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RETHINKING RURAL
The Rural-Migration
Nexus
Global Problems, Rural Issues
Edited by Nathan Kerrigan · Philomena de Lima

Rethinking Rural
Series Editors
Philomena de Lima
Centre for Remote and Rural Studies
University of the Highlands and Islands
Inverness, UK
Belinda Leach
Guelph, ON, Canada
This series will foreground rural places and communities as diverse,
mutually constitutive and intrinsic to contemporary Sociology scholarship,
deeply imbricated in globalisation and colonisation processes stretched
across national spaces. This is in contrast to an urban focus which is the
implicit norm where (urban) place often can appear as the sole backdrop
to social life.
Rather than rural places being marginal to Sociology, this series
emphasises these places as embodying plural visions, voices and experiences
which are fundamental to making sense of places as sites of solidarity,
contestation and disruption in different national contexts.
Nathan Kerrigan • Philomena de Lima
Editors
The Rural-Migration
Nexus
Global Problems, Rural Issues
Editors
Nathan Kerrigan Philomena de Lima
School of Social Sciences Centre for Living Sustainability
Birmingham City University University of the Highlands
Birmingham, UK and Islands
Inverness, UK
ISSN 2730-7123 ISSN 2730-7131 (electronic)

Rethinking Rural
ISBN 978-3-031-18041-5 ISBN 978-3-031-18042-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18042-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Acknowledgements
This edited collection began, like all good ideas, as a conversation between
us as co-editors. We wanted to address the lacunae in rural migration lit-
erature on the global-rural simultaneity of international migration. We
were interested in exploring the ways in which this process shapes particu-
lar rural places and communities, as well as the exclusion, exploitation and
shifting boundaries of belonging for migrants residing and working in
rural regions of the ‘Global North’. This book has taken an immense
amount of work, taking—because of the global Covid-19 pandemic—
almost five years to complete. The edited collection would not have
become a reality without the encouragement and support of several people.
Firstly, thanks must go to Palgrave Macmillan for contracting the book.
In particularly, a massive thank you to Sharla Plant who arranged to meet
Nathan during the 2017 British Sociological Association conference to
discuss the initial idea(s) of the project. Also, to Liam Inscoe-Jones and
Corrine Li who took over from Sharla while she was on maternity leave.
We are truly grateful for your patience in waiting for the submission of the
final manuscript.
We would like to acknowledge the support of The Rural Policy Learning
Commons (RPLC, Canada) and to Philomena’s colleagues in this journey,
in particular Linamar Campos-Flores and Belinda Leach. The RPLC
Migration in Remote and Rural Areas (MIRRA) network provided an
opportunity to identify and address gaps in discourses on rural interna-
tional migration and to identify a range of contributions that help to
address these gaps. The conclusion, and in particular, the section on trans-
locality draws on a literature review undertaken by Alexandra Mirowski
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Rabelo de Souza at the University of Guelph under the supervision of

Belinda Leach and Philomena.
Finally, thank you to all the contributors of this edited collection. Tiina
Sotkasiira, Dina Bolokan, Ewa Dabrowska-Miciula, Linamar Campos-
Flores, Adriana Leona Rosales-Mendoza, Geraldine Anne Lee-Treweek,
Branislav Radeljić, Marko Stojanović, Branka Krivokapic-skoko, Katherine
Watson and Jock Collins. Without your chapters, there would not be a
book. You have all helped to contribute to the development of what we
have called the ‘rural-migration nexus’. We hope you have enjoyed being
part of this project as much as we have.
–Nathan Kerrigan and Philomena de Lima
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Nathan Kerrigan and Philomena de Lima
Globalising the Rural, Ruralising the Global 4
Rural Migration as Global-Local Interdependencies in the
Context of the Global North 8
The Rural-Migration Nexus 12
Structure of the Book 14
References 18
2 Should
I Stay or Should I Go? Developing Migrant-led
Understandings of Welcoming Rural Communities 23
Tiina Sotkasiira
Introduction 23
Background to the Research 25
Discursive, Political and Lived Dimensions of a ‘Welcoming
Community’ 30
Data Analysis 31
The Analysis of Welcome as Having, Loving and Being 34
Welcome by Being Part of Loving Relationships 36
Being and Personal Fulfilment 39
Three Dimensions of Welcoming and Well-being 41
Conclusion: The Ambiguous Experiences of Welcoming
in Rural Finland 44
References 45
vii
viii Contents
3 On
the Hypermobility of Agricultural Workers in Europe:
Life Courses Between Rural Moldova and Switzerland/
the EU 51
Dina Bolokan
Introduction 51
The Agricultural Labour Market in Switzerland and Europe 53
Translocal Life Course Perspectives Within a Post-/Decolonial
Global Ethnography Approach 56
Translocal Life Trajectories of Workers from Moldova to
Switzerland and the EU 59
On Hypermobility: Personal Challenges and Structural
Configurations 67
Conclusion 71
References 73
4 ‘Caging
All Tigers’: Pathways to Occupational Health and
Safety for Transnational Agricultural Workers in Canada 79
Ewa Dabrowska-Miciula
Introduction 79
Methods 82
Hierarchy of Prevention in Agriculture and Interventions in
Canada 83
Temporary Migrant Labour in Canadian Agriculture 86
Results 89
Discussion 99
Conclusion 103
References 104
5 Living
Better but Separated: The Emotional Impacts
of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers
Programme on Transmigrant Workers111
Linamar Campos-Flores and Adriana Leona Rosales-Mendoza
Introduction 111
Context: The Canadian Seasonal and Temporary Agricultural
Workers Programme and the Recruitment of Mexican Workers 113
Methodology 125
Distress among Chiapanecan and Yucatecan Workers 128
Emotional Images 129
Conclusion 133
References 136
Contents ix
6 Migrants,
Refugees and Settlement Camps in the Rural
and Urban Fringes of Serbia: Cultural Repertoires,
Changing Understandings and Imaginings of the Other141
Geraldine Lee-Treweek, Branislav Radeljić, and Marko
Stojanović
Introduction 141
On the Road to Change: The Rural and Urban Fringe as
Collateral Space? 143
Methods and Cultural Repertoires Theory 151
Changing Attitudes: Borders, Politics and Expediency 152
Concerns Around Culture, Extremism and Narratives of Risk 155
Discussion 163
Conclusion 166
References 167
7 Being
Global and Being Regional: Refugee
Entrepreneurship in Regional Australia171
Branka Krivokapic-skoko, Katherine Watson, and Jock Collins
Introduction 171
Settlement of Refugees and Humanitarian Migrants in Regional
and Rural Australia: An Overview 174
Refugee Entrepreneurs: Theoretical and Empirical Overviews 177
From Around the World to Regional and Rural Australia:
Researching Refugee Entrepreneurship 182
Global Connections with Rural Australia 184
Rural-Global Connections 191
Conclusion 193
References 194
8 Conclusion201
Rural Translocality and Migration 204
Emotional Well-Being and Geographies 207
Welcoming Migrants and (Hostile) Hospitality 211
Future Directions 216
References 218
Index223
Notes on Contributors
Dina Bolokan is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Centre for Gender

Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Dina Bolokan’s work deals
with the political economy of labour migration within the agricultural sec-
tor in Europe. Her main research areas and interests are located within the
fields of decolonial thought, postcolonial and post-Soviet studies, critical
border studies, and feminist epistemologies.
Linamar Campos-Flores is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the
Fonds de recherche du Québec-Société et Culture. Her research interests
include the role of emotions in human spatial interactions, migration, gen-
der, human rights, and the use of participatory audio-visual techniques in
research.
Jock Collins is Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney,
Australia. His research interests are around the interdisciplinary study of
immigration and cultural diversity in the economy and society. He is the
author or co-author of ten books and of over 100 articles in international
and national academic journals and book chapters.
Ewa Dabrowska-Miciula is a Professor at Conestoga College, Ontario.
She is a medical geographer, certified in agricultural safety by the
International Society of Agricultural Safety and Health. Her published
works focus on rural health, rural labour migration, occupational safety,
and equity in multidisciplinary projects within Canadian provinces.
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Branka Krivokapic-skoko is a Professor of Management at Charles Sturt

University, Australia. She has published extensively on revitalisation of
regional and rural Australia and regional migration. She recently co-
authored Cosmopolitan place making in Australia: Immigrant minorities
and the built environment in cities, regional and rural areas, and it was
published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Geraldine Lee-Treweek is Professor of Knowledge Exchange (KE) and
Social Justice at Birmingham City University, UK. A sociologist and policy
analyst who has moved into interdisciplinary working, the focus of Lee-
Treweek’s extensive funded portfolio is applied transnational research and
KE, using intersectional and participatory approaches to challenge social
injustice and exclusions. Recent projects have focused on migration, refu-
gees, and racism; addressing extremism and hate on higher education
(HE) campuses; student mental health and wellbeing; youth and digital
inclusion, and capacity building in higher education on the borders
of Europe.
Adriana Leona Rosales-Mendoza is a member of Mexico’s National
System of Researchers. She is a professor at the Universidad Pedagógica
Nacional-Ajusco, and is in charge of the Master’s Program in Sexuality
Studies. She conducts research on migration, gender, emotions, sexuality,
and human rights.
Branislav Radeljić is Professor of International Relations at Necmettin
Erbakan University, Konya, and Visiting Professor of European Politics at
Antonio de Nebrija University, Madrid. He is the author and editor of
numerous publications dealing with European Union, East European and
Western Balkan political and socioeconomic developments.
Tiina Sotkasiira is an Associate Professor of Social and Public Policy at
the University of Eastern Finland. Her main areas of research are interna-
tional migration and ethnic relations. She has written several books, peer
reviewed articles and book chapters and has a keen interest in method-
ological development.
Marko Stojanović is one of the Directors of the Western Balkans Institute
(WEBIN), Belgrade, Serbia, and he leads the organisation’s training acad-
emy and project management development. He has eleven years of profes-
sional development and implementation experience in collaborative and
cooperation projects in Serbia and the Western Balkans, funded under the
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
auspices of EuropAid, Erasmus+ and HORIZON p rogrammes, and UN

agencies. His work has primarily focused on social inclusion of youth,
Roma communities, and other vulnerable groups and educational capacity
building in schools and higher education (HE) and public policy analysis.
Katherine Watson received her PhD from the University of Sydney in
2011 and has been working with University of Technology Sydney. She
co-authored Compulsory schooling in Australia (2016), and currently
coordinates an Australian Research Council-funded longitudinal study of
the settlement experiences of refugees across urban and regional
communities.
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 Six steps to safety framework based on hierarchy of control in

agriculture85
Fig. 5.1 CSAWP: Mexicans entering Canada 1974–2020. Source:
Authors, with data from the Ministry of Labour, Mexico 114
Fig. 5.2 Arriaga: Participation in the CSAWP by Canadian province of
destination 2010–2020. Source: Authors with data from
Ministry of Labour, Mexico 116
Fig. 5.3 Yucatán. Participation in the CSAWP by Canadian province of
destination 2010–2020. Source: Authors with data from
Ministry of Labour, Mexico 116
Fig. 6.1 Diagram showing the typical ‘Balkan Corridor’ migration route.
Source: Abikova and Piotrowicz (2021). 145
Fig. 7.1 Percentage of refugees settling outside Australian capital cities,
1996–2011. Source: adapted from Hugo et al. (2015: 74) 175
xv
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Examples of welcoming activities 32

