of tourism in small communities. In the case of the Arctic and the intrinsic association with ice and snow, visitation sometimes peaks during the winter season (Rantala et al. 2019). Depending on the profile of a destination, Arctic tourism as a specific product adds on to an already existing product, as in the case of Santa Claus tourism in Finnish Lapland, or creates a new season as in destinations of northern Sweden and Norway which promote sights of the Aurora Borealis as their main attraction. For example, aurora tourism has turned Abisko into a hotspot during the winter season, while only ten years ago, many tourist facilities shut down during the same period due to darkness and low temperatures. Arctification in Nordic countries has been driven at a macro level, referring to interregional cooperation between public and private stakeholders, as well as at the micro level of individual tourism companies. An example of the former is the Interreg project Visit Arctic Europe, which ran between 2015 and 2018 with the aim to establish a unified cross-­ border destination for year-round tourism in Northern Norway and Swedish and Finnish Lapland (Visit Arctic Europe 2020). Altogether,

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

353

€6.5 million were invested in order to cope with challenges related to long distances, a strong seasonality and limited company resources. Within the project, efforts were made to coordinate transport solutions to and from, as well as within, the region. For more information on this, see Box 18.3. Marketing efforts targeted the German-speaking market, the Benelux countries, UK, USA and China. Finally, the products of many small- and medium-sized companies in the region were packaged resulting in cross-border offers spread over the entire year. The project has been a success, with another €5.3 million being invested in the second phase until 2021. Overall, the project initiated the creation of an Arctic Europe brand. An interesting example of adaptation to this new Arctic image at the local and individual firm level is the opening of the Icehotel 365 in 2016, which offers a perennial version of the traditional Icehotel (Fig. 18.1). Located at the same spot in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, the hotel provides a stereotypical Arctic experience to tourists from all over the world. To a certain extent, it can be speculated that the year-round version of the

Fig. 18.1  Icehotel 365 in September 2018. (Photo: D.K. Müller)

354 

L. Lundmark et al.

Icehotel is a response to the recent popularity of the Arctic. An implication of such development is the inflow of tourists who lack adequate competencies and knowledge of the destination, requiring entrepreneurs to apply greater adaptive capacity in order to provide ‘softer’ adventures to their customers (Rantala et al. 2018). In summary, the Arctification of northern tourism leads not only to growing tourist numbers but to the influx of more diverse travellers, including a greater share of people unable to handle experiences in winter conditions on their own. As a result, individual tourism previously dominating in the region is increasingly accompanied by more collective forms of tourism. Furthermore, while previously dominated by domestic tourists, Arctic destinations now attract an increasingly global market, particularly during the winter season. This shift seems to imply a spatial and temporal concentration of tourists to a few iconic attractions, a situation that local communities may experience as overtourism.

Box 18.1  Melting Sea Ice: A Curse or Blessing for Arctic Tourism? Marta Bystrowska

Myth: Th  e melting Arctic sea ice contributes to cruise tourism development due to better accessibility of remote destinations.

In October 2019, media reported that a recently launched Mosaic expedition, the biggest Arctic research project in recent years, was struggling to find sea ice thick enough to set up a floating camp: some ice floes were only 30–40  cm thick—too little to support the icebreaker’s fastening to it. Though threatening the success of the research project, the disappearing sea ice is, however, considered by many scientists and the wider public as a contributor to cruise tourism development in the Arctic. In the last decade, many destinations, such as Svalbard or Arctic Canada, experienced growth in cruising numbers, less ice considered one of the reasons. It is true that melting sea ice contributes to better accessibility of Arctic destinations. Without that, the luxurious cruise liner Crystal Serenity would not have been able to complete its first traverse of the North-West Passage in 2016. But it was also sea ice that made the cruise liner to give up the journey in the following years—the ice was too challenging to sail. (continued)

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

355

Box 18.1  (continued) Even though decreasing, Arctic sea ice is still unpredictable and conditions change from year to year. Regional differences play a role too. For example, on Svalbard, which is one of the most popular cruise tourism destination in the European High North (Bystrowska and Dawson 2017), sea ice plays a less crucial role than in Arctic Canada. There, the conditions are usually good in the summer, as warm Gulfstream waters make the western coast of Svalbard practically ice-free. However, even on Svalbard, a few ships in 2017 were stopped by the ice in the North and had to give up their circumnavigation trips (Bystrowska 2019). Sea ice unpredictability makes Arctic cruising a rather risky business. And melting sea ice may have in fact adverse effects on Arctic cruises. The ice is, together with iconic mammals such as polar bears and walruses, one of the reasons for people to visit the Arctic. Once they are disappearing, some operators on Svalbard already consider moving to other locations due to declining attractiveness of the destination as well as overcrowding. Whether climate change would turn out to be a curse or a blessing for tourism depends largely on cruise operators. It is they who decide where to take tourists, which places in the Arctic are best to see and what to show when the ice is gone.

Overtourism: What Is It? Overtourism, albeit a concept widely used and seemingly straightforward, has so far not been clearly defined in terms of what the word includes, what kind of phenomena it refers to and how it could be studied (Koens et al. 2018; Peeters et al. 2018). At the heart of the concept lie some inherent issues of overcrowding and spatial conflicts, which indicate that there might be geographical dimensions also including rural areas and populations. Nevertheless, most thematically relevant publications examine the dynamics and the consequences of tourism growth in cities and at mass-tourism destinations. In this vein, overtourism is used to describe particular problems at destinations that occur as a result of high and increasing numbers of visitors. Goodwin (2017) provides an early definition of the concept in which he states that:

356 

L. Lundmark et al.

Box 18.2  Cruise Development in European Arctic Communities Julia Olsen and Grete K. Hovelsrud Domestic and foreign cruise tourism is a fast-growing industry in the European Arctic. Unique nature, landscapes, cultural and historical sites present the main attractions for the visitors. The cruise development comes with certain socio-economic benefits, but also with negative consequences through social and marine life disturbance and pollution. To ensure the sustainability of the cruise operations, multiple regulations, rules and guidelines are implemented in the pan-Arctic governance system. The International Marine Organization’s Polar Code for vessels, the Search and Rescue Agreement of the Arctic Council, the heavy fuel oil ban in Svalbard waters and expedition cruise industry guidelines are just some pieces in this complex Mosaic. In addition, our studies highlight that locally developed responses present supportive mechanism for local shipping governance. Trends The cruise tourism trends vary across the Barents region. This is exemplified by findings from two coastal communities: Longyearbyen on Svalbard and Solovetsky in Northern Russia. Both communities have experienced growth in the number of ship calls and passengers during the past decade (Fig.  18.2 a, b). Given the increasing tourism attraction to Arctic destina-

Longyearbyen

Solovetsky 1000

100000

2000

100000

500

50000

1000

50000 0 16

14

20

12

20

10

20

20

08

0 20

16

14

20

12

20

20

20

20

10

0

08

0

Number of ship calls

Number of ship calls

Number of passengers

Number of passengers

Fig. 18.2  (a and b) Number of passengers and ship calls for the period 2008–2016 in Solovetsky (left) and Longyearbyen (right) (continued)

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

357

Box 18.2  (continued) tions and the extension of the navigation season due to changes in sea ice conditions, cruise tourism is projected to increase further. Though the cruise season, lasting from June through September, has been stable on Solovetsky, it has been extending on Svalbard. Nowadays, the port of Longyearbyen hosts expedition and local cruise vessels from March/April and throughout late autumn. Impacts of Cruise Tourism Working closely with the two coastal communities, our research has identified a set of positive and negative impacts from the cruise industry. On the one hand, it clearly contributes to local value creation, employment opportunities and infrastructure development. On the other hand, the local population is concerned about the seasonal nature of the industry and that locally generated income does not necessarily stay in the community (e.g. Olsen and Nenasheva 2018). The increasing number of tourists leads to overcrowding (Fig. 18.2 a and b), creating social wear and tear and with a major impact on the natural environment (Olsen et al. 2000). The Role of Local Communities Our studies indicate that local stakeholders and community engagement in adaptive responses are important components in further development of the cruise industry. The visitor management strategies in both cases, based on a network of local tourism operators and related industries, represent a great example of how communities cooperate to increase the benefits from the cruise industry, while limiting the negative impacts. The examples of such practices are locally developed community guidelines, dissemination of relevant information via local media and social media, and mapping of opportunities and threats from growing trends. The residents of the Longyearbyen community also participate in search and rescue operations (Fig. 18.3). (continued)

358 

L. Lundmark et al.

Box 18.2  (continued)

Fig. 18.3  Mein Schiff has more passengers and crew members on board than the whole Longyearbyen community. (Photo: Julia Olsen)

Overtourism describes destinations where hosts and guests, locals and visitors, feel that that there are too many visitors and that the quality of life in the area or the quality of the experience has deteriorated unacceptably. (Goodwin 2017: 1)

Another definition is provided by Peeters et al. (2018: 15) who say that: Overtourism describes the situation in which the impact of tourism, at certain times and in certain locations, exceeds physical, ecological, social, economic, psychological, and/or political capacity thresholds.

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

359

Hence, the concept has strong subjective and qualitative connotations since experiences of residents and visitors are at the core of the issues raised. Yet, problems to measure and respond to overtourism in ‘objective’ terms have been voiced, and in their report to the European Parliament, Peeters et al. (2018) try to come to terms with that. Based on a statistical study, they identify eight factors connected to increased risk of overtourism: tourism density (tourists/km2), tourism intensity (tourists/capita), Airbnb’s share of accommodations, closeness to cruise ports, air travel intensity, air travel growth, tourism’s share of GDP and closeness to World Heritage Sites. The diversity of factors points to the complexity and to the dynamic character of the phenomenon. This is also how overtourism differs from its related concept of carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is generally viewed as the maximum number of visitors a destination can accommodate, but the numbers differ depending on whether the estimated restraints are built on physical, infrastructural, environmental or experiential capacities. However, ‘the concept of carrying capacity of tourist destinations is mainly discussed in relation to the quality of the tourist experience’ (Marsiglio 2017: 633). With respect to empirical investigations, carrying capacities have mainly been used in studies of natural areas, islands and designated tourist destinations, and less in urban contexts (Butler 2019). Overtourism therefore adds the possibilities to address subjective supply and demand aspects of tourism as an economic activity in rural areas and not only mere considerations of the quality of the tourist experience. Furthermore, the concept also includes aspects of the tourism system that are usually not mentioned in carrying capacity discussions, referring to tourism-­ generating areas and social media as a platform that creates new flows of tourists. There are also political dimensions that are not discussed in the concept of carrying capacity due to its origin in natural sciences. Ideologically, the development of overtourism has been attributed to the dominating neoliberal economic paradigm focusing on a good business and investment climate while leaving the civil society as the remaining resistance to injustices caused by the ruling paradigm (Higgins-Desbiolles et al. 2019). Within this neoliberal realm, there are

360 

L. Lundmark et al.

also frictions with respect to property rights. Plichta (2019: 687) views overtourism as ‘a typical management problem of the public and private property rights, e.g. between tourists’ and residents’ right to use common space, […] a manifestation of excessive consumption of goods to which property rights remain unallocated’. Research has also highlighted that the growth of tourism-related problems is often associated with improved accessibility by air through low-­ cost carriers and decreasing air-fares, in addition to an increasing supply of low-cost accommodation, for example, Airbnb (Rončák 2019). However, Airbnb is not only a way to concentrate tourists to popular destinations. It has also become a means of spreading out tourism accommodations from traditional tourism areas in cities into urban residential districts. Being located ‘off the beaten track’ means that their appeal does not lie in representing a traditional tourist attraction, but instead it is the atmosphere of everyday life that attracts visitors. This is not only the case in large cities like Berlin (Novy 2018) or Paris (Gravari-Barbas and Jacquot 2017) but also in middle-sized cities like Utrecht (Ioannides et al. 2018). Overtourism, as presented in media, often relates to problems in the relation between locals and tourists, including conflicts and resistance. Spatial concentrations of tourists might lead to cultural clashes and disturbance caused by inappropriate conduct when local customs are violated (Koens et al. 2018). Inappropriate conduct may also cause unease and anxiety among locals. Departing from previous studies on the concept, nothing in the definition of overtourism would exclude rural areas from the phenomenon. On the contrary, given the concept’s subjective elements, assessments regarding too much tourism are made by every person individually. Thus, someone on the King’s Trail in northern Sweden meeting someone else that day could lead to the sentiment that there is overtourism—paradoxically, an assessment made by someone contributing himself to the problem.

