Border and rural regions are socially constructed concepts, usually understood against urban centered values, concepts and development models. Some perspectives argue that exists a preconception considering rural regions as in stagnation (Hedberg; Carmo, 2012). Although border regions in Portugal, often overlapping with rural and remote areas, suffer from a spatial differentiation, those spaces can no longer be considered as totally isolated from global economies (Marsden et al, 1995). Transformations rural regions are facing can be translated into what can be understood has hybrid conciliations between worlds, introducing new sociabilities and networks: namely online and offline (Parker-Webster & Silva, 2013; 2016) or between global cultures and local heritages (Silva, 2013). Global effects might strengthen localisms, proving that ‘global and local cultures are relational’ (Featherstone 2008:181) and interchangeable. Therefore, these dynamics need to be reconsidered as it changes urban centered perspectives about border and rural regions, challenging dominant theories usefulness. This contribution will pay attention to the development of networking ‘communities of interest’ (Williams, 1983), acknowledging young people and young adults, in particular, expertise and new competences that could benefit local development (Neumeire, 2017). This practices may address the idea that the ‘”work of culture” is, in fact, the “work of subjectivity”’ (Nielsen 2004:9), configuring a set of community-based network initiatives, engaging young people, and the population in general, in collaborative and learning actions, considered as indicators of communities’ resilience (McManus et al., 2012; Skerratt et al., 2013, Silva et al., 2016). This paper has grown out of a multi sited ethnographic study interested in understanding young peoples’ educational pathways and senses of belonging. The study is taking place in a village, located in the Portuguese inlands, close to the Spanish border. This place is considered a remote rural area. The study aims to understand configurations of young people cultures and pathways in a remote rural region. One important part of the study includes the construction of the sense of belonging to their community. The ethnographic study started in 2010/2011, doing for over a year participant-observation in the village and in the school and writing fieldnotes. Subsequently, the study continued up to present times through the creation of a group in the internet, which enables us to keep observing and interacting with young people and young adults.

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