Table 2.2 Policy, discursive and lived dimensions of welcome 42
Table 4.1 Number of positions approved in agriculture under the
Temporary Foreign Worker Programme (TFWP) for
international migrants by programme type from 2010 to 2018 88
Table 4.2 TAWs’ occupational health and safety trajectories located
within intersecting spheres of concern in literature from 2010
to 2020 90
Table 4.3 Actions and priorities for enhancing injury prevention among
TAWs in Canada (modified from Agrivita Canada, 2017: 21) 101
Table 5.1 Characteristics of the CSAWP workers interviewed 119
Table 5.2 Categories of analyses used in our research 127
Table 7.1 Location of settlement and country of origin/ethnicity of
informants184
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
We are living in a dynamic and globalising world, intensified by cheap

transport and new technologies resulting in opportunities for some and
multiple risks, dangers, and insecurities for others across most regions of
the world. One of the most recent highlighted globalised changes to have
had an impact on people’s daily lives is migration. Globalisation under-
pinned by the drive for increasing profit margins has resulted in deepening
the ties between places—rural and urban—by distanciating time-space
through developments in technological communications, the internet and
digital revolution, cheap air travel, and multiculture (Giddens, 1991;
Harvey, 1989; Massey, 1994). This has also resulted in globalised markets
becoming increasingly reliant on migrant labour. Whilst it is important to
N. Kerrigan (*)
School of Social Sciences, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK
e-mail: Nathan.kerrigan@bcu.ac.uk
P. de Lima
Centre for Living Sustainability, University of the Highlands and Islands,
Inverness, UK
e-mail: philomena.delima.ic@uhi.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
N. Kerrigan, P. de Lima (eds.), The Rural-Migration Nexus,
Rethinking Rural,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18042-2_1
2 N. KERRIGAN AND P. DE LIMA
recognise that the geographical scope of countries implicated in labour

migration has increased across most regions of the world, this edited col-
lection includes contributions from rural areas in Europe, Canada, and
Australia. Although wealthy nation states such as Britain, most EU mem-
ber states, Australia, and Canada benefit from the employment of low-
wage, mostly temporary migrant labour, there are multiple economic,
political, and social consequences for the migrants and the local communi-
ties they migrate to. For instance, migrants are restricted to the types of
employment opportunities afforded to them; often working in low-paid,
low-skilled jobs in a wide range of sectors such as tourism, care, agricul-
ture, manufacturing, and construction (de Lima & Carvajal, 2020). They
also face issues of integration, exclusion, and racism within the local com-
munities where they reside. They are often used as ‘scapegoats’ in political
discourses around the precariousness of the labour market and the erosion
of national social and welfare infrastructures.
It is widely acknowledged that one of the major global trends arising
out of globalisation is the widening gap of inequalities within and across
nation states (United Nations, 2020a, 2020b). In the context of these
widening national and global inequalities aided by the media and political
actors, some sections of the population have attributed their declining
standards of living to an increase in migration. Although there are deeper
structural issues at the national and global levels that have impacted on
people’s lives, it is migration that is made a visible scapegoat for these
other structural concerns: for example, economic austerity and cutbacks,
the gig economy, and the precarity of work that many sections of the
worldwide population are experiencing and are of legitimate concern
(Seidler, 2018). Migration and its perceived impact on standards of living
is one of the factors that led the British public (in England and Wales in
particular) to vote 52–48% in favour of leaving the European Union on 23
June 2016 (Outhwaite, 2017). The vote for Brexit was worked up and
constructed as an act of resistance: a push-back against not only continu-
ous migrations but also elitist politicians. Given that politicians rely on
processes of migration for the socio-economic development of the coun-
try, they were perceived by some sections of the public to advocate for the
expansion of a global multiculture through state-driven social policies of
integration that ignored the lived everyday realities and experiences of the
‘British public’. The Brexit referendum resulting from the protection of a
predominately English national identity by claiming back sovereignty and
control over its own borders was not a national story in isolation from the
1 INTRODUCTION 3
rest of the world. There are other, similar national narratives happening
globally—with the increase in anti-migration parties in Canada such as
Coalition Avenir Québec (Blanchet & Medeiros, 2019), Finland topping
the European Social Attitudes Survey (2018) as being the most racist and
xenophobic country in Europe with 63% of migrants reporting racist inci-
dents, and the growth of the Populist Right more generally in countries
such as the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland. These move-
ments clearly highlight how processes of globalisation that have come to
be seen as resulting in an increase in international migration can also
impact on the lived realities of migrants living and working in ‘host’
nations.
It is important to note that some of the challenges and experiences that
have emerged in relation to increased global connectivity shape and are
shaped by various factors operating across different scalar levels, from local
to global and across diverse geographical contexts. One example of ‘the
local’ where these issues are played out is within rural spaces. Michael
Woods (2007) in his paper, ‘Engaging the global countryside: globalisa-
tion, hybridity and the reconstitution of rural place’, exemplifies processes
of international migration have a strong rural visibility in the form of sea-
sonal migrant labour, which has always been and continues to be a typical
feature of rurality, globally. In other words, there exists a global-rural rela-
tionship of migration where rural regions is a mirror which should be
viewed as being shaped by and influencing the same problems and issues
which processes of globalisation have thrown up that is seen to manifest in
the context of migration (e.g., precarious employment, exclusion, and rac-
ism). This is evidenced by even the briefest glances of statistics, with 55%
of the Brexit vote coming from the English countryside (Country Land
and Business Association, 2016).
The aim of this edited collection is to explore and examine the ways in
which global-rural relationships shape rural places and communities of
place through the lens of migration by focusing on agribusiness and rural
development, as well as othering and the shifting boundaries of belonging
in rural spaces. The chapters throughout this book take stock of these
issues through an examination of how processes of globalisation influence
different rural contexts in the ‘global north’ and the impact this has on
migrant populations. The editors acknowledge there is no ideal term to
describe the relationship between countries given the dynamic nature of
geopolitics and the impact on the hierarchical ordering of national states.
Organisations such as the United Nations and the International
Organisation for Migration frequently use income as the key term—for

example, high- and low-income countries. Similarly, migration and devel-
opment theories are dominated by binary terms such as sending-receiving,
origin-destination, here-there; modern-traditional, first-world-third-
world, global north-south, core-peripheral. Such binaries are now ‘widely
used in tracking and analysing migration within its own analytic lens, ter-
minology, direction of developmental efforts and location of develop-
ment’ (Raghuram, 2020: 44). Given this context, the editors have chosen
to tentatively employ distinctions such as global-north-south but also oth-
ers—to demonstrate the connections between international migration and
rural areas of Europe, Canada, and Australia (see Raghuram, 2020 for a
more detailed discussion on the use of binaries in migration and develop-
ment thinking). Chapters in this edited collection examine the impact of
experiences of exclusion and racism faced by migrants and refugees living
in rural regions—from the social and emotional and occupational health
costs associated with working in the agribusiness sectors to individualised
experiences of exclusion and racism that emerge from living and working
within ‘host’ rural areas. These chapters taken together identify the dialec-
tical relationship between, and the problematics of, international migra-
tion and their influence of and impact on localised rural spaces.
Globalising the Rural, Ruralising the Global

Globalisation is a dominant social, political, economic, and spatial force
that has reshaped rural societies since the turn of the twenty-first century
(McDonagh et al., 2015). At the micro-level, its pervasiveness has had
impact on the dynamics of rural life, while the unyielding pace of globali-
sation has seen rural regions undergo processes of major economic restruc-
turing at the macro-level. As far back as 2007, the European Commission
recognised that ‘globalisation is seen to touch every walk of life—opening
doors, creating opportunities, raising apprehensions’ (European
Commission, 2007). However, discussing globalisation as a monolithic
social, political, economic, and spatial force ignores the fact that it is not a
singular process. Globalisation encompasses a plethora of different pro-
cesses and developments that act in tandem with one another but are also
independent and contradictory. It has a transformative impact on all local
places including rural areas. This trend is facilitated by the intensification
of transnational integration of economic systems including the mobility of
goods, capital, and services, as well as the concentration of economic
1 INTRODUCTION 5
influence in transnational corporations with a blasé approach to capital

accumulation. In addition, the intensification of mobile populations is
aided by the diffusion of communication networks (the time-space com-
pression associated with the growth of the internet and digital revolution),
the stretching out of social relations, and the circulation and hybridisation
of culture and knowledge systems (Woods & McDonagh, 2011).
Faulconbridge and Beaverstock (2009: 332) assert that the concept of
globalisation ‘has long been contested’. Sociologists, geographers, and
political scientists have all proposed an array of definitions, each differing
in its focus and emphasis. For this edited collection, we have chosen to
take a relational perspective—as advocated by social scientists such as Ash
Amin (2002) and the late Doreen Massey (2005)—towards examining
processes of globalisation in the context of the rural. The relational
approach has become popular among sociologists of space and geogra-
phers, offering a way of moving beyond spatial essentialism which presents
places as fixed and bounded while eliding the significance of locality, as
well as postmodernist approaches (see Ray Pahl, 1966 for discussions
around ‘villages of the mind’) that favour the discursive dimensions of
place to the neglect of its materiality. This relational perspective positions
space as ‘a product of practices, trajectories, interrelations’ (Massey, 2005:
5) that are dynamic and contingent. Space, in this context, is not seg-
mented into territorialised places, but rather relational and which are
brought into being as meeting points or entanglements of diverse social,
economic, cultural, and political relations. Massey (2005: 140) refers to
this as the ‘thrown togetherness of place’: that is to say, places are always
hybrid, always fluid, always changing, and always threaded together with
other places.
This relational approach aligns with Steger’s (2003: 11) characterisa-
tion of globalisation as ‘a multidimensional set of social processes that
create, multiply, stretch and intensify worldwide social interdependencies
and exchanges while at the same time fostering in people a growing aware-
ness of deepening connections between the local and the distant’. This
definition resonates with the works of Amin (2002) and Massey (2005)
which illustrate the complexities and contingencies of globalisation. Such
a characterisation reveals processes of globalisation as ambivalent, as nei-
ther advantageous nor threatening (see also, Sikod, 2006). Woods
(2007)—borrowing heavily from Massey (2005)—explores imaginings of
rural places as entanglements of diverse social, economic, political, and
cultural relations. His concept of the ‘global countryside’ articulates rural
regions as spaces that are integrated and interconnected through globalis-

ing processes and developments, but which are also contested and marked
by redistributions of power at the local level. In other words, global-rural
areas are emergent, fragile, and fragmented spaces, which are more diffuse
and dispersed. As Woods (2007: 499) states:
The reconstitution of rural spaces under globalization results from the per-
meability of rural localities as hybrid assemblages of human and non-human
entities, knitted together intersections of networks and flows that are never
wholly fixed or contained at the local scale, and whose constant shapeshift-
ing eludes a singular representation of place […] In this way, places in the
emergent global countryside retain their local distinctiveness.
Globalisation, therefore, proceeds by capturing, substituting, cutting, and

replacing these relations, changing the ways in which rural places are con-
nected to other places, while simultaneously changing rural areas them-
selves. There is a small but growing body of European and North American
rural literature on globalisation (see, e.g., Bolokan, 2021; Edmondson,
2003; Epp & Whitson, 2001; Hedberg & Haandrikman, 2014; Nienaber
& Roos, 2016; Shortall & Bock, 2017; Woods, 2007, 2013, 2018) which
has explored specific rural place-based experiences of globalisation relating
to issues such as gender, migration, and transnational commodity and care
chains (e.g., agribusiness practices).
Through this relational perspective, rurality can be understood as nei-
ther a bounded and definable territory nor a purely imaginary space with-
out materiality. Rather rurality is relational and dynamic—with change
being integral to how globalisation has worked throughout history—dis-
cursively constructed through entanglements of different social, eco-
nomic, political, and cultural processes that produce and draw articulations
from the material foundations of rural regions and spaces (Murdoch,
2003). This is illustrated in, for example, the notion of the ‘rural idyll’,
much discussed in mainly the English but also other national contexts—
for example, Serbia, and some areas of North America and Australia (see,
for instance, Thrift, 1989; Short, 1991; Bunce, 1994; Rose, 1995). The
idyllicisation of rural space is a dominant discourse in these nations’ under-
standings of rural areas. The ‘rural idyll’ is a product of the dynamic rela-
tionship between a diverse set of social processes and politicised labour
relations. This is reflected in the romanticised images of agricultural work
by those on the left and ‘traditional’ crafts and home-made food
1 INTRODUCTION 7
production within the domestic sphere as idealised by those on the right