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

361

 rctification and Overtourism: An Issue A of Supply and Demand? Like the majority of destinations on the globe, Arctic regions follow the traditional growth paradigm to tourism development, based on expanding particularly long-haul markets (Árnadottir 2019). The Regional Council of Finnish Lapland, for instance, crafted its first tourism strategy in 2003, which has since been updated at regular intervals, but the main focus of tourism planning has always been on spurring the growth of the sector, on enlarging the amount of international travellers and on diminishing the strong seasonality (Lapin liitto 2019). Another pillar of Lapland’s tourism policy and planning has been a resort-based development approach, which has been refocused in the latest strategy document, published in December 2019, towards a greater emphasis on tourism zones (Lapin liitto 2019). Indeed, tourism in the Arctic, in general, has developed in an uneven manner. Places like the North Cape, the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, Rovaniemi with the Santa Claus Village in Finnish Lapland and several winter sport resorts can be considered mass destinations while other regions receive almost no tourists but strive for growing their visitor industries (Müller and Viken 2017). Kauppila (2011) highlights that resorts in Finnish Lapland represent ‘cores in the periphery’, and investments and economic gains of tourism remain usually highly localized. Zone development might foster a more even distribution of the economic benefits of tourism. Finnish Lapland’s tourism strategy document refers to this new development direction also as ‘smart growth’ that seeks to counteract overtourism. Given the strong seasonality and the popularity of some tourist centres in Lapland, there have been temporal but spatially limited negative effects caused by too many people visiting a small community with a narrow infrastructure (Lapin liitto 2019). Making more places attractive for tourists, plus encouraging summer tourism development, might divert pressure from overrun areas. Nonetheless, these actions do not solve all problems caused by overtourism. Finnish Lapland’s current tourism strategy acknowledges this, for example, by addressing that the growth of tourism also affects public

362 

L. Lundmark et al.

services, such as health care and rescue services, and requires additional resources (Lapin liitto 2019). Arctic tourism has led to a noteworthy increase in rescue missions (Tiihonen 2019), also because of an unskilled tourist not able to manage harsh climatic and natural conditions (Rantala et al. 2018). The peak of rescue missions for fire departments has shifted from summer to the winter months, which represents the main tourist season in Finnish Lapland (Tiihonen 2019). Moreover, many municipalities in the north face economic difficulties and austerity policies that commonly affect the health sector. More tourists in need of medical services add negatively to the already poor accessibility of health care for local populations and the workload of understaffed wards. For the municipality of Inari in Finnish Lapland, the pressure of tourism on medical services and the lack of financial resources became so acute that the local government is considering to sell public health care to a private provider (Miettunen 2019). Although Finnish Lapland’s tourism strategy aims to operationalize its responsible development values through foresighted planning, monitoring, the inclusion of many stakeholder voices and critical tourism research (Lapin liitto 2019), the above-mentioned cases represent a situation where public bodies that are not directly associated with the visitor industries have to incorporate tourism into their planning in order to prevent an exhaustion of public services caused by too many tourists. The deep-­ rooted connection of tourism to neoliberal globalization manifests also in a compression of time and space (Harvey 1990). Tourism is not only developed at the regional or national level, but global corporations, consumer trends and technological innovations influence local manifestations of tourism at an increasing pace. A result is the so-called tourism bubbles. Such bubbles emerge from sudden and unexpected inflows of tourists in certain hotspots that may disappear just as quickly as they appear, posing considerable challenges for residents and local planning responses. Global airlines can make places quickly accessible (Milano et  al. 2019), and the platform economy, led by Airbnb, provides the opportunity for locals to gain from incoming tourists, even though it might be to the detriment of the community. In Rovaniemi, where Airbnb is well represented, the case has been discussed in the regional newspaper that more and more students rent out their student

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

363

apartments, which is not allowed but difficult to control for the owning company (Kinisjärvi 2019). These consumer trends are challenging for local level planning because policy action lags behind the speed of these developments. Such development resembles extractive industries not only in terms of its local effects, namely boom and bust cycles, but also in its understanding of nature as resource provider for industry (Byström 2019). Any previous consensus on the desirability of continuous quantitative tourism growth for the sake of maximizing the economic benefits of tourism without fully considering the side effects that can possibly be destructive to the social, cultural and ecological environments, has come under intense pressure from the civil society and local populations.

 ourism in the Arctic: How Big Is T a Beautiful Destination? The answer to the question above is of course that there is no definite quantitative number to indicate. It all depends on a number of characteristics at the destination as well as with the tourists themselves. There is a large difference in how tourism can be managed depending on where it is taking place. In destinations developed particularly for tourism that have all the tourism infrastructure and cooperations in place or in cities, an increase in numbers of tourists might only mean higher revenues. What is apparent though is that, as a consequence of the above discussion on overtourism and Arctification, tourism is taking place not only in those destinations but also increasingly in other areas, also noting that the Swedish north, in comparison to Finland, is relatively less-developed in tourism, and public debates around (over)tourism have been comparatively limited. Because of the less-developed character of those places and less-experienced communities, it is more difficult to plan for and manage an increasing number of tourists who arrange their travel itineraries themselves and, thus, are not part of a transparent, known, organized or established tourism flow. This concerns both private as well as public actors across the tourism sector. Thus, more in-depth or locally based case

364 

L. Lundmark et al.

study research in terms of where bubbles are likely to emerge is needed. One way of managing the effects of relatively large flows of tourists presented here is the possibility to find ways to direct the tourists according to a prepared route, as suggested by the examples presented in Boxes 18.2 and 18.3.

Box 18.3  Enhancing Interregional Cooperation and Competitiveness Through Diverting Tourists on ‘The Arctic Route’ Dorothee Bohn Consolidating cross-border regions has been a central integration policy in the European Union (EU) since the beginning 1990s. The aim is not only to diminish discrepancies between neighboring countries but to mobilize regional public and private actors and resources more effectively through cooperative initiatives. Tourism as a specific development strategy for cross-­ border regions has gained more significance at EU level within the past decade due to the growing economic importance of the service industries. Public funding, especially the European Structural and Investment Funds, represents the main instrument for supporting various tourism development projects and public-private partnership initiatives (Prokkola 2011). Many destinations and tourism companies join interregional networks in order to enhance competiveness and visibility on international markets. In the context of the Arctic region, the EU is a major funding source for research and development (Dodds and Hemmings 2018 ). An example from the Arctic region for a networked tourism product that emerged out of the EU-funded regional development project ‘Visit Arctic Europe II’ is ‘the Arctic Route’. This bus route was launched in December 2019 and offers daily trips for tourists between different Arctic destinations in Finland, Sweden and Norway, including Rovaniemi, Luleå, Tromsø, Alta, Lyngen and Narvik (thearcticroute.com, n.d.). In addition to bus operators, a wide range of tourism activity providers is collaborating in the Arctic Route. Each itinerary contains several stops in smaller destinations where travellers can stay and purchase nature-based and cultural tourism services. This network amends Fennoscandinavia’s weak public transportation between the East and the West. Historically, connecting the South, where the national centres are located, to the peripheral North has been prioritized within (rather than across) nations, while interregional transit opportunities in the European Arctic are still limited. Thus, the Arctic Route improves touristic mobility, provides access to places ‘off the beaten track’ and offers tourism entrepreneurs in remote locations a greater visibility on the market. Overall, the (continued)

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

365

Box 18.3  (continued) product might boost the attractiveness and competiveness of the whole region. Regarding the target market, the Arctic Route caters to the individual and flexible tourist who is well versed in terms of retrieving destination information online, using social media channels and booking accommodation and services through platforms like Airbnb. Nonetheless, also cooperation with tour operators is aspired. By enhancing mobility within the region, travellers might be led during the peak season from overcrowded tourist areas to other destinations, where additional visitation is welcomed. On the one hand, such actions might counteract negative effects for small host communities with a limited infrastructure while, on the other, prevent negative tourist experiences caused by congestion resulting in a bad reputation for the whole region.

One positive outcome identified is how Arctification has helped local tourism industries and communities develop increased adaptive capacity and ‘innovation systems’ in response to climate change and improved access to global flows of knowledge, investment and markets. The need for ongoing innovation and competitive tourism development continues to be a key issue for remote tourism destinations (Carson and Carson 2018; Brouder 2012), but little is known about how well different Arctic destinations are prepared to take advantage of new market opportunities and changing global trends. As has been proposed, there might be little opportunity for small communities to respond to sudden increases in tourism flows. The problems caused by ‘tourism bubbles’ may in fact be exacerbated in locations where adaptation through swift change in economic activities is difficult, as in the case of the Arctic where sparse populations and economic structures continue to favour traditional industries (Müller 2013). In fact, tourism may be in conflict with traditional forms of land use in these areas (Plieninger et al. 2018), and the eruption of tourism bubbles may render tourism even less attractive. There are, thus, several important avenues for further research based on the real and perceived impacts of overtourism and Arctification, not least from different stakeholder perspectives. One such question concerns the extent to which these changes have created

366 

L. Lundmark et al.

issues around unforeseen ‘tourism bubbles’, overtourism and land-use competition. Where is overtourism happening in terms of location and socio-economic context, why is it happening, and at what time? How can the perceived impacts and conflicts be managed and mitigated by local and regional stakeholders? In conclusion, it is clear that the future of tourism in the Arctic is still unknown, but it would be reasonable to think that the climate change debate, as well as real climate change taking place, will be important for the direction of tourism flows in the future. Current tourism trends give no reason to doubt that growth is going to continue for a while and, thus, current policies aiming at stimulating growth need to be reconsidered. There are, however, other political aspects of tourism regarding regulations and limitations that can be important for future tourism development. These might be related to increasing xenophobia, spread of diseases spurred by the aftermath of the new Corona virus outbreak or more directly be a consequence of climate change. Furthermore, there might be indications that the social support for tourism in general could change with time, not least due to the environmental engagement among younger people, the ‘Greta effect’ or ‘flight shame’ being signs of a burgeoning trend. Although this altogether makes the future of Arctic tourism uncertain, it also underlines the need for increased efforts to engage, academically and politically, in order to align its development with overarching ideas of sustainable development in Arctic regions of Europe. Acknowledgement  The work presented in this chapter was financed by a grant from the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (Formas): Climate Change and the Double Amplification of Arctic Tourism: Challenges and Potential Solutions for Tourism and Sustainable Development in an Arctic Context.

References Árnadottir, R.  E. (2019). Nordic tourism policy analysis. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. https://doi.org/10.6027/Nord2019-008. Britton, S. J. (1991). Tourism, capital, and place: Towards a critical geography of tourism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 9(1991), 461–478.

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

367

Brouder, P. (2012). Creative Outposts: Tourism’s Place in Rural Innovation, Tourism Planning & Development, 9:4, 383–396. Butler, R. W. (2019). Overtourism and the tourism area life cycle. In R. Dodds & R. W. Butler (Eds.), Overtourism. Issues, realities and solutions. (pp.76–90). Berlin: De Gruyter. Byström, J. (2019). Mines, tourism and related diversification in the Swedish far north. Umeå: Department of Geography. Bystrowska, M. (2019). The impact of sea ice on cruise tourism on Svalbard. Arctic, 72(2), 151–165. Bystrowska, M., & Dawson, J. (2017). Making places: The role of Arctic cruise operators in ‘creating’ tourism destinations. Polar Geography, 40(3), 208–226. Carson, D. A., & Carson, D. B. (2018). International lifestyle immigrants and their contributions to rural tourism innovation: Experiences from Sweden’s far north. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 230–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jrurstud.2017.08.004. Dodds, K., & Hemmings, A. D. (2018). Arctic and Antarctic regionalism. In A.  Paasi, J.  Harrison, & M.  Jones (Eds.), Handbook on the geographies of regions and territories (pp. 489–503). Edward Elgar: Cheltenham. Eurostat. (2019). Night spent at tourist accommodation establishments by NUTS 2 regions. Available at: www.appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu Goodwin, H. (2017, October). The challenge of overtourism. Responsible tourism partnership working paper 4. Government Offices of Sweden. (2011). Sweden’s strategy for the Arctic region. Retrieved December 30, 2019, from https://www.government.se/countryand-regional-strategies/2011/10/swedens-strategy-for-the-arctic-region/ Gravari-Barbas, M., & Jacquot, S. (2017). No conflict? Discourses and management of tourism-related tension in Paris. In C. Colomb & J. Novy (Eds.), Protest and resistance in the tourist city. London: Routledge. Hamilton, J. M., Maddison, D. J., & Tol, R. S. (2005). Climate change and international tourism: A simulation study. Global Environmental Change, 15(3), 253–266. Harvey, D. (1990). The condition of postmodernity. Malden: Blackwell. Higgins-Desbiolles, F., Carnicelli, S., Krolikowski, C., Wijesinghe, G., & Boluk, K. (2019). Degrowing tourism: Rethinking tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(12), 1926–1944. Ioannides, D., Röslmaier, M., & van der Zee, E. (2018). Airbnb as an instigator of ‘tourism bubble’ expansion in Utrecht’s Lombok neighbourhood. Tourism Geographies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2018.1454505.

