Reclaiming Rural Identities: Expanding Theory By Decentering Research Methods

Background and Purpose: The presentation will report on findings from original research on why Southeast natives choose to move away from or remain in rural areas. This study is situated within recent changing geographic mobility patterns that challenge the predominant explanations of (im)mobility and the narrative about what it means to stay in a rural location. The research was guided by the questions: what do rural Southeastern natives identify as the reasons associated with their various mobility decisions, and how did they negotiate those reasons in making decisions about mobility? The study was designed to contribute to theoretical expansion by decentering the methods away from aggregate data to focus on individual subjective experiences and meaning making. Instead of deducing reasons for moving, motivations, choices and barriers from large data, this study allowed the participants to excavate their own experiences and respond to multiple dynamics they valued and negotiated in their various mobility decisions. Complex factors, individual nuances, and deeply personal and meaningful data emerged.

Methods: This qualitative study is set in a rural county of Georgia. In-depth interviews were conducted with thirty participants from the county who represent three different mobility decisions: people who stayed, left, and returned. Snowball and purposive sampling methods were used to recruit the heterogeneous sample and thematic analysis was utilized to analyze the data.

Results: The findings suggest that there are multiple connected reasons for mobility including three novel reasons that emerged from the data. Those include: one, psychosocial development that describes individuals grappling with identity formation, seeking intimacy, and generativity as part of their mobility decisions; two, the tension of being known versus anonymity which describes a push and pull within interpersonal dynamics; and three, the centrality of relationship which describes the importance of relationships which is a common thread throughout all reasons for mobility. Additionally, the findings suggest that individuals share a common iterative developmental process as they negotiate different opportunities, challenges, desires, and obligations in their mobility decisions.

Conclusions: The findings offer unique contributions to the literature as they represent integrated themes of interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects of mobility. The findings elevate the importance of relationships at multiple social levels, highlight a developmental process within mobility, and personal assessments of goodness of fit within reasons to move or not move. Further, mobility reasons are complex and span from pragmatic to existential. These contributions suggest that the dimension of place is important for a deeper understanding of human nature. This can positively impact the design and implementation of psychosocial interventions and enhance topics in social work education. This study also suggests additional theories may be useful in understanding mobility that are not traditionally used in this subject field. The theoretical expansion resulting from this study enhances future mobility research, but perhaps most importantly, it demonstrates that when individuals are given the opportunity to fully express themselves and researchers allow their work to be shaped and impacted by their participants, new and exciting contributions can be revealed, and participants’ experiences validated.