The multiethnic rural community: Exclusion or inclusion of immigrants?

Place attachment processes A qualitative finding in the Norwegian Northern and Inland cases, was that natives, internal migrants and international migrants emphasised the importance of outdoor leisure locally. Liking outdoor leisure was decisive for enjoying living locally. Local nature and local outdoor life practices could contribute to a desire to stay or return as a circular migrant. In the Inland case, the opportunity for skiing was a reason why many chose to work locally. Work and income was the main driving factor for their migration, but choice of place within Norway was not random or solely dependent on recruitment agencies and social networks. The findings contributes to migration studies by showing that boundaries between labour migrants and lifestyle migrants in some cases can be blurred. The findings also illustrate that there can be similarities in internal and international migrants? place attachment processes. Multiruralisation Internal and international migration are often separate research fields, but it can be beneficial to bring the two traditions together across a range of topics. Migration scholars have called for this type of cross-fertilisation. The focus on multiruralisation processes covers an empirical need, as internal and international migration are analysed together. Moreover, the Multirur project contributes theoretically by bringing together usually separated research traditions; rural studies on internal migrants, mobility and rural change; and theories on international migration and multi-ethnic cohesion ? developed in an urban context. Rural communities' expectations to immigrants participation The three casestudies in Norwegian rural communities show that immigrants social inclusion depend on finding the right "entry tickets" to the communities, in addition to structurel integration. In one case, participation in organized leisure activities and following up childrens' activities, were decisive. In the two other cases, immigrants relations to nature and local outdoor practices mattered for being socially appreciated. The "entry tickets" were framed by national discourses about values and practices being important for national and local social cohesion. Place attachement and scales The academic literature indicate that social, socio-demographic and physical characteristics contribute to explain place attachment. We find that this is case for immigrants and Norwegian migrants to rural communities. However, people born at the place are less influenced by such conditions. Their place attachement is more taken for granted. We find considerable differences related to scale. The attachment is highest to Norway, then the city and the neighbourhood. The municipality is the least important when it comes to attachement. Immigrants from the EU/EEA is the only group that express a higher attachement to their country of origin, than to Norway. The highest level og place attachement is found in Oslo. Media's and rural elites' perceptions of the importance of immigrants Rural places are constructed through everyday life and how people reflect about their place. We have studied local medias coverage of migration and how the community change in a multicultural direction. We have also studied the rural elites' perceptions of immigration for rural resilience. Both the media profile and the importance of rural elites perceptions for the development of rural multiethnic communities are underresearched. Different from national media, the local media in general present local immigrants and integration questions in positive frames, except for some readers' opinions. Across the Nordic countries, the rural elites perceive immigration as important for local resilience, because of immigrants' contributions to the economy and to balance the population. Because the rural elites expects the immigrants to take co-responsibility for local development, and because the elites own norms about diversity influence their perceptions of immigration and how they in practice include local immigrants, we conceptualize their attitudes as "conditioned receptiveness".

The project will study how the increasingly multiethnic Norwegian rural communities change as a result of transmigration processes. More specifically, exclusion and inclusion processes in the welfare arenas of housing and labour markets as well as civil society participation will be explored. Three very different Norwegian rural districts, as well as three contrasting cases - one urban district and one rural district in respectively Denmark and Sweden - will be compared. A most-different comparative case approach will be used to identify possible similar patterns across cases, as well as differences caused by being rural and being Norwegian. Three theoretical perspectives will be used. First, our study of changes in rural communities caused by migration is inspired by theoretical work on place. Theories on segregation and integration, as well as more recent theories on transnationalism, are alternative approaches to understanding how migration shapes and structures change in rural communities. While the latter two theoretical approaches have largely been applied in urban contexts, the present study will explore the applicability of such theories in the Norwegian rural setting. The project consists of six sub-projects (SPs) - which, separately and in combination, will help to answer the main research questions. SP1 outlines the theoretical and policy frameworks and analyses the national patterns of migration in Norwegian rural districts. SP2 analyses mobility trends in the case municipalities and provides the context of the cases. SP3 uses qualitative data to analyse how immigration has impacted on the development of the six places over time. SP4 applies surveys of majority and migrant populations to study representative patterns of inclusion and exclusion in the six cases. SP5 applies media discourse analysis to study the construction of the place narratives. SP6 provides a synthesis of the preceding SPs.