368 

L. Lundmark et al.

IPCC. (2014). Climate change 2014: Synthesis report. Contribution of working groups I, II and III to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva: IPCC. Kauppila, P. (2011). Cores and peripheries in a northern periphery: A case study in Finland. Fennia, 189(1), 20–31. Kinisjärvi, M. (2019, November 1). Rovaniemellä DAS:n opiskelija-asuntoja on Airbnb-sivustolla: Opiskelija-asunnon luvaton jälleenvuokraus voi viedä katon pään päältä. Lapin Kansa. Retrieved February 13, 2020, from https://www.lapinkansa.fi/rovaniemella-dasn-opiskelija-asuntojaon-airbnb-si/317714 Koens, K., Postma, A., & Papp, B. (2018). Is overtourism overused? Understanding the impact of tourism in a city context. Sustainability, 2018(10), 4384. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124384. Lapin Liitto. (2019). Lapin matkailustrategia 2020–2023. Retrieved February 13, 2020, from http://www.lappi.fi/c/document_library/get_file?folderI d=18283&name=DLFE-35916.pdf Lemelin, H., Dawson, J., Stewart, E. J., Maher, P., & Lueck, M. (2010). Last-­ chance tourism: The boom, doom, and gloom of visiting vanishing destinations. Current Issues in Tourism, 13(5), 477–493. https://doi. org/10.1080/13683500903406367. Lundmark, L., & Åberg, K. G. (2019). How Modest Tourism Development Becomes Successful: The Complementarity of Tourism in Malå Municipality. In R. L. Koster & D. A. Carson (Eds.), Perspectives on Rural Tourism Geographies: Case Studies from Developed Nations on the Exotic, the Fringe and the Boring Bits in Between (pp. 221–241). Cham: Springer. Lundmark, L., & Müller, D.  K. (2010). The supply of nature-based tourism activities in Sweden. Tourism, 58, 379–393. Marsiglio, S. (2017). On the carrying capacity and the optimal number of visitors in tourist destinations. Tourism Economics, 23(3), 632–646. Miettunen, O. (2019, September 19). Turistisesongit ja väestön ikääntyminen rasittavat terveydenhoitoa Inarissa. Lapin Kansa. Retrieved February 14, 2020, from https://www.lapinkansa.fi/turistisesongit-ja-vaestonikaantyminen-rasittavat/211651 Milano, C., Novelli, M., & Cheer, J. M. (2019). Overtourism and tourismphobia: a journey through four decades of tourism development, planning and local concerns. Tourism Planning & Development, 16(4), 353–357. Muler Gonzalez, V., Coromina, L., & Galí, N. (2018). Overtourism: Residents’ perceptions of tourism impact as an indicator of resident social carrying

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

369

capacity  – Case study of a Spanish heritage town. Tourism Review, 73(3), 277–296. Müller, D. K. (2011). Tourism development in Europe’s “last wilderness”: An assessment of nature-based tourism in Swedish Lapland. In A. A. Grenier & D.  K. Müller (Eds.), Polar tourism: A tool for regional development (pp. 129–153). Montreal: Presses de l’Université du Québec. Müller, D. K. (2013). Hibernating economic decline? Tourism and labour market change in Europe’s northern periphery. In G. Visser & S. Ferreira (Eds.), Tourism and crisis (pp. 123–138). London: Routledge. Müller, D.  K. (2015). Issues in Arctic tourism. In B.  Evengård, J.  Nymand Larsen, & Ø. Paasche (Eds.), The new Arctic (pp.  147–158). Heidelberg: Springer. Müller, D.  K., & Viken, A. (2017). Indigenous tourism in the Arctic. In A.  Viken & D.  K. Müller (Eds.), Tourism and indigeneity in the Arctic (pp. 3–15). Bristol: Channel View Publications. Müller, D. K., Byström, J., Stjernström, O., & Svensson, D. (2019). Making “wilderness” in a northern natural resource periphery: On restructuring and the production of a pleasure periphery in northern Sweden. In E. C. H. Keskitalo (Ed.), The politics of Arctic resources. Change and continuity in the “old north” of northern Europe (pp. 99–118). London: Routledge. Novy, J. (2018). ‘Destination’ Berlin revisited. From (new) tourism towards a pentagon of mobility and place consumption. Tourism Geographies, 20(3), 418–442. Olsen, J., & Nenasheva, M. (2018). Adaptive capacity in the context of increasing shipping activities: A case from Solovetsky, northern Russia. Polar Geography, 41(4), 241–261. Olsen, J., Hovelsrud, G. K., & Kaltenborn, B. (2000). Increased shipping and community engagement: A case from Longyearbyen, Svalbard. In E. Pongrácz, V.  Pavlov, & N.  Hänninen (Eds.), In search of Arctic marine sustainability: Arctic maritime businesses and resilience of the marine environment (pp. 305–332). Basel: Springer Nature. Oskam, J.  A. (2019). The future of Airbnb and the ‘sharing economy’. The Collaborative Consumption of our Cities. Bristol: Channel View Publ. Pedersen, K., & Viken, A. (1996). From Sami nomadism to global tourism. In M. F. Price (Ed.), People and Tourism in Fragile Environments (pp. 69–88). Chichester: Wiley Peeters, P., Gössling, S., Klijs, J., Milano, C., Novelli, M., Dijkmans, C., Eijgelaar, E., Hartman, S., Heslinga, J., Isaac, R., Mitas, O., Nawijn, J., Papp, B.,

370 

L. Lundmark et al.

& Postmaa, A. (2018). Research for the TRAN committee – Overtourism: Impact and possible policy responses. Brussels: European Parliament, Policy Department for Structural and Cohesion Policies. Pike et al. (2006). Local and regional development. Plichta, J. (2019). The co-management and stakeholders theory as a useful approach to manage the problem of overtourism in historical cities  – Illustrated with an example of Krakow. International Journal of Tourism Cities. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJTC-12-2018-0107. Plieninger, T., et al. (2018). Identifying and assessing the potential for conflict between landscape values and development preferences on the Faroe Islands. Global Environmental Change, 52, 162–180. Prime Minister’s Office Finland. (2013). Finland’s strategy for the Arctic region 2013. Government resolution on 23 August 2013. Retrieved December 30, 2019, from https://vnk.fi/en/arctic-issues/finlands-arctic-policy Prokkola, E.-K. (2011). Regionalization, tourism development and partnership: The European Union’s north calotte sub-programme of INTERREG III a north. Tourism Geographies, 13(4), 507–530. Rantala, O., Hallikainen, V., Ilola, H., & Tuulentie, S. (2018). The softening of adventure tourism. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 18(4), 343–361. Rantala, O., Barre, S.  D. L., Granås, B., Jóhannesson, G. Þ., Müller, D.  K., Saarinen, J., & Niskala, M. (2019). Arctic tourism in times of change: Seasonality. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. Rončák, M. (2019). Prague and the impact of low-cost airlines. In R. Dodds & R.  W. Butler (Eds.), Overtourism. Issues, realities and solutions. Berlin: De Gruyter. Roussel, S., & Fossum, J.  E. (2010). The Arctic is hot again in America and Europe: Introduction to part I. International Journal, 65(4), 799–808. https://doi.org/10.1177/002070201006500411. Saarinen, J., & Varnajot, A. (2019). The Arctic in tourism: Complementing and contesting perspectives on tourism in the Arctic the Arctic in tourism: Complementing and contesting. Polar Geography, 42(2), 109–124. https:// doi.org/10.1080/1088937X.2019.1578287. Svt news. (2018, April 5). Politikern jämför turister med terorrister. SVT nyheter. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/norrbotten/jamfor-turister-med-terrorister. Accessed 25 Feb 2020. Thearcticroute.com. (n.d.). https://www.thearcticroute.com/. Accessed 14 Feb 2020.

18  Arctification and the Paradox of Overtourism in Sparsely… 

371

Tiihonen, J. (2019, November 27). Matkailun kasvu on lisännyt pelastustehtäviä Lapissa: varsinkin liikennevahingot ja maastopelastus työllistävät. Yle. Retrieved February 14, 2020, from https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11090254 UNWTO. (2019). International tourism highlights, 2019 edition. Madrid: UNWTO. https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284421152. Visit Arctic Europe. (2020). VAE II. visitarcticeurope.com/. Accessed 11 Feb 2020.

19 Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth Tara Duncan, Maria Thulemark, and Peter Möller

The Myth/s Tourism is often perceived as a saviour to rural parts of the north, creating a myth of tourism as a panacea for development in rural areas, including mountain tourism destinations in northern Sweden. Tourism often gives hope to small communities and stakeholders, including local and regional government, entrepreneurs and local community groups, who endeavour to support, start and develop tourism industries to become successful, growing tourism destinations. At the same time, rural communities are seen as sleepy and unattractive for young adults leading to high rates of out-migration and distorted population development. Whilst strong growth of tourism in rural areas can lead to increased employment with high demand for labour, these new jobs are often seasonal. In spite of the acknowledged pluriactivity of those who live in northern areas (Dubois and Carson 2019), the seasonality of these jobs

T. Duncan (*) • M. Thulemark • P. Möller Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_19

373

374 

T. Duncan et al.

gives birth to another myth: that these jobs do not lead to positive community development. Alongside the employment of locals, an influx of (young) seasonal employees, often from other parts of the Sweden, who only stay for a few months, who tend to only spend time with each other, and who pay taxes somewhere else, reaffirms the myth that season tourism jobs lead to an inevitable lack of connection to the local, rural community. This chapter considers the importance of tourism to rural communities in the Swedish north through the example of Sälen, a mountain resort in northern Dalarna, Sweden. Focusing on young adults as rural inhabitants and workers in a seasonal tourism industry, this chapter highlights the value of youth workers to community. This chapter focuses both on young people who have grown up and live in the local, rural, community and on those who come to the area for seasonal tourism work, often for lifestyle reasons. Young people often leave rural areas to escape to urban areas where they perceive there to be greater opportunities (see, e.g. Rauhut and Littke 2016). At the same time, many young people take the opportunity to explore alternative lifestyles by escaping to rural areas, especially seasonal destinations, such as Sälen (Thulemark 2017). This chapter considers how seasonal workers, both locals and in-migrants, can positively affect the sustainability of rural communities. It ends with thoughts on the future of Sälen and policy implications.

