Australia’s rural towns and cities are experiencing significant social transformation and young people are front and centre of this change. Today youth from diverse migration, class and ethnic backgrounds from around the world are forging rural pathways across the country and making a home for themselves, their families and communities. This includes young people from humanitarian refugee backgrounds, those who have moved to rural Australia from other countries for work, international students, family members, and young people from local intergenerational migrant and settler backgrounds. At the same time, rural Australia has undergone profound economic and environmental change, all of which impacts on the types of rural futures that young people today imagine, pursue, and are able to sustain.

Under these conditions, this project examines how young people are generating and sustaining relationships with people and places as they build a life in rural Australia. The study draws on qualitative research with participants from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds in one rural city of Victoria over a three-year period. It hears from young people themselves about what it’s like to grow up and build a future in rural Australia today.

Funded by the Australian Research Council, Young People’s Mobilities, Relationships and Place-Making in Rural Australia is led by Dr Rose Butler, Senior Research Fellow in Sociology at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. The project has been supported by research assistance from Dr Jehonathan Ben, Dr Alexandra Coleman and Ivy Vuong.