The project explores into the lives and experiences of young people with refugee background living in rural municipalities in the north of Norway and in the west of Denmark. Research on young refugees has mainly focused on urban settings. This is in line with youth research in general, that has been criticised for an unacknowledged “metrocentricity”, by universalising a focus on metropolitan young people “as globally emblematic of young people as a whole” (Farrugia, 2014::4). There is a discursive distinction between rural and urban life defining urban life in the cities as the sophisticated being for young people, preventing young people in rural areas from taking up subjectivities as young people (Pless and Sørensen, 2015). A metrocentric approach also tends to overlook the importance of how place and geography can represent changeable and contingent conditions in young people’s lives (Farrugia 2014, Paulgaard, 2017). This paper will focus on the environmental impacts on young people as forced migrants settled in particular places in rural areas.

The number of international newcomers has increased in rural areas. In the Nordic countries, the rural populations are even more diverse than the EU average (Nørregaard, 2018). However, refugees who first settled in rural areas have moved to city areas after the first years of settlement to a larger degree than other migrant groups (Andersen, 2015; Ordemann, 2017). There is a debate both in literature and also among politicians in European countries on whether refugees should be settled in rural areas at all. Arguments (McAreavey and Argent, 2018) for settling refugees are that they can increase sustainability of population in dwindling communities (Nørregaard, 2018; Brandt, 2015). Others disagree with refugees being used to promote rural development, when peripheral areas are scarce in jobs as well as in services which can provide for refugees’ needs (McAreavey and Argent, 2018; Aure et al, 2018; Woods, 2018). 

Both Denmark and Norway, have dispersal strategies to settle refugees across the country and in rural areas. In Norway, the initiative comes from the central government, asking municipalities across the country to accept refugees for settlement. Municipalities that settle refugees receive economic support for the first five years and must provide the first housing, an obligatory two-year introductory program and a work programme (Mathisen, 2020; IMDI, 2019). Denmark also disperses refugees to all municipalities. Like Norway, it is the municipality in which the refugees are settled, that cater for the refugees for a period of three years by offering language classes and later job training. It is also the responsibility of the municipality to find housing and to financially support the refugees during their schooling and introductory programme (Larsen, 2011).

In our quest to understand the role rural places of residence play for young refugees’ we find inspiration in Kinkaid’s (2020:180) term ‘contradictions of space’, referring to moments occurring within the experience of a subject, when the person struggles to practice space and feel disorientation. Based on the phenomenology of practice (Simonsen 2021) we investigate the lived practice of young refugees. Both Simonsen and Kinkaid have studied migrants’ experiences and belonging with a starting point in the situated body. We use this approach to investigate how our young informants  navigate in and experience rural life; from housing, education, work, social life to the more ‘physical’ aspects of rural life and the material surroundings, including the natural environment, - to answer the research question: What role do the new rural place of residence play in the young refugees’ life and feeling of community and belonging, and what are the driving forces for them staying or leaving the rural areas?

The paper is a compilation of two independent studies in Denmark and Norway focusing on the experiences of refugees settled in rural areas. We decided to combine forces to get a deeper understanding of young refugees settled in the Nordic rural experiences. Our empirical material consists of young refugees arriving on their own and young refugees arriving as part of a family. The Danish case is part of a larger study on refugees re-settled in four rural municipalities. For this paper, the focus is on an abandoned nursing home (old folks home) where more than thirty single refugee men and two married couples were settled after they had been granted asylum. In 2016, 2017 and 2020 focus group interviews were conducted with respectively ten and four young refugees from Syria and Eritrea, between 17-25 years of age. They were most male except one female married to one of the males. The interviews centred around their use and perceptions of the nursing home, the town they were settled in, their everyday life and social life, as well as their plans and wishes for the future. The Norwegian case takes its starting point in the situation that occurred in the autumn of 2015 where over just a few months, more than 5500 migrants from 35 nations – mostly from Syria (40 %), Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran – crossed the Russian-Norwegian border into Eastern Finnmark, the northernmost county in Norway (Paulgaard & Soleim, 2023). In 2016 at a refugee camp near the Russian border, 12 families were interviewed at a refugee camp neat the Russian border. Three of the families initially interviewed were settled in a coastal area after having been granted asylum. Through this families the researchers were introduced to five other families with from Somalia and Syria.. The families have from 3 to 9 children at ages from baby to 17 years old. The Norwegian study is based on fieldwork entailing both field conversations, participatory observation and interviews. The analysis took place independently as part of each research study but also in collaboration. The empirical material were investigated again to identify important themes of how the young persons experienced their place of residence. The themes were compared and discussed, common topics as well as differences were identified across the two cases. The term young people are used very broadly in this paper. It covers young people from 14 to 25 years.

Despite several differences between Norwegian and Danish rural areas, in relation to geography and distances, nature and climate, and population density, the experiences from within, by young refugees, show surprisingly many similarities and common experiences. The young people in our studies encounter many of the same challenges to do with the rural environment; describing long distances, limited public transport, few meeting places, unfamiliar behavioural norms, darkness and harsh weather conditions. This shows, according to Kinkaid (2020:169) that “difference is not located to space itself”, but experienced and “formed through lived practice; sedimentation of experience.” Thus, being settled in Nordic rural areas has produced moments of contradictions and disorientation; situations of not knowing how to navigate, but also feelings of meaning and belonging, mainly spurred by socialising, especially with other peoples in the same situation as themselves. Even though the young refugees have struggled to navigate and feel at ease in the rural towns during the first years after arrival, they have not all moved or wish to move to cities. A few have stayed in the towns where they were first settled mainly due to social relations to other refugees and family. More have moved closer to educational opportunities like most young Danish and Norwegian people also do. They are pushed to move by the same structural factors such as lack of rental accommodation and the limited transport and education possibilities. However, their experiences of disorientation and unfamiliarity and not being able to practice rural space and social life properly, seem to strengthen this push and their experience of being bored, embarrassed and feeling different.

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