Youths, Tourism and Rurality Tourism is increasingly important to the Swedish economy (SOU 2017). Globally, and in Sweden, the value of tourism, whether export value, GDP or employment numbers, is growing at a rate greater than many other industries (SOU 2017; UNEP & UNWTO 2005). Overall, Sweden has seen increasing employment (170,000 in 2016 vs. 131,000 in 2000) and increasing value from tourism (from SEK 160 billion in 2000 to SEK 296 billion in 2016) (see SOU 2017, p. 46). The growth of the tourism industry is particularly relevant for rural areas as tourism is often seen to have greater importance in the development of such areas (SOU 2017). This development is often seen in job creation opportunities,

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

375

in-migration of entrepreneurs (who can have important multiplier effects) and through the influx of young seasonal employees who (it is anticipated) might stay in the community (SOU 2017; Müller 2006; Thulemark et al. 2014). In some rural spaces where the tourism industry is better developed, the industry is attractive for in-migrants as entrepreneurial opportunities exist and there are (relatively) plentiful services and job opportunities available, with in-migrants often choosing tourism-related jobs (Müller 2006; Thulemark et  al. 2014). In such places, amenities (Nepal and Chipeniuk 2005; Moss 2006) and lifestyle factors (Benson and O’Reilly 2009; Thulemark 2011) can play an important role as they provide these rural spaces with tourism experiences and infrastructure (Löffler and Steinicke 2006; Thulemark 2015). As Thulemark et al. (2014) show, a large percentage of (young, seasonal) in-migrants make the choice to move to rural areas such as Sälen for reasons other than employment. Their analysis shows that the in-migrants roughly come from the same regions as the tourists to Sälen (and the wider mountainous area), suggesting that lifestyle and leisure are factors heavily influencing their move to this area (Thulemark et al. 2014). However, it must also be acknowledged that migrants moving to rural areas with established but un-­ developed tourism destinations often saw natural or cultural amenities as a stronger driving force than tourism opportunities (Vuin et al. 2016). For these migrants, moving was for health or family reasons and work could involve lifestyle farming or other non-tourism business opportunities. However, many of these (older) migrants did admit that having some tourism infrastructure to ‘fall back on’ eased potential anxieties about their move (Vuin et al. 2016). As already stated, young seasonal workers can be potential in-migrants or derive from local young adults. Rönnlund (2019) highlights that whilst much literature has neglected young adults in rural areas, this is changing. However, she does emphasize that the choice to stay ‘local’ or move away is a complex issue (Rönnlund 2019, p. 1). The majority of seasonal workers stay for only a season. Those, either local or in-migrants that do consider staying in the destinations permanently, are often the ones who engage in their favourite leisure activities, make/find a career and see a rural setting as an opportunity for climbing the career ladder, or

376 

T. Duncan et al.

the ones who want to start a new life in a ‘better’ place (Tuulentie and Heimtun 2014). Despite these motivations, it is not always easy to have a sustainable career in rural areas due to small labour markets and lack of positions (Heldt Cassel et al. 2018). Declining employment in traditional rural activities such as agriculture, forestry and fishing (Dubois and Carson 2019; Hall et  al. 2009) has, together with higher educational requirements for many jobs and very limited opportunities for tertiary education in rural areas (Berlin et al. 2010; Olofsson and Panican 2012), a great influence on employment opportunities for rural youth. Several studies have revealed that perceived local job opportunities are equally important for young adults’ decision to stay or to migrate. Residential attachment—strong bonds to people and place (Rönnlund 2019)—is influenced by individuals’ expectations about their futures. This may indicate an adaptability to local young people’s educational and economic reality even as many of these young adults will have to migrate (at least temporarily) for higher education and employment purposes. (Kirkpatrick Johnson et  al. 2005). Alongside this, Davies (2008, p. 170) argues that the willingness among young people to move to rural areas is based on perceived social and employment opportunities, regardless of whether such perceptions are based on actual conditions or not. Therefore, whilst both the myth and the reality of young people leaving rural areas remains (Rauhut and Littke 2016), contradictory evidence suggests that the issues of de-population is much more than government statistics and research implies. However, in support of the myth, several perceived obstacles for young adults to stay in rural areas have been reported in previous studies. For example, it has been suggested that compared to urban schools, in rural schools there are limited choice of peers, a generally more constraining milieu for youth who do not fit into the conventional mould, a sense of isolation, limited social networking opportunities and a claustrophobic local community (National Youth Bureau 1990; Phillips and Skinner 1994; Crockett et al. 2000; Ní Laoire 2000; Stockdale 2002). Furthermore, young adults who leave rural areas are often considered as more successful than those who choose to stay (Easthope and Gabriel 2008; Svensson 2006; Kåks 2007). These perceptions and the subsequent migration culture have shown persistence during periods even when rural areas have

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

377

had a flourishing economy and employment opportunities. This reiterates the notion that migration decisions are not based solely on education and employment prospects. Employment and education opportunities are often pointed to as reasons for migration but have been shown to function as triggers for migration decisions taken long before these triggers became relevant (Ní Laoire 2000). Closely connected to this is the belief of a mobile life as an ideal of success (Jonsson 2003; Kåks 2007; Heldt Cassel et al. 2018). There is also a temporal dimension to young residents’ relationships with rural areas where the childhoods in rural areas are often described in positive terms, but the life phases of late teens and young adults are more often described in negative terms, sometimes using the ‘rural dull’ concept where the darker sides of the rural idyll—a community spirit of simplicity, safety and cohesion—are seen as controlling and lacking tolerance of difference (including success) (Glendinning et al. 2003; Rye 2006; Möller 2012; Sørensen and Pless 2017; although for an exception to this in a Swedish context, see Rönnlund 2019). What is obvious in rural areas is that the role of tourism and its social impacts highlight positive effects for young adults, both local and in-­ migrants. Opportunities to meet new people, increased understanding and tolerance of differences, higher than standard public facilities, and increased shopping, entertainment and recreation supply are all evident in rural areas where tourism dominates (Milman and Pizam 1988; Fredline 2002; Easterling 2004; Sharma et al. 2008; Deery et al. 2012). These elements of rural community can suggest a rural urbanity, where the rural transcends ‘traditional’ society to ‘feel’ more urban and cosmopolitan, with all of its associated advantages (Möller et  al. 2015), that challenges the ‘rural dull’ suggested above and provides young adults with motivations to move or stay in rural areas with thriving tourism industries. This point will be discussed further below, after the destination of Sälen is described to provide context to understand the attractiveness of rural destinations for young adults.

378 

T. Duncan et al.

Sälen Sälen is one of Sweden’s largest winter tourism destinations attracting over 4.8 million visitor nights per year in 55,000 beds of which 25,000 are commercial beds. Sälen is located about a five-hour drive from Stockholm and two and a half hours from the county’s urban centre of Falun-Borlänge. In the Sälen area, the villages of Sälen, Transtrand and Lima are located along the Dalarna River, while five of Sälen’s six large ski resorts are located in the Sälen Mountains. One resort is located south of Transtrand. Four of the ski resorts in Sälen are owned by Skistar, the largest Swedish alpine skiing company. Sälen, Transtrand and Lima villages had 1400 inhabitants in 2010 with a few more inhabitants in the surrounding countryside (Table  19.1). Sälen village is the only village in Malung-Sälen municipality with a constant population growth; all other villages had their biggest population in 1980 or earlier, including the municipality centre Malung. With such a small population, Sälen’s six ski resorts rely on local young people and an influx of young seasonal workers to cater to the (mainly domestic) visitors. A new airport, which opened on December 22, 2019, has the potential to provide even more tourism opportunities and change this community substantially. It will open up the area for new tourist groups from other countries (specifically Denmark and the UK), tourists that need to be able to stay without using a car, tourists with other demands than seen before and so on. It is anticipated that the area will become more of an international destination, which will put pressure on both regular infrastructural elements (i.e. roads, waste collection, etc.) and the tourism infrastructure. Increasing international visitors will also Table 19.1  Population numbers for Sälen and surrounding villages Village/town

1960

1970

1975

1980

1990

2000

2010

Limedsforsen Malung Malungsfors Sälen Transtrand Lima

629 5500 940 238 414 325

554 6028 732 256 429 492

526 6211 683 230 418 485

496 6114 666 262 412 540

478 5667 614 437 375 426

472 5176 608 489 353 402

441 5126 560 652 386 398

Source: Statistics Sweden 2020 The bold numbers illustrate the highest population for those town over time

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

379

affect the labour market and the need for staff with a wider range of skills including language skills, emotional intelligence and more technical skills (Fig. 19.1).

Young People in Sälen There are several studies showing positive effects from tourism on population change in rural areas (Beale and Johnson 1998; McGranahan 1999; English et al. 2000; Möller and Amcoff 2018). Further, the population structure has also been proven more positive in terms of a better gender balance and lower average age in these areas. Such positive impacts

Fig. 19.1  Location of Sälen. (Source: Lantmäteriet, Map design: Peter Möller)

380 

T. Duncan et al.

have often proved to be an effect of increased in-migration rather than decreased out-migration (Beale and Johnson 1998; Getz 1986; Lundmark 2006). Using case studies from Möller and Thulemark from the period 2011–2015, the rest of this chapter will consider the role of young people in ‘debunking’ or confirming the myths outlined in the introduction.

Young Residents In a thorough examination of the tourism industry’s social effects on a group of young local adults in Sälen, Möller (2016a) concluded that there are three important effects. First is that there is an extended supply of potential friends and acquaintances due to the huge flow of people passing by Sälen. Tourists, seasonal workers and entrepreneurs (most in the tourism sector) were all highlighted by the young adults in the interviews although these groups had different levels of importance to them. The tourists were the most volatile group with most of them spending only a short time in Sälen, often only a few days, and therefore the least important group for the young adults from a social perspective. Some entrepreneurs spend a short time in Sälen, while others stay for several years and have moved to Sälen permanently. Both those who stay for a short time and the permanent group were described as important for the young adults, in extending their social network, especially regarding their occupational career. The entrepreneurs living in Sälen permanently are important for a career in Sälen, while the entrepreneurs staying for a shorter time were described as important when the young people looked for jobs in other parts of Sweden. The seasonal workers could also be useful connections when looking for jobs in other parts of Sweden but were also the group described as the most important for the young adults’ social life in Sälen. Of the three categories of people passing through Sälen, seasonal workers constituted the highest potential of future friends or acquaintances, often extending the young adult inhabitants’ social network in their everyday lives. Second, the tourism and its considerable flows of people also contributed to a perception of Sälen as a place where ‘things happen’. This is important if taken into consideration with accounts of the ‘rural dull’,

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

381

especially among young people in their late teens and young adults. One important finding by Möller (2016a) was that most of the out-migrants from Sälen had predominately positive feelings about Sälen, contrary to previous research about rural youth out-migration (Ní Laoire 2000; Svensson 2006; Easthope and Gabriel 2008; Kåks 2007). Third, Möller (2016a) describes Sälen as a dynamic mixed landscape where both rurality and urbanity, traditional and modern values are present. Even though tourism has a huge impact on Sälen, the very prerequisites for its existence—that is, many of the appreciated rural features reported in previous studies including the wilderness, hunting and fishing—had a positive sense on Sälen as a community. Altogether, these three effects contribute substantially to the attractiveness of Sälen among young adults. Their sense of identity and sense of place became bound up with the outdoor aspects of rural life as well as more urban aspects, such as the availability of a similarly focused peer group and tourism products, including bars, restaurants and retail. At the same time, this rural urbanity was not always enough to ‘keep’ young people in the area. Rovaniemi in Finland, with its rural location and the attraction of ‘Santa Claus’, is another rural destination where the urban aspects, including higher education opportunities, offer seemingly attractive season work (Box 19.1). However, like Sälen, these attractive jobs are not always enough to retain young seasonal workers longer term. For instance, Sälen is located in the most sparsely populated part of Dalarna with tourism constituting a large part of the small labour market in the area, and some young adults in Möller’s study (2016b) who did not want a career in tourism had to leave Sälen to fulfil their ambitions. Still, most of them described their relationship with Sälen as positive, and many of them visited Sälen regularly. Möller’s (2016a and b) research highlights that even though tourism job opportunities are an important contribution in retaining young people in the area, the positive impacts of the varied social life and social opportunities, combined with aspects associated with a rural lifestyle brought about because of tourism, proved to be an important contributor to young people’s perceptions of Sälen and their intentions to stay and/or eventually return.

382 

T. Duncan et al.

Young Seasonal Workers During a winter season over 2000 seasonal workers are recruited to meet the needs of the tourism industry in Sälen. They, often young adults, are mainly recruited from other parts of Sweden as the local labour market cannot cover the need. During any winter season, more seasonal workers move in to the area than there are local residents. These workers temporarily move to Sälen for between three and five months and mostly stay in accommodation arranged by the company for which they work or in accommodation that is solely for seasonal workers. This means that these seasonal workers stay together with like-minded young people who are there for the same reasons. What is interesting to note, as Thulemark’s (2017) study finds, is that young in-migrants form particular communities in destinations such as Sälen. Thulemark’s (2017) research on first season and experienced seasonal workers in Sälen showed they were members of occupational communities. Such communities are characterized by strong social bonds within the community and a strong relation between work and private life (Lee-Ross 1999, 2008). These types of communities have evolved around the tourism work itself and the social relationships revolve around those built in the work environment. However, a further place dimension—in this case the village of Sälen—is included. This becomes more evident when such communities are built in rural areas as the place becomes important as an arena for the like-minded to meet. The seasonal workers choose the place/destination not only based on the rural amenities of the place but also because of the social attributes that they have heard exist among young seasonal workers in the place. The attractiveness of destinations such as Sälen can be found in resort destinations globally, and Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, is a good example of how lifestyle aspirations, sense of identity and sense of place have seen generations of young people to move to, work and stay in rural tourism destinations (Duncan 2008; Box 19.2). These examples further reiterate the narrative of rural urbanity as both a motivation to move to a rural destination and a motive to remain longer term or return annually.