(all of which ignore the racialised and gendered nature of such labour),
cultural conventions, and landscape metaphors (Fowler, 2021; Francis &
Henderson, 1992; Readman, 2018). It is the combination of these differ-
ent relations that produces the distinctive imagining that is perceived to be
so iconic and quintessential to this specific configuration of rurality. Yet, it
is also these relations that tie these idyllicised imaginings into broader
networks and structures, and which reinforce the image of rural areas as
vulnerable to ‘distant events’ such as the incursion of neoliberalism, migra-
tion, and urbanisation (Halfacree, 2012; Stenbacka, 2012; Tonts &
Horsley, 2019).
Seeing rurality as relational facilitates a critical approach to the populist
narratives concerning international rural migration that prevail in favour
of answering more meaningful questions. These include questions such as,
how are rural places remade through migration? How has migration
become enmeshed into new or reproduced rural relations? And how
migration is ambivalently experienced, being welcomed and supported,
on the one hand, through state-driven social policies, while exploited and
subject to racism and exclusion, on the other, by the same social policies
and their reception from ‘host’ communities? It is these questions which
form the thematic content presented by chapters in this book. The pur-
pose of this edited collection is not in contributing to the ongoing
(abstract) discussions regarding globalisation’s relationship to the rural.
Nor is it about commenting on the merits of international rural migration,
or whether the ‘global countryside’ (Woods, 2007) is actually a new con-
cept or that rural has always been global given that agriculture has relied
on seasonal labour (especially within Western states) as well as the colonial
legacies that form the rural landscape (Fowler, 2021). Instead, the focus
of this book is on presenting an analysis of how globalisation through the
facilitation of international labour and more recently refugee migration
into many rural areas on a scale not experienced before is experienced,
negotiated, and contested within the ‘global north’.
The task of this edited collection is to acknowledge that to fully under-
stand the impact of the international migration-global nexus, it is essential
to explore how it is experienced at a local level—in this case rural contexts.
This involves unpacking the multiple contradictory and ambivalent ways
in which migration is promoted, managed, and experienced—for instance,
state governments encouraging migration through policies that both wel-
come and exploit individual migrants (Chap. 2), resulting in harsh lived
experiences/realities characterised by mental health issues and the exer-

tion of much emotional labour (Chaps. 3 and 4), occupational health and
safety issues in the workplace (Chap. 4), and exclusion and racism from
‘host’ communities (Chaps. 6 and 7). Together these chapters present
attempts to understand the plurality of experiences with regard to how
migration processes are manifested across different rural areas of the
‘global north’.
Rural Migration as Global-Local Interdependencies

in the Context of the Global North
Migration needs to be understood as being embedded within dynamic and

globalising processes, having influence on, and being impacted by, a range
of social, cultural, economic, and political structures. Migration is con-
stantly shaped and reshaped across scaler levels—from local to global—
and within diverse geographical contexts, most notably between urban
and rural regions but also between rural localities themselves. Rye and
O’Reilly (2021) argue that the specificities of migration flows need to be
understood to examine how wider social structures influence the contex-
tuality of globalised migration through a range of opportunities and risks.
This contextuality presents distinctive experiences and practices for differ-
ent nation states in relation to migration. Over the past two decades, these
interconnections have become increasingly evident in the rising levels of
migration globally, which has led to Castles and Miller (2009) to term this
temporal moment the ‘Age of Migration’.
The number of people living outside of their country of origin was 281
million in 2020, with international migrants representing less than 4% of
the world’s total population. Much of the increase for the last few decades
have come from labour and family migration and more recently from asy-
lum seekers, refugees, and forcibly displaced populations (United Nations,
2020a, 2020b: 6–7). These migratory flows are closely related to ruralised
systems of food production and the wider agribusiness industry. As shown
in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5 of this edited collection, rural migration is still largely
rooted in, and a direct response to, the dynamics of globalised food pro-
duction and wider agribusiness systems, which often rely on having access
to cheap and flexible migrant labour. It is also important to acknowledge
however that processes of economic restructuring have resulted in rural
economies becoming not that different from urban areas—at least in the
1 INTRODUCTION 9
UK—in terms of economic activities. The proportion of individuals

employed in the land-based sector has declined in comparison to those
now working in manufacturing, service industries and quality food prod-
ucts (Shucksmith, 2012). Both of these trends have been facilitated by
migrant worker recruiters (Martin, 2017), forced migration, and the cre-
ation of bilateral agreements between countries in the ‘global north’ and
the ‘global south’ that have intensified the concentration of migrant sup-
ply chains from countries in the ‘global south’ (Preibisch, 2012). These
trends have facilitated ‘frictionless’ migratory flows—for employers—and
often exclusionary and exploitative social and occupational conditions for
migrants and refugees that lock them out of settlement and rights (Allen
& Axelsson, 2019).
There have been various major geopolitical changes over the past 30
years that have driven cross-border migration to rural areas. In the context
of Europe, the fall of communism (1989–1990) and enlargements of the
European Union (both in 2004 and 2007) were significant in facilitating
new migratory patterns (Rye & O’Reilly, 2021). European migration has
tended to move towards more western regions of the European continent,
reflecting strong regional economic disparities between ‘old’ and ‘new’
EU members states. An examination of population change between 1990
and 2010 within and across European nations (e.g., Spain, Portugal,
Greece, Ireland, some regions of the UK, and the Nordic countries) high-
lights ‘old’ (western) EU member states seeing population growth, with
much of this growth occurring in rural regions (Johansson, 2015: 104).
The pattern of population change in the ‘new’ (eastern) EU member
states during the same period was, however, quite different, with many
‘new’ member states experiencing negative population trends. This was
largely due to Eastern Europe undergoing political transformation pro-
cesses—because of the collapse of communism—that affected both the
economy and the labour market in these nations. This led to population
decreases as individuals within the remotely localised periphery areas of
Europe (mostly in Eastern European countries) looked to other areas and
regions, particularly within Western European countries, for employment
opportunities—affecting both rural and urban areas across Europe
(Johansson, 2015).
Similarly, in North America, migrants have been increasingly arriving in
small cities and their peripheral towns, as well as in rural areas (Jentsch &
Simard, 2016). Specifically, within the context of Canada, migration has
moved increasingly from small urban areas to rural areas, mainly prompted
by policies and programmes such as the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural

Workers Programme that draws upon (mostly) Mexican migrant labour to
support food production and the wider agribusiness sector (Hennebry &
Preibisch, 2012). Such patterns of migration differ by province. Some
provinces have benefited more than others—with rural areas in British
Columbia, Yukon Territory, Ontario, and Alberta all seeing greater con-
centration of seasonal migrants in recent years than other regions of
Canada—but all have an emotional and mental health impact on the
migrants involved with many having to live away from their families for
prolonged periods of time (see Chap. 5). The use of temporary labour
migration programmes by governments is not isolated to rural Canada but
operates in many countries across the world (McLaughlin & Weiler,
2017), especially given the changing demographics of aging populations
and outmigration of the young and the economically active. In addition,
more recently rural areas are also increasingly being seen as suitable desti-
nations for the hosting and settling of refugees as discussed in Chaps. 2, 3,
6, and 7 (see also Glorious et al., 2020).
Against the background of changing demographics, governments in
the ‘global north’ are adopting welcoming policies as a way of (presenting
themselves as) being open to migration to rural regions. Welcoming poli-
cies aim to achieve the ‘integration’ of migrant communities through dif-
ferent strategies of mobilisation and intercultural familiarisation as well as
participation to ensure migrants are integrated into employment and the
labour market, local schools, community organisations, and other social
institutions. Public and voluntary sector organisations are crucial to help-
ing migrants cope and adjust in ‘host’ communities. These organisations
provide informal support and advice to migrants in helping them to settle.
Countries such as Canada, Finland (see Chap. 2), and Scotland have all
adopted policies of welcome to increase migratory flows to their rural
areas to address labour shortages and the demographic and economic
challenges they face. Some commentators (see, for instance, Gimpel &
Lay, 2008; Jackson & Jones, 2014) maintain that such political strategies
of integration can contribute to furthering feelings of exclusion for migrant
communities. Processes of welcoming migrants into ‘host’ communities
or indeed nations is conditional on migrants ‘fitting in’. It involves
migrants having to adhere to particular sets of rules, laws, and customs.
Thus, integration is only ever partially achievable and subject to the
decision-making of ‘host’ communities/nations to welcome and support
the settling of migrant communities, suspending migrants between the
1 INTRODUCTION 11
poles of inclusion/exclusion, as individuals who are present but not fully

enrolled residents/citizens (de Lima & Wright, 2009).
Given that processes and conditions of welcoming are determined by
the ‘host’ community/nation and can be withdrawn at any time, migrants
experience many challenges and uncertainties regarding the processes of
integration and inclusion. This is especially true of the political moment at
the present time. Over the past decade, there has been a growth in right-
wing populism. Such political commentators and parties (e.g., UKIP in
the UK, the Golden Dawn Party in Greece, Le Pen’s Front Nationale in
France, Coalition Avenir Québec in Canada, Trumpism in the USA) have
all constructed narratives around migrant populations, with migrants
being worked up as external threats and internal dangers against whom
nation states and ‘host’ communities must defend themselves (Virdee &
McGeever, 2017). In the context of the rural, these narratives have been
highly concentrated, with Mamonova and Franquesa (2019: 710) assert-
ing that right-wing populism found its ‘greatest support among rural
communities’. These anti-migrant discourses—despite being global in
reach—are highly contextual with different countries focusing on differ-
ent migratory flows. For example, right-wing populism in Italy established
anti-migration discourses with reference to Italian agricultural and food
traditions (‘nativism’) (see Iocco et al., 2020). While, in the UK, one of
the central arguments presented for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU
(‘Brexit’) was the wish to restrict labour migration from Central and
Eastern Europe, as well as the large numbers of refugees fleeing conflict in
Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, who made their way to EU
member states via border crossings as part of the 2015 refugee crisis. Many
of these 2015 migrants arrived in rural destinations to find work (Brovia
& Piro, 2020).
These trends have further presented the need for thinking through
rural patterns of migration as part of a wider system of relationality within
the context of dynamic globalised spaces. The chapters in this edited col-
lection demonstrate the uniqueness of migratory experiences across rural
areas. They also highlight the ways rural migration is shaped and reshaped
by global changes and far-reaching structural shifts and how these are
understood, experienced, and performed in different rural contexts in
diverse ways, resulting in various modes of inclusion, integration, assimila-
tion, exclusion, racism, and exploitation. As such, rural migration needs to
be researched as a multiscalar spatialised phenomenon—encapsulated in
the term ‘rural-migration nexus’ adopted in this edited collection—where

the ongoing outcomes of migration emerge from the dynamism of local
and global social relations and structures.
The Rural-Migration Nexus

