Understanding aspirations to stay: Relative endowment within a time–space perspective

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Abstract

This article explores the factors and mechanisms that underpin aspirations to stay in situations where migration could be beneficial. To do so, this article proposes a spatial–temporal comparative framework and explains aspirations to stay through the notion of relative endowment, which reveals a positive assessment of what people have, despite the awareness of social inequalities. Empirically, the article focuses on a rural town in northern Brazil that has experienced a stagnating economy since the 1990s, where young adults express aspirations to stay. Non-economic factors such as closeness to nature, family, and friends not only encourage staying, but make young people feel endowed in relation to a perceived stressful work-centered urban life. The proposed framework reveals that the overall negative perspectives on the town’s present are congruous with aspirations to stay because of young people’s positive feelings about the town’s past and future. In fact, hope plays an important role in shaping aspirations to stay. This article shows the value of considering people’s perceptions of past, present, and future and how they influence aspirations to stay, and migrate.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbermnad007
Pages (from-to)259-285
Number of pages27
JournalMigration Studies
Volume11
Issue number2
Early online date18 Apr 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding
This work was supported by the Migration as Development (MADE) Consolidator Grant project and has received funding from the European
Research Council under the European Community’s Horizon 2020 Programme (H2020/2015–2020)/ERC Grant Agreement 648496.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press.

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