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

383

Box 19.1  When Magic Begins to Fade. Seasonal Workers and the Makings of the Christmas Albina Pashkevich and Tara Duncan Rovaniemi, a town in northern peripheral Finland, has, since the late 1980s, been the home of Santa Claus (Visit Rovaniemi 2020). Welcoming over 500,000 visitors annually with a population of just over 62,000, Rovaniemi also has two university campuses with almost 8000 students (Visit Rovaniemi n.d.). The main attractions are two Santa villages and other activities associated with Christmas and winter activities. However, whilst most visitors come during the winter months, it is worth noting that the Santa villages are open all year round. Selling the magic of Christmas and being an ‘elf’ who introduces children—and adults—to Santa seems like an attractive seasonal job, especially for the international students attending the universities in Rovaniemi. It is the myth of attractiveness of these jobs that this box seeks to shatter. Analysis of workers employed by several of the major attractions connected to Christmas tourism shows a mixed picture. The study considered the emotional labour of young adults working in the Christmas villages. When it came to leveraging the knowledge and feelings of Christmas in their jobs, not all workers were able to express equal enthusiasm. Finnish young adults acknowledged that the festive and magical feelings around Christmas and its celebration were easy to associate with, as it is part of their yearly traditions. However, workers from outside of Europe, especially those from Asian backgrounds, had to first learn and understand what the phenomenon of Christmas meant in order to be able to excite and contribute to the expectations of visitors and their employer. However, after working as Santa Claus helpers, these youngsters frequently became disillusioned trying to keep visitors excited about Christmas. The Finnish hospitality workers often ‘learnt’ the system and were able to vary their working tasks and flexibility to help them ‘keep the magic going’. However, international workers, and especially non-European young adults, were not as able to navigate the system and be in control of their tasks, leading to tasks that became repetitive and sometimes even physically challenging. For these young people, they found that their hospitality work— getting people into the Christmas mood—lost its initial attraction and instead they experienced a kind of ‘emptiness’ in their roles. Christmas became agonizing; instead of being associated with magic and celebration, it became associated with the behind-the-scenes hard work. The Rovaniemi ‘brand’ of Santa Claus attracts young people to the periphery, many of whom return annually. These young people aim to experience the magic of Santa Claus through seasonal jobs. However, for some young seasonal employees, especially international students, their lack of (lived) understanding of Christmas traditions and the type of tasks and roles available often mean that the excitement of Christmas disappears rapidly. What this means is that for these young people, whilst the attractiveness of the destination may not fade, the magic of Christmas can.

384 

T. Duncan et al.

The connection to place may not be the focus of many of occupational community members. However, these young seasonal workers gain a unique sense of place and attachment to place from their time in Sälen. Such place attachment can, later in life, become important as the earlier experience and sense of rootedness can play a role in decisions to move to rural areas (Stockdale et al. 2013). Some of these young seasonal workers can see themselves moving to rural mountain communities in an imagined future. However, they do not necessarily talk about Sälen as the place to move (back) to; rather, they talk about amenity-rich rural destinations in which they can live a desired lifestyle (Thulemark 2015). Although only a small number of the young seasonal workers decide to stay in Sälen longer term or permanently, the ones that do stay constitute an important contribution to the positive population change and, maybe even more importantly, further strengthen and extend the range of the social networks among young adults in Sälen (Möller 2016b).

Future for Sälen? With a focus on tourism development in rural Sweden (SOU 2017) and a new airport with growing domestic and international arrivals, Sälen is a growing tourism destination. However, the local population continues to decline. Young seasonal tourism workers, both locals who chose to stay and in-migrants, are seen as one solution to this declining population. Thulemark (2015), in line with Tuulentie and Heimtun (2014), sees great potential for seasonal workers (and tourists) to move permanently to Sälen, revitalizing community and accentuating the rural urbanity which, in turn, increases place attractiveness encouraging more people to stay, return or move to Sälen, and other such rural tourism destinations. The continued focus on (sustainable) tourism growth of rural destinations such as Sälen (SOU 2017) illustrates the importance for the local community and municipality to actively work to attract and retain these potential in-migrants. Communities and municipalities need to strongly consider the role of enclavic workers (Heimtun 2012) and occupational communities (Thulemark 2017) where young seasonal workers actively build their sense of place and belonging. However, whilst the mobility of

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

385

young seasonal workers in rural tourism may explode myths around the sleepiness and undesirability of living in such places, there are much-­ needed discussions to be had around other groups of temporary migrants and workers in these rural areas, such as berry pickers (Eriksson and Tollefsen 2018). Whilst not the purview of this chapter, these migrants may find the negative elements of rural communities, linking back to the ‘rural dull’, as reasons to leave rather than stay. Box 19.2  The Vibrancy of a Ski Resort: Attracting Young People to Whistler, BC Tara Duncan Whistler is a resort destination located 127 km north of Vancouver on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. Frequently recognized as one of North America’s top all-season mountain resorts with almost 3.5 million annual visitors (RMOW 2019a), it is home to just under 12,000 permanent residents, equal numbers of second-home owners and approximately 2500 seasonal residents (Gill and Williams 2018; RMOW 2019a; Tourism Whistler 2019). As a town specifically built for tourism, it is unique. However, like many other mountain destinations, myths remain. Whilst for Whistler, the myth of tourism being a panacea for small communities may not be true; the attractiveness for young people to stay in Whistler remains a myth that can be explored. These two myths will be explored here. Whistler, as a designated Resort Municipality since 1975 (Tourism Whistler 2019), has long attracted tourists for both winter skiing and summer activities. Visitor numbers and consumer spending have (generally) steadily increased over more than the last twenty years (RMOW 2019b), and it is safe to argue that Whistler is an economically vibrant community. Whilst this paints a picture of a thriving destination, there are areas of concern. Median income (RMOW 2019b), used by Whistler to indicate the community’s overall economic well-being, fell between 2009 and 2016, and trust in council decision-making has dropped substantially since 2014 (RMOW 2019b). However, as resident satisfaction remains high (RMOW 2019b), it is clear that Whistler continues to flourish. Through Whistler’s continued growth and success, local young people have significant job and leisure opportunities. Whistler is not the sort of community that could be described as the ‘rural dull’ (Glendinning et  al. 2003) and is much closer to Möller et al.’s (2015) ‘rural urbanity’ in its attractiveness for young people to stay. Whistler’s large seasonal employee population is also a positive. It remains a destination that requires vast numbers (continued)

386 

T. Duncan et al.

Box 19.2  (continued) of seasonal employees. From Whistler’s first settlers (Gill and Williams 2018) to now, there has always been an ebb and flow of seasonal residents, and whilst most leave, some always remain to become entrepreneurs, visionaries and advocates of the village. Whistler has always attracted young people: from the squatters of the 1970s (Vogler 2000) to the local young people, backpackers and working-holiday makers of today. As Vogler (2000, p. 16) said twenty years ago, Whistler has always been about vibrancy and change, and it is these characteristics that cause it to explode the myriad of myths that exist around rural tourism destinations.

In places like Sälen, and similar to the young residents, seasonal workers extend their social networks within their own surroundings. Within this, there is potential for stronger social networks to be built across seasonal workers and young residents. For the young residents, these new networks and social relations are highly important in their everyday life as Möller (2016a) suggests, they can give young local people wider opportunities, connection beyond the local. The ‘rural dull’ is converted into a rural urbanity in which these young adults may choose to stay rather than move away. Another way is to think about these occupational communities as a larger group who are attracted to stay in the destination and to see the potential of these in-migrants in either the whole or parts of any such group. As the seasonal workers tend to choose jobs and destinations due to social attributes rather than place-specific amenities, this might be a potential factor in attracting the group to stay. The development of the new airport has the potential to change the social landscape of Sälen substantially. There will be opportunities and challenges for both the tourism industry and the local community. It is difficult to forecast how the new airport will affect the attractiveness of Sälen among young adults, both local residents and seasonal workers. It may take some time before tourist arrivals through that airport fully develop, but it will be interesting to evaluate the wider societal effects in Sälen. Considering that the tourists have the least social impacts on the young residents, and since it is expected that the biggest change will be an inflow of international tourists, the social impacts on young adults from

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

387

the airport may be insignificant. The inflow of international tourists may add an international touch to the whole area, and in the end, an increase in the exchange with other countries may enable an extension of the social networks among the young adults outside the Swedish borders There may also be an increase of international seasonal workers to Sälen because of the growth of tourism numbers through the increased air transport routes, especially from the wider EU region. What this will do for young people’s future social and work opportunities as well as in-­ migration for the Sälen area remains to be seen. These discussions also illustrate the potential for rural destinations like Sälen to be useful when considering wider policy implication in the development of tourism in rural areas in Sweden, and more globally. As Sweden encourages the sustainable development of tourism outside its main urban centres (SOU 2017), so there is a need for a broader understanding of the role of young seasonal workers as potential in-migrants for rural communities. At the same time, there is need to recognize the impact of negative aspects of the ‘rural dull’ such as geographical isolation, small communities sizes and lack of amenities. Thus, greater interaction between stakeholders, including rural communities and policy makers, is necessary to ensure that tourism development provides wider and longer-term opportunities including year-round career opportunities for young people, affordable housing, leisure activities and retail services. Whilst rural destinations are often places people simply ‘pass through’, policy consideration is necessary to consider the role young people, both local and seasonal workers, play in maintaining and growing destinations like Sälen. Young people’s sense of self and attachment to rural destinations such as Sälen can be life-long. These young people, either now or in the future, may be the tourists, migrants, entrepreneurs or workers that the local community relies on to maintain a successful tourism industry. This chapter has considered two of the many myths around rural areas and tourism, specifically within mountain area. The two myths—one, that tourism can be a panacea for rural areas, and two, that seasonal workers do not positively contribute to local communities—have not necessarily been debunked but have been challenged through the example of Sälen. Tourism has undoubtedly played a role in the need for large numbers of seasonal workers in Sälen. With a new airport and the

388 

T. Duncan et al.

continued rise in tourism numbers, the natural environment and lifestyle may have attracted lifestyle entrepreneurs and may also have decreased or, at a minimum, slowed out-migration of young people. Möller, Thulemark and Engstrom’s (Möller et al. 2015) ideas of rural urbanity illustrate some of the factors that may encourage local young people to stay and young seasonal workers to in-migrate. Rather than the ‘rural dull’, destinations such as Sälen illustrate that they have the potential to draw young adults looking to embark on lifestyles and careers in different environments. Thus, the sociality of these destinations becomes an aspect that cannot be ignored; myths around the attractiveness of the natural environment or career prospects are taking second place to young people’s desire to be part of a community, occupational and more.

References Beale, C., & Johnson, K. M. (1998). The identification of recreational counties in nonmetropolitan areas of the USA. Population Research and Policy Review, 17, 37–53. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2009). Lifestyle migration; expectations, aspirations and experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. Berlin, G., Furstenberg, F. F., & Waters, M. (2010). Introducing the issue. The Future of Children, 20, 3–18. Crockett, L. J., Shanahan, M. J., & Jackson-Newsom, J. (2000). Rural youth: Ecological and life course perspectives. In R. Montemayor (Ed.), Advances in adolescent development: Vol. 10. Adolescent diversity in ethnic, economic, and cultural contexts. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Davies, A. (2008). Declining youth in-migration in rural western Australia: The role of perceptions of rural employment and lifestyle opportunities. Geographical Research, 46, 162–171. Deery, M., Jago, L., & Fredline, L. (2012). Rethinking social impacts of tourism research: A new research agenda. Tourism Management, 33, 64–73. Dubois, A., & Carson, D. B. (2019). Die hard: On the persistence of Swedish upland farming. Journal of Rural Studies, 69, 41–52. Duncan, T. (2008). The internationalisation of tourism labour markets: Working and playing in a ski resort. In C. M. Hall & T. Coles (Eds.), International business and tourism (pp. 181–194). Abingdon: Routledge.