The term chosen to conceptualise the global interdependences described
above between migration and the rural is the ‘rural-migration nexus’.
Transnational perspectives within the field of migration studies have long
drawn attention to the importance of giving due considerations to migrant
interactions across national spaces (see, for instance, King, 2012). Despite
an existing body of work (Basch et al., 1994; Levitt & Schiller, 2004)
highlighting the dialectical relationship of transnational migration pro-
cesses between sending and receiving areas, this research has tended to
focus predominately on the macro-level and largely in urban contexts
(O'Reilly, 2012). For the purposes of this edited collection, it is important
to conceptualise and make sense of transnational migrant experiences of
living and working in rural areas. In this context, migrants are paradoxi-
cally fixed within a liminal space, navigating between the ‘here’ (e.g.,
establishing belonging in ‘host’ rural communities or putting up with
poor conditions of work, limited rights, and dealing with emotional loss)
and the ‘there’ (e.g., financially supporting their families and maintaining
regular contact with family and friends, as well as maintaining emotional
and often physical connection to their homeland; see Chap. 4); conse-
quently, changing the nature of rural places themselves.
At the time of writing, there has been no formal references to the term
‘rural-migration nexus’ in the rural sociological or geographical literature.
Nor within the field of migration studies. There has, however, been refer-
ences to an ‘agriculture-migration nexus’ (see Akeju, 2013) and a
‘migration-development’ nexus (Faist & Fauser, 2011), which is not the
focus of this edited collection. What sets the ‘rural-migration nexus’ apart
from this previous research (e.g., Akeju, 2013; Faist & Fauser, 2011) is
that it seeks to address questions concerning the interconnections between
migration and rural in the context of a dynamic global-rural simultaneity
that underpins experiences of migration. That is to say, the actions that
happen in rural contexts are simultaneously affecting and are affected by
other ruralised social fields and multi-layered global processes, leading to
what Carmo and Hedberg (2019) have termed a translocal mobility sys-
tem of rural migration.
1 INTRODUCTION 13
Rural migration as shaped through interconnected rural-global pro-

cesses is of course not a new idea. Historically, transnational mobilities
(forced and voluntary) of populations including from one rural area to
another has always happened. In this sense, the rural has always been
global and movement of people has been a feature of this. However, pro-
cesses of globalisation have intensified—as discussed earlier—and have
produced and reconstituted new patterns of spatial rural mobilities (Sheller
& Urry, 2006), albeit in a different form and shape. This is reflected by an
intensification and diversification of migration circulation between not
only rural and urban areas, but also between rural spaces situated in differ-
ent regional, national, and international geographies (Hedberg & Carmo,
2012). This acceleration of movement is a characteristic of late-modern
globalisation and has introduced new complexities within rural areas—for
example, the emergence of new patterns of daily life, the diversification of
businesses, and the arrival of new social groups (Woods, 2007)—resulting
in the transformation rather than the diminution of rurality.
What marks contemporary patterns of international rural migration
from previous forms is its scale and intensity, as well as it being a deliberate
aspect of state management and policy to address labour shortages.
Contemporary patterns of international rural migration are deeply
enmeshed within processes of globalisation through migrants’ participa-
tion in networks and mobilities between different localities (Hedberg &
Carmo, 2012; Woods, 2007); thus simultaneously becoming important
actants on the global scale too. This means rural areas are not ‘fixed’ places
immune to migratory flows and networks that circulate all over the world.
Conversely, rural areas are relational and interconnected spaces, which are
constructed through their interrelations with other spaces (Massey, 2005)
resulting in a dynamic of spatial mobility of rural migration that is simul-
taneously global whilst also locally embedded, affecting change nationally
and internationally. In other words, migrants and refugees navigate life
between different spaces, but, once they have moved, they do not cease to
engage with the social and cultural sensibilities and materiality of the
spaces they have left. Rather, they add the place of arrival to the place of
departure (along with previous places where they have lived), connecting
and transforming rural places—as well as national and international con-
texts—through their mobility (Brickell & Datta, 2011). The concept of
translocalism best captures these contemporary forms of international
rural migration and the production of relational ruralities (Brickell &
Datta, 2011), seeing the transformation of rural (and national and
international) places not only through the activities that occur as migrants
move but also through the activities of migrants and the consequences
that are produced in rural space through such activities (Smith, 2001).
Structure of the Book

Working across six central chapters, this edited collection aims to unpack
the various complexities and contingencies embedded within these pro-
cesses of the rural-migration nexus. Beginning with Chap. 2, Tiina
Sotkasiira examines Finland’s ‘Welcoming Countryside’ policy, which
draws together different actors at regional and local levels to develop ini-
tiatives that engage various organisations as well as newcomers and estab-
lished community members to create warmer and more welcoming rural
communities and programmes that facilitate the settlement and integra-
tion of newcomers. Drawing on qualitative data collected from participant
observations and interviews with diverse groups of migrants living and
working in rural areas of Finland, this chapter explores what enables and
facilitates migrants to stay long-term in rural regions. From a Nordic per-
spective, the chapter produces new empirical and migrant-led insight into
the notion of ‘welcoming’ rural communities and the diverse lived experi-
ences of rural migrants in Finland. The chapter also acknowledges the
contradictory processes, through which migrants are, on the level of
regional politics, constituted as very important members of rural commu-
nities, while simultaneously in their everyday lives experience discrimina-
tion and face difficulties as they attempt to navigate life locally.
Chapter 3 explores changes in European and global food chains over
past decades that have prompted an enormous demand for temporary
workers. In particular, Dina Bolokan draws on decolonial perspectives and
life course ethnographies to highlight two dynamics which have been
increasingly strengthened in the agricultural sector in the last decade in
Europe: prison-like working conditions on the one hand and the hyper-
mobility of workers on the other. She argues that mobility agreements
foster the concept of so-called circular migration and are essential for just-
in-time recruitment practices, which correspond with the needs of wealth-
ier European countries. The chapter demonstrates how these forms of
confinement for workers and the transnationalisation of Fordist recruit-
ment logic are not the product of a hidden strategy but of the interaction
of colonialism, a repressive migration regime and the neoliberalisation of
agriculture in Post-Soviet societies. The case study presented in this
1 INTRODUCTION 15
chapter focuses on Post-Soviet Moldova, a country on the so-called

periphery of Europe. It deals with one of the countries from which labour
to Europe can be recruited, although Moldova is not part of the European
Union and hence does not fit into the two-circles model. By focusing on
the recruitment structures and bilateral agreements between Switzerland/
Europe and Moldova in relation to circular migration policies and post-
soviet citizenship practices, this chapter facilitates an understanding of
how the agricultural sector in Europe is organised, the impact of outmi-
gration on post-Soviet rural Moldova, and the enduring health impacts on
Moldovan migrants.
Chapter 4 demonstrates how changes in regional economic conditions
in Canada have contributed to the changing proportion of migrants arriv-
ing in rural areas. The changing nature of population mobility into rural
areas, both for highly skilled and low-skilled occupations, results from the
expansion of Temporary Foreign Worker Programmes. While there are
positive effects of growing food closer to home and a preference for local
produce, which contribute to lowering greenhouse gas emissions and
increasing the quantity of fresher products delivered directly to customers,
there are also negative health implications for migrant workers, including
long-term agriculture-related ill health and occupational injuries.
Agricultural migrant work is considered to be one of the most hazardous
occupations. Within this chapter, Ewa Dabrowska-Miciula focuses on
exploring the gaps in agricultural safety and immigration policies that have
been unevenly addressed across Canada. Specifically, this chapter seeks to
answer the following question: how can future studies overcome research
gaps and inform programmes and policies intended to increase the well-
being of communities and the safety of transnational migrants in rural
Canada? This research adopts a multi-method approach, incorporating
primary research, current government reports and policy briefs, as well as
secondary data and resources from Immigration, Refuge and Citizenship
Canada (IRCC). Critical analysis of the experience of transnational Latina
migrant workers in Canada presented within this chapter leads to the con-
clusion that a Canadian food policy that seeks to achieve sustainable food
systems should include a focus on protecting the health and safety of the
people who do the work—the human capital of those transnational agri-
cultural workers from the rural ‘global south’.
Building upon the narratives of Chap. 4, Linamar Campos-Flores and
Adriana Leona Rosales-Mendoza in Chap. 5 investigate the exploitative
conditions of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Programme.
Previous research undertaken has found that the employer-tied contracts

signed by transnational agricultural workers increase the risks and expo-
sure of these workers to abuse, exploitation, and occupational illnesses
that go unrecognised as well as a violation of their rights and liberties
enshrined in Canadian Law (Basok, 1999; Basok et al., 2014; Preibisch,
2007). Most of these studies have centred on labour, legal, social, or
health issues, neglecting the emotional component which plays a funda-
mental role in transnational agricultural workers’ mental health and well-
being because of the prevalence of stress and chronic illnesses (which
remain unrecognised) associated with their working conditions. Drawing
on the results of a larger research project, Chap. 5 examines data collected
using interviews and visual ethnographic methods with Mexican transmi-
grant agricultural workers. The chapter demonstrates that the Canadian
Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programme represents a site of emotional
labour for migrants who are stuck between the ‘here’ (the place they call
home) and the ‘there’ (the work site) by building on the studies that
emphasise the importance of addressing the intersections of gendered
identity, work, and emotions (Bryant & Jaworski, 2011; Ey et al., 2017;
Hochschild, 1983).
Shifting the focus from migrants themselves to the attitudes towards
migrants by ‘host’ communities, Chap. 6 denotes how rural regions in
Europe remain a place of slow change that is considered to be immune to
some of the worst excesses of city or suburban living, such as crime, social
unrest, and even social and ethnic difference. In Serbia, whilst the concept
of rurality may not be as romanticised as in other European countries,
such as the UK, the narratives of the rural are no less compelling and are
set against the presumption of the rapid change of city lives. In Serbia,
most people live in either cities or towns and there has been a de-
ruralification process ongoing for many years. But at the same time, Serbia
has undergone massive change related to the arrival of migrants and refu-
gees, due to Serbia being central to the Balkan corridor route for those
refugees who have travelled across the Mediterranean and who seek pas-
sage into Europe. Once that route was shut in 2016, and fortress Europe
drew up the drawbridge (primarily blocking the train routes across the
Western Balkans borders and building fences as boundaries), refugees
found themselves ‘stuck’ in Serbia and refugee camps sprang up in rural
areas to cater for them. The changes in Serbia due to migration have not
been lost on right-wing narratives and narrators in politics but also in
‘host’ communities. Geraldine Lee-Treweek, Branislav Radeljić, and
1 INTRODUCTION 17
Marko Stojanović in this chapter demonstrate the ways in which migrants

are constructed to be ‘out of place’ in the rural fringes of Serbian towns
and cities. The chapter reports on the mythologies that have grown up
around rural change, migration, and migrants themselves. Drawing on the
accounts of NGO workers to report on narratives around these rural inter-
lopers, findings illustrate how migrants are perceived through a lens of
being out of place and represented as an insertion of an urban problem
into rural locales.
The final central chapter of this edited collection (Chap. 7) observes
the strategies adopted by refugees over many decades in Australia and
other countries of the ‘global north’ to overcome restricted access to
labour market mobility (Collins, 2003). Branka Krivokapic-skoko,
Katherine Wilson, and Jock Collins illustrate in this chapter that one strat-
egy refugees employ to overcome such restrictive labour market mobility
practices is to create their own jobs through refugee entrepreneurship.
Refugee entrepreneurship in Australia is shaped by the intersection of sev-
eral factors: ethnic resources and networks, class resources, regimes of
regulation, inclusion/exclusion, opportunity, family relations, gender, and
racialisation. This chapter presents data gathered from interviews with 15
African female refugee entrepreneurs currently living in regional and rural
Australia. It investigates the reasons why female refugees started up their
own business, their strategies for overcoming the massive obstacles they
faced setting up the business, and the extent to which their businesses are
embedded in their family and community. African female entrepreneurs
located in non-metropolitan Australia are also involved in diasporic entre-
preneurship, with the critical role that international social networks of
migrant communities play in the dynamics and success of these enter-
prises. The chapter identifies strong relations between resources obtained
from personal network ties of the African female refugees and start-up
success of their enterprises, as well as through the process of internation-
alisation. African female refugees benefited from social networks and com-
mitment among the family but even more from the trust and relationships
established and maintained through personal contacts with overseas based
buyers and suppliers. The chapter further denotes the experience of formal
and informal discrimination; the extent to which the racialisation of female
refugees in Australia has shaped their lives, blocked their access to the
labour market, and influenced moving into specific ethnic niche industries;
as well as the contradictions embedded in the refugee entrepreneurship
paradox in Australia.
In the concluding chapter, the ‘rural-migration-nexus’ is further

extrapolated. Detailing how processes of globalisation—of which migra-
tion is a part—change and have impact on rural places, facilitating conse-
quences for both migrants and ‘host’ communities with a range of varied
processual, conflicting, and sometimes contradictory differences and simi-
larities across rural spaces, selected emergent themes covered across each
of the chapters are drawn together highlighting wider social and policy
implications and future research trajectories in relation to illuminating fur-
ther the rural-migration nexus nested within the global-local
relationship.
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CHAPTER 2
Should I Stay or Should I Go? Developing

