The research on rural youth and issues related to place and identity in Nordic contexts, and on rural education more generally (e.g. Hargreaves et al, 2009), is sparse. These issues are in focus in the project “Rural youth – education, place and participation”. The project was designed to develop an understanding of youth, their participation and agency in rural contexts. It asks what it is that distinguishes and unites young people’s social inclusion and participation in various rural (and urban) schools and how schools in different places address young people’s opportunities to work and social inclusion.

Drawing on data from the project, this paper explores how young people in a sparsely populated rural area in Northern Sweden talk about their lives, themselves and about the future: What are the relationships between place, mobility and identity when boys and girls in this rural area talk about participation in school and in their local community, and how can these relationships be understood?

Central for the analysis is geographical theorizing of identification with place, and the understanding of place as relational and constructed. Widely spread theories in geography point to the continued importance of attachment to place in shaping our identities (Casey, 1993). People have bonds to the outside world and identity is understood to be created through the body’s interactions with place. This has existential dimension. To exist implies being in a place, as described by Casey: ”[…] to be is to be in a place. There is no being except being in a place.” (Ibid: 313). 

Within this way of addressing the issue of identity – as closely related to place – lies an understanding that the very idea of “place” is a social construct (Massey, 1984; 1995). A place is always interpreted, narrated, perceived, felt, understood and communicated in relation to other urban and/or rural places, but also continuously constructed through socio-spatial and material practices, including various identities and contemporary/historical relations and conflicts. When discussing the nature of identity in late-modern times, we also need to recognize the importance of mobility. Sociologists such as Giddens and Bauman have claimed that we are moving away from rooted identities based on place and towards hubrid and flexible forms of identity (Giddens 1991; Bauman 1991, 2001). To fully understand the process of identity construction we need to recognize both place and mobility. As argued by Easthope (2009), the concept of identity cannot be fully understood without reference to the dialectic of place and mobility. 

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