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

389

Easterling, D. S. (2004). The residents’ perspective in tourism research: A review and synthesis. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 17, 45–62. Easthope, H., & Gabriel, M. (2008). Turbulent lives: Exploring the cultural meaning of regional youth migration. Geographical Research, 46, 172–182. English, D., Marcouiller, D., & Cordell, H. K. (2000). Tourism dependence in rural America: Estimates and effects. Society & Natural Resources, 13, 185–202. Eriksson, M., & Tollefsen, A. (2018). The production of the rural landscape and its labour: The development of supply chain capitalism in the Swedish berry industry. Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, 40, 69–82. Fredline, L. (2002). Social impacts of tourism on the Gold Coast. Gold Coast Tourism Visioning Project 3.3. Altona: Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism. Getz, D. (1986). Tourism and population change: Long-term impacts of tourism in the Badenoch and Strathspey district of the Scottish highlands. The Scottish Geographical Magazine, 102, 113–126. Gill, A. M., & Williams, P. W. (2018). Transitioning towards sustainability in the mountain resort community of Whistler, British Columbia. Tourism Recreation Research, 43, 528–539. Glendinning, A., Nuttall, M., Hendry, L. B., Kloep, M., & Wood, S. (2003). Rural communities and well-being: A good place to grow up? The Sociological Review, 51, 129–156. Hall, C. M., Muller, D. K., & Saarinen, J. (2009). Nordic tourism: Issues and cases. Buffalo: Channel View Publications. Heimtun, B. (2012). Life in the bubble: The leisure experiences of female Swedish seasonal hospitality workers in Nordkapp, Norway. Hospitality & Society, 2, 159–178. Heldt Cassel, S., Thulemark, M., & Duncan, T. (2018). Career paths and mobility in the Swedish hospitality sector. Tourism Geographies, 20, 29–48. Jonsson, G. (2003). Rotad, rotlös, rastlös – Ung mobilitet i tid och rum (Doctoral thesis, Human geography). Umeå: Umeå University. Kåks, H. (2007). Mellan erfarenhet och förväntan: Betydelser av att bli vuxen i ungdomars livsberättelser (Doctoral thesis, Studies in arts and science). Linköping: Linköping University. Kirkpatrick Johnson, M., Elder, G.  H., & Stern, M. (2005). Attachments to family and community and the young adult transition of rural youth. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 15, 99–125. Lee-Ross, D. (1999). Seasonal hotel jobs: An occupation and a way of life. International Journal of Tourism Research, 1, 239–253.

390 

T. Duncan et al.

Lee-Ross, D. (2008). Occupational communities and cruise tourism: Testing a theory. Journal of Management Development, 27, 467–479. Löffler, R., & Steinicke, E. (2006). Counterurbanization and its socioeconomic effects in high mountain areas of the Sierra Nevada (California/Nevada). Mountain Research and Development, 26, 64–71. Lundmark, L. (2006). Mobility, migration and seasonal tourism employment: Evidence from Swedish mountain municipalities. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 6, 197–213. McGranahan, D. (1999). Natural amenities drive rural population change (Agricultural economic report no. 781). Washington DC: Food and Rural Economics Division, Economic Research Service, U.S. Dpt of Agriculture. Milman, A., & Pizam, A. (1988). Social impacts of tourism on Central Florida. Annals of Tourism Research, 15, 191–204. Möller, P. (2012). Young adult transition in a tourism dominated rural area. Tourism Planning & Development, 9, 429–440. Möller, P. (2016a). Young adults in rural tourism areas (Doctoral thesis, Örebro studies in human geography 10). Örebro: Örebro University. Möller, P. (2016b). Young adults’ perceptions of and affective bonds to a rural tourism community. Fennia, 194, 32–45. Möller, P., & Amcoff, J. (2018). Tourism’s localised population effect in the rural areas of Sweden. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 18, 39–55. Möller, P., Thulemark, M., & Engström, C. (2015). Urbanity and rurality in a tourism context: Exploring the myth of vivid cities and sleepy villages. In K.  Dashper (Ed.), Rural tourism, an international perspective (pp.  22–40). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars. Moss, L. A. G. (Ed.). (2006). The amenity migrants: Seeking and sustaining mountains and their cultures. Oxfordshire: Cabi. Müller, D.  K. (2006). Amenity migration and tourism development in the Tärna Mountains, Sweden. In L.  A. G.  Moss (Ed.), The amenity migrants: Seeking and sustaining mountains and their cultures. Oxfordshire: Cabi. National Youth Bureau. (1990). Deprivation in rural areas: Young people’s perspectives. Leicester: National Youth Bureau. Nepal, S. K., & Chipeniuk, R. (2005). Mountain tourism: Toward a conceptual framework. Tourism Geographies, 7, 313–333. Ní Laoire, C. (2000). Conceptualising Irish rural youth migration: A biographical approach. International Journal of Population Geography, 6, 229–243. Olofsson, J., & Panican, A. (2012). Lärlingsutbildningen – aktuella erfarenheter och framtida möjligheter [Apprenticeship training – Current experiences and future opportunities]. Rapport nr 2 maj 2012. Stockholm: Ratio.

19  Tourism, Seasonality and the Attraction of Youth 

391

Phillips, D., & Skinner, A. (1994). Nothing ever happens around here: Developing work with young people in rural areas. Leicester: Youth Work Press. Rauhut, D., & Littke, H. (2016). ‘A one way ticket to the city, please!’ On young women leaving the Swedish peripheral region Västernorrland. Journal of Rural Studies, 43, 301–310. RMOW. (2019a). Facts and figures. www.whistler.ca/about/facts-and-figures. Accessed 30 Mar 2020. RMOW. (2019b). Community monitoring: Whistler facts and figures. www.whistler.ca/municipal-gov/community-monitoring/whistler-facts-and-figures. Accessed 30 Mar 2020. Rönnlund, M. (2019). ‘I love this place, but I won’t stay’: Identification with place and imagined spatial futures among youth living in rural areas in Sweden. Young, 28(2) 123–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1103308818823818. Rye, J. F. (2006). Heading for the cities? Gender and lifestyle patterns in rural youths’ residential preferences. Norwegian Journal of Geography, 60, 199–208. Sharma, B., Dyer, P., Carter, J., & Gursoy, D. (2008). Exploring residents’ perceptions of the social impacts of tourism on the sunshine coast, Australia. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 9, 288–311. Sørensen, N. U., & Pless, M. (2017). Living on the periphery of youth: Young people’s narratives of youth life in rural areas. Young, 25, 1S–17S. SOU (Statens Offentliga Utredningar). (2017). Ett land att besöka: En samlad politik för hållbar turism och växande besöksnäring. Stockholm: SOU. Statistics Sweden. (2020). Folkmängd och landareal i tätorter, per tätort. Vart femte år 1960–2018 [Population and land area in urban areas, per urban area. Every fifth year 1960–2018] [Database]. www.ssd.scb.se/pxweb/sv/ssd/ START__MI__MI0810__MI0810A/LandarealTatortN/. Accessed 30 Mar 2020. Stockdale, A. (2002). Towards a typology of out-migration from peripheral areas: A Scottish case study. International Journal of Population Geography, 8, 345–364. Stockdale, A., MacLeod, M., & Philip, L. (2013). Connected life courses: Influences on and experiences of ‘midlife’ in-migration to rural areas. Population, Space and Place, 19, 239–257. Svensson, L. (2006). Vinna och försvinna? Drivkrafter bakom ungdomars utflyttning (Doctoral thesis, Studies in arts and science). Linköping: Linköping University. Thulemark, M. (2011). A new life in the mountains: Changing lifestyles among in-migrants to Wanaka, New Zealand. Recreation and Society in Africa. Asia and Latin America, 2, 1.

392 

T. Duncan et al.

Thulemark, M. (2015). Moved by the mountains: Migration into tourism dominated rural areas (Doctoral thesis, Örebro studies in human geography 9). Örebro: Örebro University. Thulemark, M. (2017). Community formation and sense of place – Seasonal tourism workers in rural Sweden. Population, Space and Place, 23, e2018. Thulemark, M., Lundmark, M., & Heldt-Cassel, S. (2014). Tourism employment and creative in-migrants. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 14, 403–421. Tourism Whistler. (2019). About Whistler. https://media.whistler.com/allabout-whistler/stats-and-facts/. Accessed 30 Mar 2020. Tuulentie, S., & Heimtun, B. (2014). New rural residents or working tourists? Place attachment of mobile tourism workers in Finnish Lapland and northern Norway. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 14, 367–384. UNEP & UNWTO. 2005. Making Tourism More Sustainable - A Guide for Policy Makers. Paris, France and Madrid, Spain. Retrieved from http://www. unep.fr/shared/publications/pdf/DTIx0592xPA-TourismPolicyEN.pdf. Visit Rovaniemi. (2020). Rovaniemi. The official hometown of Santa Claus. https://www.visitrovaniemi.fi/. Accessed 30 Mar 2020. Visit Rovaniemi. (n.d.). Facts, figures and highlights. www.visitrovaniemi.fi/ media/facts-figures-highlights/. Accessed 30 Mar 2020. Vogler, S. (2000). Whistler features. Vancouver: Ward Digital. Vuin, A., Carson, D. A., Carson, D. B., & Garrett, J. (2016). The role of heritage tourism in attracting “active” in-migrants to “low amenity” rural areas. Rural Society, 25, 134–153.

20 Epilogue: From Growth to Decline to Degrowth? The Future of Northern SPAs Dean B. Carson, Marco Eimermann, and Linda Lundmark

A New Beginning in the End? As we write, an ongoing pandemic is raging around the globe. Already, some months into the chaos caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, there are huge challenges presented for the different systems we have created both economically and politically but also in terms of different healthcare systems around the world. Needless to say, the outbreak might change the rules of the game quicker than we ever thought possible. The quote below is from the Swedish research council FORMAS indicating what will be

D. B. Carson Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities, Central Queensland University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M. Eimermann • L. Lundmark (*) Department of Geography, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3_20

393

394 

D. B. Carson et al.

the biggest challenge in our time and underlining the threat of climate change. If the urgency of climate change did not feel real, the shock wave produced by this microscopic virus does (Box 20.1). What impact this disturbance will leave when it is all over is of course not possible for us to envisage in detail, but some indications that we have observed and presented in this book might be further encouraged by it.

Box 20.1  Window of Opportunity or “Here We Go Again”? Ingemar Elander Is humanity thrown into a “perfect storm” of coincidence between several huge challenges such as climate change, the corona pandemic, the accelerating extinction of species and the refugee crisis? Is there even a crisis of governance and democracy (Freedom House 2018; Mastropaolo 2012)? In the analysis of path-dependent institutions, policies and practices, the concept of “critical juncture” comes to the fore, that is, when decisions of crucial actors are causally decisive for the selection of one path of institutional development over other possible paths (Capoccia 2016). The challenges/crises are mentioned by many scientists, some world leaders and a broader audience considered as existential threats in need of urgent action, commonly labelled “securitization”. As the causes, effects and adequate reactions are contested, there are no given solutions how to “de-securitize” the perceived threats, neither one by one, no less together (Bigo and McCluskey 2018). In other words, it is ultimately a question of how government and governance in a particular context choose to decide on the road forward—time will tell! Renowned geographer/historian Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond 1997) and other books, stated in an interview for a Swedish daily that the corona virus has a “limited mortality. The climate crisis can literally kill us all. It is without doubt the worst threat. It is fine that people buy protecting masks against the corona virus, but they should also buy masks against coal power” (Gelin 2020). Although the economic, social and political consequences of the corona virus in terms of loss of profits and jobs seem to overshadow their epidemiological root causes, most world leaders still look for reinventing the wheel by massively fertilising banks, big companies and even households with new money. There seems to be an explicit or implicit confidence among financial and political leaders that it is both possible and necessary to return to something like “The Great Acceleration” (the post–World War II era of intensive resource exploitation) (continued)

20  Epilogue: From Growth to Decline to Degrowth? The Future… 

395

Box 20.1  (continued) during which the economy grew exponentially, and most curves of welfare and happiness seemed to indicate progress. What signs of hope are there in the current “perfect storm” and “critical juncture” of crises? Related to the particular focus of this book, for example, downshifting may sound a provoking concept when, in the wake of the corona pandemic, mass-unemployment knocks on the doors world-wide. Despite this, strategies for making people return to work and make their living do not necessarily have to, and certainly cannot, just imitate the economistic “success story” (environmental damage excluded) of the past. Kallis et al. (2015), for example, state ten theses in favour of “de-growth”, for instance, that growth—as we know it so far—is “senseless”, “uneconomic”, “unjust” and “ecologically unsustainable”. Paradoxically, this might be exactly the critical juncture and window of opportunity needed to inspire and boost alternative strategies of work and living as indicated by buzz-words like “green growth” (especially in the energy and transport sectors), “universal basic income” and “creative adaptation” (cf. Box 8.4 in this volume). Instead of downshifting I would suggest using “re-shifting” or “co-­ shifting”, as keywords, indicating more of flexibility needed in such a turbulent time—when dramatic downshifting/shutting down of jobs is accompanied by extreme upshifting for people working in the social and healthcare sectors. At the time of writing we also see an increasing amount of voluntary efforts by individuals and civil society associations helping vulnerable people in the risk of being hit by the corona virus, losing their jobs or lacking any kind of insurance, for example, by giving support to professional health workers, delivering food and other necessities to old and sick people, and creating virtual networks to keep and nurture education and social relations, without physical contact. There is thus an enormous potential of “crisis governance” to release outside the narrow economistic discourse of the Great Acceleration. We all face “the great challenge of balancing emotional messages of fear and hope in order to create a story that opens up space and also provides incentives for action” (Lidskog et al. 2020: 122). Will our children look back at this period as a unique, temporary backlash of an eternal capitalist growth society when the big nations and economies of the world took a break to recover before re-starting and speeding-up the wheels faster than ever? Or was this the critical juncture when utopia became “nowtopia”—more than a naïve dream—replacing the current popularity of retrotopian ideas without returning to a destructive carbon-­ dependent “capitalocene” (Moore 2017)?