Migrant-led Understandings of Welcoming
Rural Communities
Tiina Sotkasiira
Introduction
The urban-rural dynamic is changing worldwide. Many countries, espe-
cially in the ‘Global North’, are dealing with population decline and age-
ing. This is experienced more so in rural areas, while employment and
educational opportunities tend to concentrate in and around the urban
growth centres. In a rapidly industrialised country like Finland, more than
70% of the population now reside in urban areas (Helminen et al., 2020).
Young people and the economically active in particular seek education and
employment opportunities and lifestyle changes in larger cities (Armila
et al., 2018). In Finland, many rural municipalities also struggle to fund
and deliver educational, social, health and leisure services for diminishing
populations. For example, the number of village shops has dropped by
T. Sotkasiira (*)
University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland
e-mail: tiina.sotkasiira@uef.fi
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2023
N. Kerrigan, P. de Lima (eds.), The Rural-Migration Nexus,
Rethinking Rural,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18042-2_2
24 T. SOTKASIIRA
20% between 2012 and 2015, around 60 village schools close each year
and the number of post offices in rural areas has decreased steadily since
the 1990s (Sireni et al., 2017).
Amidst such change, international migration has gained prominence
(Hedberg & Haandrikman, 2014; Hugo & Morén-Alégret, 2008). It has
become portrayed as a strategy to address problems of development in
peripheral and sparsely populated rural areas, although researchers have
been doubtful of its long-term effects (Hedlund et al., 2017). A key ques-
tion in these debates is: how to attract immigrants and convince them to
stay in sparsely populated areas, which lack attractiveness for the ‘host’
population, especially among the young and educated. A solution has
been proposed in the form of programmes and initiatives that facilitate the
settlement and integration of international immigrants by creating rural
communities that are more welcoming towards the needs of newcomers
(Esses et al., 2010). Previous research has defined welcoming communi-
ties as those that embrace diversity, encourage civic participation among
residents, provide a range of appropriate service provisions and offer
meaningful employment (Gibson et al., 2017). In the Finnish context,
there are local and regional projects and programmes that aim to create
receptive or welcoming rural communities. The meanings given to these
terms have been the same as elsewhere, such as in Australia, Canada and
New Zealand (Wulff et al., 2008).
While the attraction of immigrants to rural areas has been recognised as
having many encouraging immediate impacts, such as increased business
investment and positive community interaction, research has also pointed
towards economic, social and service-based risks and limitations for new
immigrants who move to live in small and peripheral communities (Wulff
et al., 2008). Welcoming initiatives seem to be based on a new kind of
creative thinking, which challenges the backward-looking anti-immigration
discourse that prevails in some rural communities (Sotkasiira & Haverinen,
2016). However, it could also be argued that such rural immigration ini-
tiatives are developed to mainly serve the needs of long-term residents and
local businesses (Søholt et al., 2018). The projects and programmes do
not necessarily recognise the interests of rural immigrants, who may
become perceived as the targets of welcoming and less as autonomous
individuals with their own needs and aspirations (Mcintosh & Cockburn-
Wootten, 2019). To challenge such instrumental views of immigration
and immigrants, this chapter turns to the concept (and experiences) of
2 SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? DEVELOPING MIGRANT-LED… 25
well-being, which is analysed through the narratives of migrants who have

settled in the rural parts of North Karelia, Finland.
Paying attention to the narratives of well-being is suggested here as a
step towards recognising the lived experiences of immigrants in rural set-
tings in Finland, who to date are an under-researched group (Lund &
Hira-Friesen, 2013). It is assumed that the focus on well-being in every-
day experiences allows research to move beyond the most simplistic and
instrumentalised conceptions of the relationship between immigrants and
rural development. The focus on well-being is further justified by de
Lima’s (2016) perception that migrants’ well-being has been largely
neglected and marginalised in scholarly and political discussions, where
the focus has been placed mainly on instrumental views of migrants and
their contributions in host societies. Mindful of de Lima’s (2016) advice
to study well-being as an ongoing process that emerges out of and is
embedded in the social, economic, cultural and political processes and
relations of everyday living, this chapter examines rural immigrants’ expe-
riences of/lack of welcome in the Finnish countryside.
Background to the Research
North Karelian Regional Context

This chapter focuses on North Karelia, which is a sparsely populated
region located in eastern Finland along the border with the Russian
Federation. According to Statistics Finland (2020), almost 403,000 peo-
ple with a foreign background lived in Finland in 2018, which accounted
for 7% of the total population. In the Uusimaa region, near Helsinki, their
proportion was 13% of the total population, while in North Karelia it is
only 3.2%. The total population of North Karelia is around 162,000, of
which 71,551 reside in the city of Joensuu, the regional centre. The other
municipalities in North Karelia have fewer than 15,000 inhabitants and
they consist of the rural heartland, rural areas close to urban areas, sparsely
populated rural areas as well as local rural centres (Helminen et al., 2020).
In the case of North Karelia, a large part of immigration is from Russia
and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Particularly in the rural
municipalities of Tohmajärvi and Kitee, Russian speakers form a significant
linguistic minority. Traditionally, North Karelia has not been a significant
destination for immigrants, except for the resettlement of Karelian evacu-
ees after the Second World War. Instead, it comprises municipalities with
26 T. SOTKASIIRA
little prior experience of migration—they are what is termed New

Immigration Destinations (see McAreavey, 2017). During the Cold War
period, the border between Finland and the Soviet Union was closed and
heavily guarded, crossing the border was highly restricted, with transbor-
der mobility being limited (Raudaskoski & Laine, 2018). The first immi-
grants to settle after the collapse of the Soviet Union were mainly Ingrian
Finns and other citizens of the former Soviet Union who were of Finnish
descent. The profile of immigration to North Karelia has since diversified.
The languages most spoken in North Karelia besides the official languages
of Finnish and Swedish are Russian, Arabic, English, Estonian, Somali,
Thai, Bengali, German, Kurdish and Turkish.
In rural parts of the country, reception centres for asylum seekers have
been established in empty schools, hospitals and military buildings to host
such individuals due to depopulation and the centralisation of public ser-
vices in recent decades. Also, in North Karelia immigrant communities
have been formed nearby rural municipalities that hosted asylum centres.
In 2013, 4.2% of the residents of Lieksa were of foreign origin (mostly
humanitarian migrants of Somali descent), which was a significant propor-
tion, comparable to the figures of the large university cities. However, due
to negative attitudes and high unemployment, Somali residents found it
difficult to settle and find employment in Lieksa, with many of them mov-
ing to Southern Finland. A few Somali families, who still remain, have
recently (post-2015) been joined by new humanitarian migrants, who
were first settled in North Karelia as asylum seekers and continued to live
there after receiving residence permits.
Other common motives for moving to Eastern Finland are connected
to family reasons (Pöllänen, 2013) and education. The representatives of
North Karelia Municipal Education and Training Consortium have visited
Russia to inform young people and adults of the opportunities in Finland
and to attract new students to prevent the closure of study programmes
because of decreasing student numbers. Labour migration is also gaining
importance, but it is still highly regulated. Third-country nationals, for
example, those who do not enjoy the European Union right to free move-
ment, are not permitted to enter the country in search of employment.
They are required to obtain a residence permit in advance before arriving
in Finland.
In 2018, the share of people working in the primary sector (forestry,
fishery and agriculture) in North Karelia was 5.6%, which is higher than
that in the rest of the country (at 2.9%). The service sector is the largest
employer in the region, employing over 70% of the population (almost

75% are employed in the whole country). The service sectors employing
the largest number of people are commerce, transport, hotel and catering
services, education, health and social services. In manufacturing, there are
jobs in plastic production, technology, wood processing and food indus-
tries, for example. Immigrants are employed in the same sectors as Finns,
although more often in employment that is not commensurate with their
qualifications (Myrskylä & Pyykkönen, 2014). In North Karelia, the
unemployment rate in January 2020 was 13.8% and of unemployed job
seekers, 5% (498 persons) were foreign nationals. The factors frequently
cited to explain the difficulties among immigrants in finding employment
include insufficient Finnish language proficiency, lack of Finnish education
and work experience, lack of Finland-specific cultural competence and
informal capital, lack of ethnically diverse social networks, the lack of rec-
ognition of qualifications earned abroad and discrimination (Ahmad, 2019).
The Finnish Policy Context

The Rural Policy Programme is the key policy document that sets out the
objectives and measures for rural development in Finland. The 2014–2020
Policy Programme (Rural Policy Committee, 2014) identified that devel-
opment in rural areas was difficult to achieve without attracting new popu-
lations. It considered work-based immigration into rural areas as a
particular challenge as there was an acute need for labour in many indus-
trial and service sectors in rural regions, but immigrants tend to concen-
trate in cities. For these reasons, rural policy has highlighted the importance
of measures to support the integration of immigrants into rural locations,
paying attention to the reception and engagement in their village and resi-
dential communities as well as to the availability of employment opportu-
nities. In rural policy terms, successful rural communities are those that
provide immigrants with employment, a sense of community and suffi-
cient services for supporting their integration. The hegemonic regional
policy discourse also highlights the economic necessity of immigration and
discusses population decline as a threat to the future viability of rural com-
munities (Sotkasiira, 2016; for comparison, see Berg-Nordlie, 2018). At
the same time, there is also a critical discourse of immigration underscor-
ing the fears that increased immigration may result in xenophobia and
heightened resistance towards the newcomers in new immigration
destinations.
28 T. SOTKASIIRA
In Finnish immigration policy, the integration of immigrants is per-

ceived as being of utmost importance as it, among other things, paves the
way to good population relations. The Act on the Promotion of Immigrant
Integration defines integration as an ‘interactive development involving
immigrants and society at large’, which aims at providing immigrants with
‘the knowledge and skills required in society and working life’ and with
support ‘to maintain their culture and language’. It also refers to integra-
tion as involving multi-sectoral promotion and support based on measures
and services provided by local authorities and civil society. The measures
of support include both basic governmental and municipal services avail-
able to all as well as services that only immigrants are entitled to, such as
language courses, integration training and guidance and counselling ser-
vices. The immigrants who seek employment are served by public employ-
ment services, while municipalities and civil society organise integration
activities for those who do not participate in employment services, includ-
ing elderly people, stay-at-home parents and those suffering from long-
term illnesses.
Those taking part in integration measures are entitled to financial assis-
tance in the form of a labour market subsidy or social assistance. In prin-
ciple, then, the universal welfare state designates undifferentiated basic
social security for all who have a municipality of residence in the country.
In practice, the non-citizens’ social entitlements differ depending on
nationality, legal status and the form of employment they are in. Könönen
(2018) discusses this issue in detail and uses the concept of differential
inclusion to describe the reception of immigrants into the Finnish employ-
ment and welfare systems. Furthermore, the current immigration policy
has a clear emphasis on strengthening labour migration, which is under-
stood as key to boosting ‘employment and public finances’ and improving
‘the dependency ratio and enhances internationalisation of the economy’
(Ministry of the Interior, 2018: 9). The policy is in line with the 2015
European Agenda on Migration, which identifies a specific demand for
skilled migrants and stresses the need to control other types of immigration.
While there are similarities between practical integration activities
across the country, the services are not consistent in terms of their content
or availability (Karinen et al., 2020). They also change over time. For
example, when the number of immigrants was on the rise in Lieksa, the
municipality designated substantial resources to integrating immigrants.
In 2009, the municipality established an integration office with three to
five full-time employees, whose job was to facilitate the introduction of
newly arrived immigrants into the local community to support their settle-
ment. This office was closed in 2015. The reason stated was that the
municipality aimed at providing all residents with similar services by mak-
ing a transfer from a targeted service to the mainstream. In 2019, the resi-
dents of Lieksa were served by one immigration coordinator, whose task
was limited to coordinating immigrants’ interaction with municipal ser-
vices and authorities.
Another recent policy development proposes to organise integration
services in municipalities with the largest number of immigrants (Karinen
et al., 2020). In North Karelia, there have been plans to centralise integra-
tion services in Joensuu. Many services have already been centralised and
digitalised. Southeast Finland’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and
Employment (TE) Office, which is based in the city of Lappeenranta, han-
dles issues related to residence permits for employed people centrally for
the regions of the Economic Development, Transport and the Environment
(ELY) Centres of Southeast Finland, South Savo, Northern Savo, Central
Finland and North Karelia. This means that the nearest office that serves
North Karelian applicants is situated 240 kilometres from Joensuu and
almost 400 kilometres from Nurmes, the northernmost municipality of
North Karelia.
The welcoming of immigrants in rural parts of the country is thus
largely dependent on non-governmental organisations and short-term
(EU-funded) projects. The At Home in Finland project (2015–2020) has
focused on developing guidance, services and processes supporting immi-
grant integration. While being coordinated by the Centre for Economic
Development, Transport and the Environment for Uusimaa, it has
branches and employers across the country. In North Karelia, the
Association on Rural Culture and Education ran a Leader project between
2017 and 2018, which aimed at welcoming immigrants in rural areas by
organising joint activities for long-term residents and newcomers and sup-
porting volunteers who were interested in working with immigrants.
Additionally, immigrants have set up organisations to provide newcomers
with peer support. Such initiatives are typical of Finnish and other Nordic
societies, where the third sector traditionally has a prominent advocacy
role as a vehicle for expressing citizens’ political, social and recreational
interests (Pirkkalainen et al., 2018: 24–25). At the same time, it has raised
concerns about the hollowing out of the welfare state in sparsely popu-
lated rural areas due to wider neoliberal restructuring (Jokinen et al.,
2011; Pöllänen & Davydova-Minguet, 2017).
30 T. SOTKASIIRA
Discursive, Political and Lived Dimensions

of a ‘Welcoming Community’
The term ‘welcoming community’ came into use during the 1990s and
was originally applied in the context of diversity management (Esses et al.,
2010). Over the years, it became a popular term in rural development,
where it appealed to and was often used by governments, consultants and
other stakeholders with an interest in immigration. At the present time,
‘welcoming communities’ is viewed as a policy approach, a local develop-
ment practice (Gibson & Annis, 2019) and as a discursive device with
which rural developers identify problems and propose solutions to trans-
form and ‘cultivate’ the notion of rural communities as being welcoming.
According to Lynch (2017), the idea of ‘welcoming’ frequently features in
the definitions and discussions of hospitality, which refers to the quality of
being hospitable, for example, to being friendly and welcoming to guests
and visitors and to providing good conditions for something or someone to
live and grow. Lynch (2017: 175) notes that in dictionaries keywords
associated with welcome include, for example, kindness, an act of consid-
eration to another; welcoming strangers, a reaching out to another; and
acceptance, and tolerating and embracing difference. These terms are
often defined in relation to their opposites (inhospitality and unwelcome)
which are understood as opposites to the concept of welcoming (see
Sheringham & Daruwalla, 2007).
As a policy concept, a welcoming community has no universally agreed
meaning (Esses et al., 2010). Still, previous research has identified many
similarities in the ways in which the idea of welcoming is enacted in the
Global North by different actors and stakeholders, who commit to build-
ing communities or localities that are not just open to immigration, but
actively seek to attract immigrants (Gibson & Annis, 2019). Reviewing
international examples of welcoming communities (Bonifacio & Drolet,
2017; Guo & Guo, 2016; Immigration Services of New Zealand, 2017;
Sampedro & Camarero, 2018), it appears that such programmes focus on
three aspects of community development. They claim to manage social
relations and build networks at the local level, provide a steer towards
migrant-focused service provision and remove structural barriers to immi-
grants’ long-term settlement.
The practices, which focus on social relations and networks, are based
on understanding that the notion of welcoming includes specific interac-
tions between ‘host’ communities and immigrants. McIntosh and
Another random document with
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LXVI
A person who is full of secrets is a knave or a fool, or both.
LXVII
The error of Mandeville, as well as of those opposed to him, is in
concluding that man is a simple and not a compound being. The
schoolmen and divines endeavour to prove that the gross and
material part of his nature is a foreign admixture, distinct from and
unworthy of the man himself. The misanthropes and sceptics, on the
other hand, maintain the falsity of all human virtues, and that all
that is not sensual and selfish is a mere theatrical deception. But in
order that man should be a wholly and incorrigibly selfish being, he
should be shut up like an oyster in its shell, without any possible
conception of what passes beyond the wall of his senses; and the
feelers of his mind should not extend their ramifications under any
circumstance or in any manner, to the thoughts and sentiments of
others. Shakspeare has expressed the matter better than the pedants
on either side, who wish unreasonably to exalt or degrade human
nature.—‘The web of our lives is as of a mingled yarn, good and ill
together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not,
and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our
virtues.’
LXVIII
People cry out against the preposterous absurdity of such
representations as the German inventions of the Devil’s Elixir and
the Bottle Imp. Is it then a fiction that we see? Or is it not rather a
palpable reality that takes place every day and hour? Who is there
that is not haunted by some heated phantom of his brain, some
wizard spell, that clings to him in spite of his will, and hurries him on
to absurdity or ruin? There is no machinery or phantasmagoria of a
melo-drame, more extravagant than the workings of the passions.
Mr. Farley may do his worst with scaly forms, with flames, and
dragon’s wings: but after all, the true demon is within us. How many,
whose senses are shocked at the outward spectacle, and who turn
away startled or disgusted might say, pointing to their bosoms, ‘The
moral is here!’
LXIX
Mr. L—— asked Sir Thomas —— who had been intimate with the
Prince, if it was true that he was so fine a gentleman as he was
generally represented? Sir Thomas —— made answer, that it was
certainly true that the Prince was a very fine gentleman indeed: ‘but,’
added he, ‘if I am to speak my mind, the finest gentleman I ever saw,
was Sadi Baba, the ambassador to Constantinople, from the Usbek
Tartars.’
LXX
‘Man is in no haste to be venerable.’ At present, it seems as if there
were no occasion to become so. People die as usual; but it is not the
fashion to grow old. Formerly, men subsided and settled down into a
respectable old age at forty, as they did into a bob-wig, and a brown
coat and waistcoat of a certain cut. The father of a family no longer
pretended to pass for a gay young fellow, after he had children grown
up; and women dwindled, by regular and willing gradations, into
mothers and grandmothers, transferring their charms and
pretensions to a blooming posterity; but these things are never
thought of now-a-days. A matron of sixty flaunts it in ‘La Belle
Assemblée’s dresses for May:’ and certainly M. Stultz never inquires
into the grand climacteric of his customers. Dress levels all ages as
well as all ranks.
A CHAPTER ON EDITORS
The Monthly Magazine.]

[November, 1830.
‘Our withers are unwrung.’
Editors are (to use an approved Scotch phrase—for what that is