396 

D. B. Carson et al.

The next ten years will be crucial if the world is to achieve sustainable development. Entire social systems, sectors and industries need to change. It requires courageous political decisions, new ways of organizing, managing and planning our societies, new business models and changing consumption habits. None of this is easy or arises by itself. (FORMAS 2019: 5, authors’ translation)

For example, new movements in society show that there is a tendency for a new “green wave”, possibly offering new opportunities in some rural areas for in-migration and renewal especially revisiting our friends in the Tavelsjö area (Box 20.2). Ideas of downshifting and re-growing, down-­ sizing and degrowth are challenging rural “decline” as the negative result of general restructuring in sparsely populated areas (SPAs). The ongoing

Box 20.2  Post-productivism in Tavelsjö Håkan Appelblad, Marco Eimermann and Göran Sundqvist This box links back to the box on TuRe in the introductory chapter. Many cases in this book exemplified ongoing themes around post-productivism when much fewer people are employed in agriculture and forestry than before. Another example is the “100 beds” project in Tavelsjö, in which locals investigated possibilities to convert existing agricultural barns and buildings into Bed and Breakfasts. Challenges were identified in terms of high costs for short visits, meaning that (former) farmers needed to charge high prices per overnight stay to make this economically viable. At the moment, TuRe is not taking any concrete steps, but it would be valuable to conduct a survey to see how, for example, high costs can be reduced with collective solutions. At the same time, TuRe communicates with researchers about a project to study autonomous vehicles in rural areas, and there are plans for a new sports hall. The local sports clubs are very active, for instance, maintaining the 7-km cross-country track in Rödåsel or organising outdoor winter and summer sports events. One of the first projects was the 20-km-long hiking track around lake Tavelsjö. Another project is the half marathon-running event that has been arranged since 2012, and notwithstanding the corona outbreak, the lake’s first ever frozen track run was organised in March 2020. As part of the year-round hiking trail Tio Toppar Tavelsjö, inaugurated in 2019, locals have created marked trails for those who like to leave the beaten tracks (Fig. 20.1). This trail leads to ten local hilltops, the highest at 282 metres above sea level. (continued)

20  Epilogue: From Growth to Decline to Degrowth? The Future… 

397

Box 20.2  (continued)

Fig. 20.1  View over Tavelsjö in winter. (Photo: Marco Eimermann) In winter when lake Tavelsjö is frozen, a group of locals invest innumerable late evenings and weekends creating and maintaining a 13-km ice-­ skating track. In 2020, this attracted a group of 13 ice-skating enthusiasts from Belgium and the Netherlands. Their long-weekend visit was organised by an Umeå-based travel agency and the group leader (the chairman of the Belgian ice-skating club LBSG) had good previous contacts with the organisers. The visitors participated with 40 others in an ice-skating race on natural ice, covering 52–104 km in different categories. After the race, they enjoyed a stew in the cosy lakeside restaurant, recently opened by an Englishman and his wife. They had met while working in a restaurant in London and decided to move to Tavelsjö because she grew up there (and Brexit didn’t make things easier for them in London). Ice skating is not a big sport in Sweden, but this example shows the big potential to develop this sport for an international target group. Two Belgian journalists had joined the ice skaters, and they published about this event in a national newspaper and on a well-known weblog. Gert (chairman) said he would like to see a somewhat larger group of ice skaters from the low countries next year, but not too many. With a smile, he said, “40-50 (continued)

398 

D. B. Carson et al.

Box 20.2  (continued) would be nice, so they can help each other during the race, but I wouldn’t like it to become a Benidorm on ice!” Besides continuing to work and lobby for apartment construction, an elderly care centre and improved bus connections, new concerns regard school closures of primary schools in Tavelsjö. Overall, one of the biggest concerns is on those new village inhabitants who work in Umeå and don’t seem to engage locally. During a meeting, one of the TuRe representatives exclaimed, “in today’s society, it seems like everyone works and no one has time for spontaneous activities!” We can link this back to this book’s section on “who works?”, and we identify this as a field for future studies, for example, on potential conflicts and synergies between different stakeholders in such places. A field excursion for geography students would be a good start. Perhaps more students will write their thesis about the fascinating developments in northern SPAs!

outbreak might encourage more people to act on their longing for the “better life”. Furthermore, new technologies (some of which have been developed in the north) are making it increasingly possible to provide services to small populations in isolated locations, and this is also changing the conditions for living in rural peripheral areas to the better. In Storumans Kommun, a project encouraging owners of unoccupied houses to rent them out or even sell them proved very successful. Also in Storuman, the development of the “Virtual Health Room” by local medical practitioners and researchers means that people living in isolated villages no longer need to travel hundreds of kilometres for straightforward medical consultations. As discussed, amidst (and often intertwined with) the signs of departure are signs of new arrivals both short term and long term. The old forestry huts, which were often themselves re-used seasonal lodging for livestock farmers, have been repurposed for tourism and recreation. Farmhouses that may originally only have been seasonally inhabited anyway, remain that way through their use as summer (or winter) second homes for residents from other parts of the north or further afield. “Permanent” international in-migration to the north has received increasing academic attention, with a focus on “lifestyle migrant

20  Epilogue: From Growth to Decline to Degrowth? The Future… 

399

entrepreneurs” from other parts of Europe and refugees who were at least temporarily settled in the north in large numbers following the global refugee crisis in 2014/2015. Interestingly, quite a number of the lifestyle migrants who expected to stay long term move on after a short period of time, and some of the refugees who were expected to stay short term are now intending to settle permanently in the north. Many of the refugees are young adults, and their increasing presence requires a re-think of the perception of the north as a place that young people mostly leave. In fact, young adults are also the largest group of in-migrants to the north, sometimes returning home after university, sometimes coming north for further education and sometimes coming north for work which tends to be more plentiful (for people with particular qualifications) and even better paid (relative to seniority and experience) here than in the south or coastal regions. A number of these young adults choose to live in very small and isolated villages which otherwise have lost population at the expense of the larger centres, particularly the municipal capitals. In the future some SPAs will be prosperous in attracting such mobile populations either short or long term. This will not however be true for all SPAs, and the development will be highly diverse. We usually assume that this is a slow process which will not be seen on a greater scale for a long time—if ever—but that it locally might generate significant impacts both short and long term. What will happen now in the turmoil caused by the Covid-19 disease we do not know. However, it is reasonable to believe that for some people it will impact their decisions in such a way that they act on their desire to find “the good life”, whatever that might be.

The End (of the North as We Know It?) Ever since the Siljan symposium in 1960, some researchers have argued that it will not be long before the SPAs are empty from people: the economic possibilities are next to none and the urban norm will make it less and less likely that people move there. Furthermore, in time the dimension that urban people do not need the SPAs has been added. However, sparsely populated areas are still sparse, but not empty of people, and the need for rural people, places and products has not disappeared. On the

400 

D. B. Carson et al.

contrary, change, transformation and adaptation have been pivotal for development, and this is what we have seen as examples throughout this book. This has been something that we have wanted to share with you since we started to plan for the book some three years ago. A sense of gratitude and duty towards the people and areas we are studying has been guiding all of the work presented, and we hope that the research we are doing will be useful for as many as possible. In short, we hope that you (as a reader) appreciated this book! (Fig. 20.2).

Fig. 20.2  The promise of new things to come. (Painting: Paul Breddels [A Dutch artist living in Sweden], 2019)

20  Epilogue: From Growth to Decline to Degrowth? The Future… 

401

References Bigo, D., & McCluskey, E. (2018). What is a PARIS approach to (in)securitization? Political anthropological research for international sociology. In A. Gheciu & W. C. Wohlforth (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of international security. www.oxfordhandbooks.com. Accessed 27 Mar 2020. Capoccia, G. (2016). Critical junctures. In O.  Fioretos, T.  G. Falleti, & A. Sheingate (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical institutionalism. www. oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199662814.001.0001/ oxfordhb-9780199662814. Accessed 27 Mar 2020. Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs and steel. The fates of human societies. New York: Norton. FORMAS, Swedish research council for sustainable development (R14:2019). Kunskap för hållbar omställning. Ett underlag till Sveriges forsknings- och innovationspolitik 2021–2024. www.formas.se. Accessed 27 Mar 2020. Freedom House. (2018). Democracy in crisis. Freedom in the world 2019. New York: Freedom House. Gelin, G. (2020, March 21). Jared Diamond. Viruset är här för att stanna, men det kommer inte slå ut vår civilisation [Jared Diamond. The virus is here to stay, but it will not knock out our civilisation]. Interview with Jared Diamond. Dagens Nyheter, pp. 8–9. Kallis, G., Demaria, F., & D’Alisa, G. (2015). Degrowth. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (Vol. 6, 2nd ed., pp. 24–30). Oxford: Elsevier. Lidskog, R., Berg, M., Gustafsson, K. M., & Löfmarck, E. (2020). Cold science meets hot weather: Environmental threats, emotional messages and scientific storytelling. Media and Communication, 8, 118–128. Mastropaolo, A. (2012). Is democracy a lost cause? Paradoxes of an imperfect invention. Colchester: ECPR Press. Moore, J. W. (2017). The Capitalocene. Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44, 594–630.

Index

A

Abisko, 270, 352 Accessibility, 22, 23, 187, 247, 277, 327, 338, 351, 354, 360, 362 Acculturation theory, 113, 122 Adak/Adakgruvan, 38, 39, 42, 43, 47, 49 Agricultural sector comparisons with Australia, 32 culinary region initiative, 141, 226, 235 economic impact, 5, 16, 229, 235 food and identity, 243 food plurality, 242 food security, 213, 220 Inlandsmat, 141, 226, 235 new associationalism, 218, 236 REKO-ring, 141, 226, 229, 235 small-scale farming, 234 AIMDay, 336

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Lundmark et al. (eds.), Dipping in to the North, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6623-3

Alternative food networks (AFN), 141, 219, 220 Australia, 220 Åskilje, 49 Australia agricultural sector, 16, 19, 219, 229 Cairns/Tropical North Queensland, 229, 288 Darwin/Northern Territory, 292–294, 304, 305 extreme weather, 202 farmer’s markets, 220 Irvinebank, 35 Kuranda, 289 Port Douglas, 288, 289 Ravenswood, 36 rural restructuring, 17 Thornborough, 35 tourism, 16, 32, 272, 286, 288, 293, 306

403

404 Index B

Beck, U., 142, 143, 196, 199, 200, 206 Björksele, 44 Bregman, R., 133–135, 137–139, 144 Easter Island, 134 human nature, 134, 135 motivations to work, 137 Bubbi, Morthens, 55

tourism, 137, 267, 285–306, 333, 355, 360, 363 Climate change melting sea ice, 352 tourism, 276–278, 292, 352, 355, 366 Commuting, 4, 5, 57, 58, 92, 93, 103, 207, 244, 288 D

C

Cairns/Tropical North Queensland, Australia, 288 daytrip tourism, 288–289, 294, 304 gateway city, 288, 293, 304 Great Barrier Reef, 288 relationships with hinterlands, 287–289, 304 spillover effects, 288–289, 304 sponge city, 289 tourism sector, 304 Wet Tropics Rainforest, 288 Carrying capacity, 359 tourism sector, 359 Centre for Rural Medicine, see Glesbygdmedicinskt Centrum Chain migration, 80, 108, 125 Cities backwash, 287, 292, 304 crowding out, 292, 293, 301, 304, 305 gateway city, 285–306 relationships with hinterlands, 292, 295 spillover effects, 289, 293, 295, 302, 304, 305