Scotch is not approved?) a ‘sort of tittle-tattle‘—difficult to deal with,
dangerous to discuss. ‘A capital subject for an article, great scope,
complete novelty, and ground never touched upon!’ Very true; for
what Editor would insert an article against himself? Certainly none
that did not feel himself free from and superior to the common
foibles of his tribe. What might, therefore, be taken for a satire in
manuscript, turns to a compliment in print—the exception in this, as
in other cases, proves the rule—an inference we have endeavoured to
express in our motto.
With one exception, then, Editors in general partake of the usual
infirmity of human nature, and of persons placed in high and
honorary situations. Like other individuals raised to authority, they
are chosen to fill a certain post for qualities useful or ornamental to
the reading public; but they soon fancy that the situation has been
invented for their own honour and profit, and sink the use in the
abuse. Kings are not the only servants of the public who imagine that
they are the state. Editors are but men, and easily ‘lay the flattering
unction to their souls’ that they are the Magazine, the Newspaper, or
the Review they conduct. They have got a little power in their hands,
and they wish to employ that power (as all power is employed) to
increase the sense of self-importance; they borrow a certain dignity
from their situation as arbiters and judges of taste and elegance, and
they are determined to keep it to the detriment of their employers
and of every one else. They are dreadfully afraid there should be any
thing behind the Editor’s chair, greater than the Editor’s chair. That
is a scandal to be prevented at all risks. The publication they are
entrusted with for the amusement and edification of the town, they
convert, in theory and practice, into a stalking-horse of their own
vanity, whims, and prejudices. They cannot write a whole work
themselves, but they take care that the whole is such as they might
have written: it is to have the Editor’s mark, like the broad R, on
every page, or the N. N. at the Tuileries; it is to bear the same image
and superscription—every line is to be upon oath: nothing is to be
differently conceived or better expressed than the Editor could have
done it. The whole begins in vanity, and ends too often in dulness
and insipidity.
It is utterly impossible to persuade an Editor that he is nobody. As
Mr. Horne Tooke said, on his trial for a libel before Lord Kenyon,
‘There are two parties in this cause—myself and the jury; the judge
and the crier of the court attend in their respective places:’ so in
every periodical miscellany, there are two essential parties—the
writers and the public; the Editor and the printer’s-devil are merely
the mechanical instruments to bring them together. There is a secret
consciousness of this on the part of the Conductor of the Literary
Diligence, that his place is one for shew and form rather than use;
and as he cannot maintain his pretended superiority by what he does
himself, he thinks to arrive at the same end by hindering others from
doing their best. The ‘dog-in-the-manger’ principle comes into full
play. If an article has nothing to recommend it, is one of no mark or
likelihood, it goes in; there is no offence in it. If it is likely to strike, to
draw attention, to make a noise, then every syllable is scanned, every
objection is weighed: if grave, it is too grave; if witty, it is too witty.
One way or other, it might be better; and while this nice point is
pending, it gives place, as a matter of course, to something that there
is no question about.
The responsibility, the delicacy, the nervous apprehension of the
Editor, naturally increase with the probable effect and popularity of
the contributions on which he has to pass judgment; and the nearer
an effusion approaches to perfection, the more fatal is a single flaw,
or its falling short of that superhuman standard by a hair’s-breadth
difference, to its final reception. If people are likely to ask, ‘Who
wrote a certain paper in the last number of ——?’ the Editor is bound,
as a point of honour, to baulk that impertinent curiosity on the part
of the public. He would have it understood that all the articles are
equally good, and may be equally his own. If he inserts a paper of
more than the allowed average merit, his next care is to spoil by
revising it. The sting, with the honey, is sure to be left out. If there is
any thing that pleased you in the writing, you look in vain for it in the
proof. What might electrify the reader, startles the Editor. With a
paternal regard for the interests of the public, he takes care that their
tastes should not be pampered, and their expectations raised too
high, by a succession of fine passages, of which it is impossible to
continue a supply. He interposes between the town and their vicious
appetite for the piquant and high-seasoned, as we forbid children to
indulge in sweetmeats. The trite and superficial are always to be had
to order, and present a beautiful uniformity of appearance. There is
no unexpected relief, no unwelcome inequality of style, to disorder
the nerves or perplex the understanding: the reader may read, and
smile, and sleep, without meeting a single idea to break his repose!
Some Editors, moreover, have a way of altering the first
paragraph: they have then exercised their privileges, and let you
alone for the rest of the chapter. This is like paying ‘a pepper-corn
rent,’ or making one’s bow on entering a room: it is being let off
cheap. Others add a pointless conclusion of their own: it is like
signing their names to the article. Some have a passion for sticking in
the word however at every opportunity, in order to impede the
march of the style; and others are contented and take great pains
(with Lindley Murray’s Grammar lying open before them) to alter ‘if
it is’ into ‘if it be.’ An Editor abhors an ellipsis. If you fling your
thoughts into continued passages, they set to work to cut them up
into short paragraphs: if you make frequent breaks, they turn the
tables on you that way, and throw the whole composition into
masses. Any thing to preserve the form and appearance of power, to
make the work their own by mental stratagem, to stamp it by some
fiction of criticism with their personal identity, to enable them to run
away with the credit, and look upon themselves as the master-spirits
of the work and of the age! If there is any point they do not
understand, they are sure to meddle with it, and mar the sense; for it
piques their self-love, and they think they are bound ex-officio to
know better than the writer. Thus they substitute (at a venture, and
merely for the sake of altering) one epithet for another, when
perhaps the same word has occurred just before, and produces a
cruel tautology, never considering the trouble you have taken to
compare the context and vary the phraseology.
Editors have no misplaced confidence in the powers of their
contributors: they think by the supposition they must be in the right
from a single supercilious glance,—and you in the wrong, after
poring over a subject for a month. There are Editors who, if you
insert the name of a popular actor or artist, strike it out, and, in
virtue of their authority, insert a favourite of their own,—as a
dexterous attorney substitutes the name of a friend in a will. Some
Editors will let you praise nobody; others will let you blame nobody.
The first excites their jealousy of contemporary merit; the last excites
their fears, and they do not like to make enemies. Some insist upon
giving no opinion at all, and observe an unarmed neutrality as to all
parties and persons;—it is no wonder the world think very little of
them in return. Some Editors stand upon their characters for this;
others for that. Some pique themselves upon being genteel and well-
dressed; others on being moral and immaculate, and do not perceive
that the public never trouble their heads about the matter. We only
know one Editor who openly discards all regard to character and
decency, and who thrives by the dissolution of partnership, if indeed
the articles were ever drawn up. We shall not mention names, as we
would not advertise a work that ‘ought to lie on no gentleman’s
table.’ Some Editors drink tea with a set of blue stockings and
literary ladies: not a whisper, not a breath that might blow away
those fine cobwebs of the brain—
‘More subtle web Arachne cannot spin;
Nor those fine threads which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee!’
Others dine with Lords and Academicians—for God’s sake, take care
what you say! Would you strip the Editor’s mantel-piece of the cards
of invitation that adorn it to select parties for the next six months?
An Editor takes a turn in St. James’s-street, and is congratulated by
the successive literary or political groups on all he does not write;
and when the mistake is found out, the true Simon Pure is dismissed.
We have heard that it was well said by the proprietor of a leading
journal, that he would take good care never to write a line in his own
paper, as he had conflicting interests enough to manage, without
adding literary jealousies to the number. On the other hand, a very
good-natured and warm-hearted individual declared, ‘he would
never have another man of talents for an Editor’ (the Editor, in this
case, is to the proprietor as the author to the Editor), ‘for he was tired
of having their good things thrust in his teeth.’ Some Editors are
scrubs, mere drudges, newspaper-puffs: others are bullies or quacks:
others are nothing at all—they have the name, and receive a salary
for it! A literary sinecure is at once lucrative and highly respectable.
At Lord’s-Ground there are some old hands that are famous for
‘blocking out and staying in:’ it would seem that some of our literary
veterans had taken a lesson from their youthful exercises at Harrow
or Eton.
All this is bad enough; but the worst is, that Editors, besides their
own failings, have friends who aggravate and take advantage of
them. These self-styled friends are the night-shade and hemlock
clinging to the work, preventing its growth and circulation, and
dropping a slumberous poison from its jaundiced leaves. They form a
cordon, an opake mass round the Editor, and persuade him that they
are the support, the prop, and pillar of his reputation. They get
between him and the public, and shut out the light, and set aside
common sense. They pretend anxiety for the interest of some
established organ of opinion, while all they want is to make it the
organ of their dogmas, prejudices, or party. They want to be the
Magazine or the Review—to wield that power covertly, to warp that
influence to their own purposes. If they cannot do this, they care not
if it sinks or swims. They prejudge every question—fly-blow every
writer who is not of their own set. A friend of theirs has three articles
in the last number of ——; they strain every nerve and make pressing
instances to throw a slur on a popular contribution by another hand,
in order that he may write a fourth in the next number. The short
articles which are read by the vulgar, are cut down to make room for
the long ones, which are read by nobody but the writers and their
friends. If an opinion is expressed contrary to the shibboleth of the
party, it is represented as an outrage on decency and public opinion,
when in truth the public are delighted with the candour and boldness
displayed. They would convert the most valuable and spirited journal
into a dull pamphleteer, stuffed with their own lucubrations on
certain heavy topics. The self-importance of these people is in
proportion to their insignificance; and what they cannot do by an
appeal to argument or sound policy, they effect by importunity and
insinuation. They keep the Editor in continual alarm as to what will
be said of him by the public, when in fact the public will think (in
nine cases out of ten) just what he tells them.
These people create much of the mischief. An Editor should have
no friends—his only prompter should be the number of copies of the
work that sell. It is superfluous to strike off a large impression of a
work for those few squeamish persons who prefer lead to tinsel.
Principle and good manners are barriers that are, in our estimate,
inviolable: the rest is open to popular suffrage, and is not to be
prejudged by a coterie with closed doors. Another difficulty lies here.
An Editor should, in one sense, be a respectable man—a
distinguished character; otherwise, he cannot lend his name and
sanction to the work. The conductor of a periodical publication
which is to circulate widely and give the tone to taste and opinion,
ought to be of high standing, should have connections with society,
should belong to some literary institution, should be courted by the
great, be run after by the obscure. But ‘here’s the rub’—that one so
graced and gifted can neither have his time nor his thoughts to
himself. Our obligations are mutual; and those who owe much to
others, become the slaves of their good opinion and good word. He
who dines out loses his free agency. He may improve in politeness;
he falls off in the pith and pungency of his style. A poem is dedicated
to the son of the Muses:—can the critic do otherwise than praise it? A
tragedy is brought out by a noble friend and patron:—the severe
rules of the drama must yield in some measure to the amenities of
private life. On the contrary, Mr. —— is a garretteer—a person that
nobody knows; his work has nothing but the contents to recommend
it; it sinks into obscurity, or addresses itself to the canaille. An
Editor, then, should be an abstraction—a being in the clouds—a mind
without a body—reason without passion.——But where find such a
one?
THE LETTER-BELL
The Monthly Magazine.]

[March, 1831.
Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of

human life, when, if we examine its smallest details, they present a
world by themselves. The most trifling objects, retraced with the eye
of memory, assume the vividness, the delicacy, and importance of
insects seen through a magnifying glass. There is no end of the
brilliancy or the variety. The habitual feeling of the love of life may be
compared to ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ which, if analysed,
breaks into a thousand shining fragments. Ask the sum-total of the
value of human life, and we are puzzled with the length of the
account, and the multiplicity of items in it: take any one of them
apart, and it is wonderful what matter for reflection will be found in
it! As I write this, the Letter-Bell passes: it has a lively, pleasant
sound with it, and not only fills the street with its importunate
clamour, but rings clear through the length of many half-forgotten
years. It strikes upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it wakes me
from the dream of time, it flings me back upon my first entrance into
life, the period of my first coming up to town, when all around was
strange, uncertain, adverse—a hubbub of confused noises, a chaos of
shifting objects—and when this sound alone, startling me with the
recollection of a letter I had to send to the friends I had lately left,
brought me as it were to myself, made me feel that I had links still
connecting me with the universe, and gave me hope and patience to
persevere. At that loud-tinkling, interrupted sound (now and then),
the long line of blue hills near the place where I was brought up
waves in the horizon, a golden sunset hovers over them, the dwarf-
oaks rustle their red leaves in the eveningbreeze, and the road from
—— to ——, by which I first set out on my journey through life, stares
me in the face as plain, but from time and change not less visionary
and mysterious, than the pictures in the Pilgrim’s Progress. I should
notice, that at this time the light of the French Revolution circled my
head like a glory, though dabbled with drops of crimson gore: I
walked comfortable and cheerful by its side—
‘And by the vision splendid
Was on my way attended.’
It rose then in the east: it has again risen in the west. Two suns in
one day, two triumphs of liberty in one age, is a miracle which I hope
the Laureate will hail in appropriate verse. Or may not Mr.
Wordsworth give a different turn to the fine passage, beginning—
‘What, though the radiance which was once so bright,
Be now for ever vanished from my sight;
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower?’
For is it not brought back, ‘like morn risen on mid-night‘; and may
he not yet greet the yellow light shining on the evening bank with
eyes of youth, of genius, and freedom, as of yore? No, never! But
what would not these persons give for the unbroken integrity of their
early opinions—for one unshackled, uncontaminated strain—one Io
pæan to Liberty—one burst of indignation against tyrants and
sycophants, who subject other countries to slavery by force, and
prepare their own for it by servile sophistry, as we see the huge
serpent lick over its trembling, helpless victim with its slime and
poison, before it devours it! On every stanza so penned should be
written the word Recreant! Every taunt, every reproach, every note
of exultation at restored light and freedom, would recal to them how
their hearts failed them in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And
what shall we say to him—the sleep-walker, the dreamer, the sophist,
the word-hunter, the craver after sympathy, but still vulnerable to
truth, accessible to opinion, because not sordid or mechanical? The
Bourbons being no longer tied about his neck, he may perhaps
recover his original liberty of speculating; so that we may apply to
him the lines about his own Ancient Mariner—
‘And from his neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.’
This is the reason I can write an article on the Letter-Bell, and other
such subjects; I have never given the lie to my own soul. If I have felt
any impression once, I feel it more strongly a second time; and I have
no wish to revile or discard my best thoughts. There is at least a
thorough keeping in what I write—not a line that betrays a principle
or disguises a feeling. If my wealth is small, it all goes to enrich the
same heap; and trifles in this way accumulate to a tolerable sum. Or
if the Letter-Bell does not lead me a dance into the country, it fixes
me in the thick of my town recollections, I know not how long ago. It
was a kind of alarm to break off from my work when there happened
to be company to dinner or when I was going to the play. That was
going to the play, indeed, when I went twice a year, and had not been
more than half a dozen times in my life. Even the idea that any one
else in the house was going, was a sort of reflected enjoyment, and
conjured up a lively anticipation of the scene. I remember a Miss D
——, a maiden lady from Wales (who in her youth was to have been
married to an earl), tantalised me greatly in this way, by talking all
day of going to see Mrs. Siddons’ ‘airs and graces’ at night in some
favourite part; and when the Letter-Bell announced that the time was
approaching, and its last receding sound lingered on the ear, or was
lost in silence, how anxious and uneasy I became, lest she and her
companion should not be in time to get good places—lest the curtain
should draw up before they arrived—and lest I should lose one line
or look in the intelligent report which I should hear the next
morning! The punctuating of time at that early period—every thing
that gives it an articulate voice—seems of the utmost consequence;
for we do not know what scenes in the ideal world may run out of
them: a world of interest may hang upon every instant, and we can
hardly sustain the weight of future years which are contained in
embryo in the most minute and inconsiderable passing events. How
often have I put off writing a letter till it was too late! How often had
to run after the postman with it—now missing, now recovering the
sound of his bell—breathless, angry with myself—then hearing the
welcome sound come full round a corner—and seeing the scarlet
costume which set all my fears and self-reproaches at rest! I do not
recollect having ever repented giving a letter to the postman, or
wishing to retrieve it after he had once deposited it in his bag. What I
have once set my hand to, I take the consequences of, and have been
always pretty much of the same humour in this respect. I am not like
the person who, having sent off a letter to his mistress, who resided a
hundred and twenty miles in the country, and disapproving, on
second thoughts, of some expressions contained in it, took a post-
chaise and four to follow and intercept it the next morning. At other
times, I have sat and watched the decaying embers in a little back
painting-room (just as the wintry day declined), and brooded over
the half-finished copy of a Rembrandt, or a landscape by Vangoyen,
placing it where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the fire;
while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my thoughts to
the world without, and reminded me that I had a task to perform in
it. As to that landscape, methinks I see it now—
‘The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.’
There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage

beside it:—how delighted I was when I had made the tremulous,
undulating reflection in the water, and saw the dull canvas become a
lucid mirror of the commonest features of nature! Certainly, painting
gives one a strong interest in nature and humanity (it is not the
dandy-school of morals or sentiment)—
‘While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.’
Perhaps there is no part of a painter’s life (if we must tell ‘the secrets
of the prison-house’) in which he has more enjoyment of himself and
his art, than that in which after his work is over, and with furtive,
sidelong glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing his
brushes and cleaning his pallet for the day. Afterwards, when he gets
a servant in livery to do this for him, he may have other and more
ostensible sources of satisfaction—greater splendour, wealth, or
fame; but he will not be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such
a hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest
drudgery to others—too humble to despise aught that had to do with
the object of his glory and his pride, with that on which all his
projects of ambition or pleasure were founded. ‘Entire affection
scorneth nicer hands.’ When the professor is above this mechanical
part of his business, it may have become a stalking-horse to other
worldly schemes, but is no longer his hobby-horse and the delight of
his inmost thoughts—
‘His shame in crowds, his solitary pride!’
I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while

the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner-bell) summoned me to the
fraternal board, where youth and hope
‘Made good digestion wait on appetite
And health on both—’
or oftener I put it off till after dinner, that I might loiter longer and
with more luxurious indolence over it, and connect it with the
thoughts of my next day’s labours.
The dustman’s bell, with its heavy, monotonous noise, and the
brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin-bell, have something in them, but
not much. They will bear dilating upon with the utmost licence of
inventive prose. All things are not alike conductors to the
imagination. A learned Scotch professor found fault with an
ingenious friend and arch-critic for cultivating a rookery on his
grounds: the professor declared ‘he would as soon think of
encouraging a froggery.’ This was barbarous as it was senseless.
Strange, that a country that has produced the Scotch novels and
Gertrude of Wyoming should want sentiment!
The postman’s double knock at the door the next morning is ‘more
germain to the matter.’ How that knock often goes to the heart! We
distinguish to a nicety the arrival of the Two-penny or the General
Post. The summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bringing
news from a greater distance, and as, the longer it has been delayed,
fraught with a deeper interest. We catch the sound of what is to be
paid—eight-pence, nine-pence, a shilling—and our hopes generally
rise with the postage. How we are provoked at the delay in getting
change—at the servant who does not hear the door! Then if the
postman passes, and we do not hear the expected knock, what a pang
is there! It is like the silence of death—of hope! We think he does it
on purpose, and enjoys all the misery of our suspense. I have
sometimes walked out to see the Mail-Coach pass, by which I had
sent a letter, or to meet it when I expected one. I never see a Mail-
Coach, for this reason, but I look at it as the bearer of glad tidings—
the messenger of fate. I have reason to say so. The finest sight in the
metropolis is that of the Mail-Coaches setting off from Piccadilly. The
horses paw the ground, and are impatient to be gone, as if conscious
of the precious burden they convey. There is a peculiar secresy and
despatch, significant and full of meaning, in all the proceedings
concerning them. Even the outside passengers have an erect and
supercilious air, as if proof against the accidents of the journey. In
fact, it seems indifferent whether they are to encounter the summer’s
heat or winter’s cold, since they are borne on through the air in a
winged chariot. The Mail-Carts drive up; the transfer of packages is
made; and, at a signal given, they start off, bearing the irrevocable
scrolls that give wings to thought, and that bind or sever hearts for
ever. How we hate the Putney and Brentford stages that draw up in a
line after they are gone! Some persons think the sublimest object in
nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean: but give me, for
my private satisfaction, the Mail-Coaches that pour down Piccadilly
of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them
to the Land’s-End!
In Cowper’s time, Mail-Coaches were hardly set up; but he has
beautifully described the coming in of the Post-Boy:—
‘Hark! ’tis the twanging horn o’er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright:—
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
True to his charge, the close-packed load behind.
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn;
And having dropped the expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch!
Cold and yet cheerful; messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some;
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
Houses in ashes and the fall of stocks,
Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet
With tears that trickled down the writer’s cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains
Or nymphs responsive, equally affect
His horse and him, unconscious of them all.’
And yet, notwithstanding this, and so many other passages that seem
like the very marrow of our being, Lord Byron denies that Cowper
was a poet!—The Mail-Coach is an improvement on the Post-Boy;
but I fear it will hardly bear so poetical a description. The
picturesque and dramatic do not keep pace with the useful and
mechanical. The telegraphs that lately communicated the
intelligence of the new revolution to all France within a few hours,
are a wonderful contrivance; but they are less striking and appalling
than the beacon-fires (mentioned by Æschylus), which, lighted from
hill-top to hill-top, announced the taking of Troy, and the return of
Agamemnon.
ON THE SPIRIT OF MONARCHY
The Liberal.]
[1822.
‘Strip it of its externals, and what is it but a jest?’
Charade on the word Majesty.
‘As for politics, I think poets are Tories by nature, supposing them to be by
nature poets. The love of an individual person or family, that has worn a crown for
many successions, is an inclination greatly adapted to the fanciful tribe. On the
other hand, mathematicians, abstract reasoners, of no manner of attachment to
persons, at least to the visible part of them, but prodigiously devoted to the ideas of
virtue, liberty, and so forth, are generally Whigs. It happens agreeably enough to
this maxim, that the Whigs are friends to that wise, plodding, unpoetical people,
the Dutch.’—Skenstone’s Letters, 1746.
The Spirit of Monarchy then is nothing but the craving in the

human mind after the Sensible and the One. It is not so much a
matter of state-necessity or policy, as a natural infirmity, a disease, a
false appetite in the popular feeling, which must be gratified. Man is
an individual animal with narrow faculties, but infinite desires,
which he is anxious to concentrate in some one object within the
grasp of his imagination, and where, if he cannot be all that he
wishes himself, he may at least contemplate his own pride, vanity,
and passions, displayed in their most extravagant dimensions in a
being no bigger and no better than himself. Each individual would
(were it in his power) be a king, a God: but as he cannot, the next
best thing is to see this reflex image of his self-love, the darling
passion of his breast, realized, embodied out of himself in the first
object he can lay his hands on for the purpose. The slave admires the
tyrant, because the last is, what the first would be. He surveys
himself all over in the glass of royalty. The swelling, bloated self-
importance of the one is the very counterpart and ultimate goal of
the abject servility of the other. But both hate mankind for the same
reason, because a respect for humanity is a diversion to their
inordinate self-love, and the idea of the general good is a check to the
gross intemperance of passion. The worthlessness of the object does
not diminish but irritate the propensity to admire. It serves to
pamper our imagination equally, and does not provoke our envy. All
we want is to aggrandize our own vain-glory at second-hand; and the
less of real superiority or excellence there is in the person we fix
upon as our proxy in this dramatic exhibition, the more easily can we
change places with him, and fancy ourselves as good as he. Nay, the
descent favours the rise; and we heap our tribute of applause the
higher, in proportion as it is a free gift. An idol is not the worse for
being of coarse materials: a king should be a common-place man.
Otherwise, he is superior in his own nature, and not dependent on
our bounty or caprice. Man is a poetical animal, and delights in
fiction. We like to have scope for the exercise of our mere will. We
make kings of men, and Gods of stocks and stones: we are not
jealous of the creatures of our own hands. We only want a peg or
loop to hang our idle fancies on, a puppet to dress up, a lay-figure to
paint from. It is ‘Thing Ferdinand, and not King Ferdinand,’ as it
was wisely and wittily observed. We ask only for the stage effect; we
do not go behind the scenes, or it would go hard with many of our
prejudices! We see the symbols of majesty, we enjoy the pomp, we
crouch before the power, we walk in the procession, and make part of
the pageant, and we say in our secret hearts, there is nothing but
accident that prevents us from being at the head of it. There is
something in the mock-sublimity of thrones, wonderfully congenial
to the human mind. Every man feels that he could sit there; every
man feels that he could look big there; every man feels that he could
bow there; every man feels that he could play the monarch there. The
transition is so easy, and so delightful! The imagination keeps pace
with royal state,
‘And by the vision splendid
Is on its way attended.’
The Madman in Hogarth who fancies himself a king, is not a solitary

instance of this species of hallucination. Almost every true and loyal
subject holds such a barren sceptre in his hand; and the meanest of

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The Rural-Migration Nexus: Global

Problems, Rural Issues Nathan

Edited by Nathan Kerrigan · Philomena de Lima

ISSN 2730-7123 ISSN 2730-7131 (electronic)

Cover Credit: Ariel Skelley

Rabelo de Souza at the University of Guelph under the supervision of

Dina Bolokan is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Centre for Gender

Branka Krivokapic-skoko is a Professor of Management at Charles Sturt

auspices of EuropAid, Erasmus+ and HORIZON p ­ rogrammes, and UN

Fig. 4.1 Six steps to safety framework based on hierarchy of control in

Table 2.1 Examples of welcoming activities 32

Nathan Kerrigan and Philomena de Lima

We are living in a dynamic and globalising world, intensified by cheap

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

recognise that the geographical scope of countries implicated in labour

Organisation for Migration frequently use income as the key term—for

Globalising the Rural, Ruralising the Global

influence in transnational corporations with a blasé approach to capital

regions as spaces that are integrated and interconnected through globalis-

Globalisation, therefore, proceeds by capturing, substituting, cutting, and

production within the domestic sphere as idealised by those on the right

experiences/realities characterised by mental health issues and the exer-

Rural Migration as Global-Local Interdependencies

Migration needs to be understood as being embedded within dynamic and

UK—in terms of economic activities. The proportion of individuals

by policies and programmes such as the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural

poles of inclusion/exclusion, as individuals who are present but not fully

the term ‘rural-migration nexus’ adopted in this edited collection—where

The Rural-Migration Nexus

Rural migration as shaped through interconnected rural-global pro-

Structure of the Book

chapter focuses on Post-Soviet Moldova, a country on the so-called

Previous research undertaken has found that the employer-tied contracts

Marko Stojanović in this chapter demonstrate the ways in which migrants

In the concluding chapter, the ‘rural-migration-nexus’ is further

Bunce, M. (1994). The countryside ideal. Routledge.

Thrift, N. (1989). Images of social change. In C. Hamnett, L. McDowell, &

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Developing

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

well-being, which is analysed through the narratives of migrants who have

Background to the Research

North Karelian Regional Context

little prior experience of migration—they are what is termed New

employer in the region, employing over 70% of the population (almost

The Finnish Policy Context

In Finnish immigration policy, the integration of immigrants is per-

Discursive, Political and Lived Dimensions

The Monthly Magazine.]

Editors are (to use an approved Scotch phrase—for what that is

The Monthly Magazine.]

Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of

There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage

I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while

The Spirit of Monarchy then is nothing but the craving in the

The Madman in Hogarth who fancies himself a king, is not a solitary

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auspices of EuropAid, Erasmus+ and HORIZON p rogrammes, and UN

Table 2.1 Examples of welcoming activities 32