Dalhousie, Canada, 32–34 Darwin/Northern Territory, Australia accessibility, 294, 304, 305 boomtown, 293–294 crowding out, 292, 293, 304, 305 daytrip tourism, 294, 304 economic crisis, 292, 293 gateway city, 293 nature-based tourism, 293, 305 relationships with hinterlands, 292–294 stimulus packages, 294 Top End region, 293 tourism sector, 304 Demographic adaptation, 145, 146 Depopulation, 45, 145, 246, 255, 315, 316 Dimensions of national culture, 113–121 Downshifting forced downshifting, 143, 145 and migration, 197, 204, 211 modernity, 199, 200 motivations, 139, 141 place perceptions, 197 rural and urban, 197, 199, 202 social connections, 199 theories, 145

 Index 

2019 Transition Conference, Umeå, 139, 196 voluntary simplicity, 139, 199, 200, 205

405

food availability, 229, 251 informal markets, 251 integration impacts, 142, 242, 243, 248, 253, 257–258 Thai women, 142, 249, 257 Forestry sector, 16, 42

E

Easter Island, 16, 134 Ecolodge Tjarn, 336–337 Economic development, 3, 41, 42, 47, 75, 82, 245, 247, 267, 275, 280, 334 eHealth, 182, 183, 186–190 Employment security, 143 Engels, F., 144 Entrepreneurship agricultural sector, 5, 245 gender, 142, 258 international migrants, 246 migrant, 117, 142, 243, 245, 246, 248, 253, 257 tourism, 333–335, 339–344 F

Faroe Islands culture, 166, 167 grindadráp, 166 modernity, 166, 167 whaling, 166, 167 Finnish Lapland overtourism, 361 Rovaniemi, 361 Santa Claus/Christmas tourism, 352, 361, 383 Food practices bread baking, 142 entrepreneurship, 142, 241–259

G

Gällivare, 36, 92, 98–100, 103, 270 Gender, 11, 60, 61, 74, 82, 199, 244, 250, 257, 379 Germany, 107, 109, 111, 115, 116, 121, 124–125, 272, 297, 315 refugee migration, 112 Glesbygdsmedicinskt Centrum (GMC), 176, 177 Global financial crisis (GFC), 290, 293, 311 Globalisation, 17, 153, 350, 362 Glommersträsk, 39, 44, 45, 49 Greenland hunting, 157, 158 identity, 157 Inuit people, 157, 158 Nuuk, 157, 159 relations with Denmark, 157 Gunnarn, 44 H

Hemavan, 39–41, 43, 48, 49, 300 tourism, 39, 43, 49, 275 Housing demand, 47, 91, 93–98 empty/abandoned houses, 90, 95, 97, 98, 146, 275 life course, 94

406 Index

Housing (cont.) municipal attitudes, 97 1 Million Program, 89, 93 policy, 23, 97 supply, 89, 91, 92, 96–100, 103 I

Icehotel, 270, 273, 353, 354, 361 Icehotel 365, 353 Iceland fishing sector, 60 fishing villages, 288 migration intentions, 60 population ageing, 61, 76 population distribution, 77 population mobility, 66 youth flight, 76–77 Indigenous peoples, see Sami people Australia, 180, 181 Faroe Islands, 167 Finland, 278 Greenland, 157 health workforce, 181 Norway, 153 Russia, 152, 153 Industry towns boom and bust, 29, 31, 363 closures, 30, 31 Dalhousie, Canada, 33 diversification, 31 economic development, 47, 267 fishing villages, 288 knowledge clusters, 34 mining town, 35 post-staples development, 29–35 resource dependence, 31, 35 Innovation, 177, 184, 255, 256, 335, 362, 365

Instant towns, 29–31, 41, 48 Integration lifestyle migrants, 108, 109, 111–113, 122, 123, 126, 128, 241 refugees, 123, 241, 246 Intercultural communication, 107–129 International migration flows lifestyle migrants, 108, 398 refugees, 79, 399 Thai women, 142, 257 Irvinebank, Australia, 35 Isolation, 19, 22, 30, 233, 234, 376, 387 J

Jonstad, D., 196, 197, 204 place attachment, 197 sustainable living, 196 K

Kilpisjärvi, Finland, 320 second homes, 320 Kristineberg, 39, 41–43, 49 Kuranda, Australia, 289 L

Labour migration, 78, 241 Labour recruitment and retention demand for labour, 373 health workforce, 176, 181, 184, 189 “Recruit and Retain” project, 184, 186, 188 Lagom, 120

 Index 

Laponia World Heritage Site co-management, 160 management plan, 162 Sami engagement, 162 Lifestyle migration chain migration, 108 integration, 111, 113, 123, 126, 128 migration motivations, 108, 113 nature-based integration, 126 place marketing, 109, 111, 128, 129 theories, 111, 113, 266 Loach, K., 138 employment security, 138 “Sorry we missed you,” 138 Local government, 3, 40, 44, 66–67, 83, 117, 143, 144, 180, 345, 350, 362 Longyearbyen, Svalbard, 356–358 tourism sector, 356

407

N

National communication patterns, 117, 119 Netherlands, 107–109, 115, 116, 123, 272, 297, 397 migration to Sweden, 107, 109, 115 Northern Ireland, 64, 65 O

Overtourism Arctic tourism, 352, 362 carrying capacity, 359 emergency rescues, 362 Finnish Lapland, 352, 361 theories, 289 tourism bubbles, 365 Visit Arctic Europe/the Arctic Route, 352, 364, 365 P

M

Malå, 38, 39, 48, 221, 301–303 Malmberget, 98–100 Marx, K., 135, 144 Medical technologies, 176 Migration intentions, 58, 60, 64 Migration motivations, lifestyle migrants, 107, 113 Migration policy, 4 Mining sector, 16, 42 Modernity, 135, 136, 142, 152, 153, 156, 163, 164, 166, 167, 199–204 Moskosel, 44, 45, 49 Motivations to work, 137–141 Multi-occupational lifestyles, 223

Place marketing migration impacts, 125 role of food, 245 Pluriactivity, 218, 373 Population ageing de-ageing, 184 health and care, 136, 177, 178, 184 older entrepreneurs, 343 older workers, 179 Population distribution, 77 Population mobility, 30 Porjus, 39, 41, 44, 47 Port Douglas, Australia, 288, 289 Post-productivism, 9, 335, 394–395

408 Index R

Ravenswood, Australia, 36 Refugee migration Germany, 124–125 youth, 22, 75, 78, 80 Region10, 72, 73, 75, 79, 80 Region Västerbotten, 303 Return migration, 57, 80, 82, 183 Reykjavik, Iceland Arctic tourism, 290 basecamp, 290–292 daytrip tourism, 304 gateway city, 290–292, 304 indoor nature attractions, 290–292 relationships with hinterlands, 290, 304 seasonality, 290–292, 304 spillover effects, 304 sponge city, 290 tourist/visitor dispersal, 290, 291, 304 winter tourism, 291 Rovaniemi, Finland, 361, 362, 364, 381, 383 Santa Claus/Christmas tourism, 361, 381, 383 Rural decline, 71–80, 82, 83 Rural health, 136, 176, 179, 185, 189, 190 Rural idyll, 2, 5–8, 77, 108, 110, 202, 211, 212, 334, 377 rural dull, 377 Rural restructuring, 17, 92 S

Sälen, Dalarna attractiveness, 377, 381, 382, 384 in-migration, 380, 387

population growth, 378 seasonality, 374, 375, 377, 378, 380–382, 384, 386–388 social organisation, 380 tourism, 374, 375, 378, 380–382, 384, 386, 387 worker accommodation, 382 youth employment, 375 Sami people authenticity, 155, 156, 163 colonisation, 180 cultural revival, 154, 155 culture, 155, 156, 163, 166 health and care, 136, 180, 181 identity, 21, 135, 136, 154 international indigenous movement, 155 Knowledge Network for Sami Health, 181 Laponia World Heritage Site, 163 marginalization, 180 modernity, 135, 136, 156, 166 out-migration, 20 perceptions of, 156 policy towards, 155, 163, 180 reindeer herding, 136, 155, 156, 161, 162 Sami Management Municipalities, 180 self-exoticization, 152 tourism, 20, 136, 137 Traditional Ecological Knowledge, 152, 155, 156, 159, 160, 162–164 Umeå, 137, 301 Seashore Protection Act, 93 Seasonality demographic impacts, 275

 Index 

tourism, 45, 49, 179, 273, 275, 276, 292, 300, 353, 361, 373–388 Second homes Airiston Helmi Ltd, 322 community impacts, 281, 316 in Finland, 281, 311–328 German ownership, 313–315 Kilpisjärvi, Finland, 320 Norwegian ownership, 302, 315, 320 ownership, 96, 311–328 policy, 318, 321, 335, 345 population displacement, 96, 313, 327 precursor to migration, 265, 266, 315 property prices, 313, 314 Russian ownership, 311–328 security concerns, 311–313, 322, 323, 327 spatial distribution, 269, 316 Settlement cycle, 47, 48 Settlement policy, 11, 23 Settlement viability Adak/Adakgruvan, 39 Åskilje, 49 Björksele, 44 Glommersträsk, 39, 49 Gunnarn, 44 Hemavan, 48 Kristineberg, 39, 49 Moskosel, 49 Porjus, 39 Tärnaby, 40, 43 Vuollerim, 39, 41 Settlement zones, 16

409

Skellefteå, 100, 101, 231, 269, 271, 296, 297, 301, 302 Small business, 140, 141, 242, 252, 256, 257 Small villages abandonment, 234 demographic change, 40 diversity, 5, 20 employment opportunities, 41 evolution/transformation, 46 settlement cycle, 48 settler villages, 39–41, 43, 46 spatial clustering, 39 tourism, 29, 31, 32, 35–40, 42–44, 46–49 vulnerability and decline, 28, 29, 35, 47 Social accountability, 182–184, 188–190 Solovetsky, Russia, 356, 357 tourism sector, 356 Southern Lapland, 141, 217–237 agriculture, 141, 221, 223, 230 Spatial inequality, 136, 146 Stone, K., 15, 19, 20, 22, 24 Sustainable development and agriculture, 225 “Beyond GDP growth,” 198, 199 economic and social goals, 198 green business, 342, 346 sustainable countryside, 202, 212 tourism, 346, 366, 387 Swedish Rural Development Program (SRDP), 247 Swedish swirl, 117–121

410 Index T

Tärnaby, 39–41, 43 Thornborough, Australia, 35 Tourism sector business tourism, 272 community development, 141, 350, 374 cruise tourism, 277, 352, 354–357 destination marketing organisations, 301 economic development, 267, 275, 280 entrepreneurship, 333–335 European Union investment, 364 globalization, 266, 350 innovation, 362, 365 Longyearbyen, Svalbard, 356 nature based tourism, 113, 127, 280, 288, 333–335, 346 public investment, 266, 274, 350 Solovetsky, Russia, 356 youth employment, 83, 373 Town closures, 31 U

Ukrainian conflict, 311, 321, 324 Umeå accessibility, 244, 300 boring bits in between, 295–303 business tourism, 272 cultural tourism, 299 destination marketing organisations, 301 European Capital of Culture, 269, 298 events, 298, 301, 303

gateway city, 295, 299, 300, 305 as generating market, 302 international markets, 270, 299 relationships with hinterlands, 295, 298, 302 Sami culture, 137, 301 seasonality, 300, 301, 305 shopping tourism, 298, 299, 304 spillover effects, 302 tourism, 269, 286, 295, 297–299, 301, 305, 306 tourist/visitor dispersal, 299, 305 university, 6, 40, 176, 185, 279, 298, 300 visiting friends and relatives (VFR), 281, 298, 303 Uncertainty avoidance, 116, 125 Unemployment, 143, 145 Urbanisation, 74, 285, 286 V

Village abandonment, 20 Vuollerim, 39, 41, 44 W

Whistler, Canada seasonal employment, 50 ski tourism, 278 Women, 11, 41, 56, 60, 61, 64, 72, 74, 179, 183, 242, 244, 245, 248–256, 258, 259 Y

Youth flight, 76–77 Youth health, 177, 187

 Index 

health workforce, 177, 187 Youth left behind, 83 Youth migration complex drivers, 74

economic, 74, 75 gender, 74 refugee, 75, 79 tourism, 83, 373–388

411