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Statistikmyndigheten SCB (2023) visar att 14774 människor födda i Nederländerna bodde i Sverige 2022 vilket var mer än tre gånger så många som år 2000. Befolkning från Tyskland och Schweiz ökade också, och många av dem bosatte sig i avlägsna landsbygdsområden eller isolerade byar (Carson & Carson, 2018; Eimermann, 2015a). Migranterna gör ofta så i hopp om att kunna komma ifrån karriärhetsen och det hektiska stadslivet och i stället kunna ägna sig åt utomhusaktiviteter i orörd natur och lugn omgivning samtidigt som de kan spendera mer tid med familjen (Carson m.fl., 2018; Eimermann, 2013). Dessa före-ställningar om det goda livet på Sveriges landsbygd motsvarar många internationella livsstilsmigranters motiv (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009, 2016). Utifrån detta kommer vi att kortfattat introducera livsstilsmigration som en teoretisk ram och interkulturell kommunikation som ett mer praktiskt verktyg för att förstå våra empiriska data, innan vi nyanserar myten om att dessa européer lätt integreras i de svenska värdsamhällena.

I detta kapitel introduceras begreppen ”tomrum” och ”platser emellan”. Begreppen är delvis kopplade till en jämförelse mellan Nordnorge och norra Sverige. Tomrum kan begreppsliggöras på många sätt, från ett fysiskt vakuum till ett rum tomt på företeelser eller geografiska objekt. Inom samhällsvetenskap och geografi hänvisar det ofta till bristen på något i det geografiska rummet, brist på resurser, människor eller aktiviteter. Fördelningen av geografiska objekt som människor är också relaterad till aktiviteter, resurser och andra människor. Rummet blir relationellt. Den relationella förståelsen av rummet refererar bland annat till hur individer försörjer sig. Människans eller individens relation till det fysiska rummet förändras också över tid. Det relationella rummet genomgår en förändring. Många idéer om relationen mellan människor och rum är baserade på Torsten Hägerstrand och hans tidsgeografi (Hägerstrand 1974, Stjernström 1998, Rönnlund & Tollefsen 2016). Det relationella rummet (Lefebvre 2014) och tanken om den dynamiska relationen mellan aktör och struktur, som utvecklats av Anthony Giddens (1984) (inspirerad av Hägerstrands tidsgeografiska postulat om det fysikaliska rummet), markerar en av de teoretiska utgångspunkterna i denna text.

This paper examines the social context of “domestic food production” (dfp) in the inland North of Sweden, with a focus on understanding the contributions of non-commercial food distribution to local food security and sustainable rural community-building. We report on the findings of an exploratory pilot study that included an online survey of 305 people who engaged in at least one dfp activity (hunting, fishing, foraging, or farming). The aims were to uncover common social practices of dfp, as well as to identify key values attached to dfp, the extent of commercial and non-commercial distribution of home-produced food, and motivations to give away food. The main findings emphasize the social nature of dfp activities, with the vast majority of respondents undertaking dfp in groups or as part of formal clubs. Key values attached to dfp included social and community-related aspects, while commercial interests were limited. Respondents were more likely to engage in non-commercial distribution networks, usually involving close family and friends. Food givers mostly cited social factors as their main motivations rather than other food-related aspects (such as food security, health benefits, or food waste). Food givers were also likely to receive food from others, emphasizing the relatively narrow and reciprocal character of non-commercial food networks. We conclude that non-commercial dfp networks may be expanded to the broader community by exploiting the social nature of dfp and encouraging generalized reciprocity led by dfp clubs. This could potentially reduce the negative impacts of food deserts whilst also stimulating community interactions, learning and local dfp communities of practice.

This paper examines the role of public funding in transforming tourism pathways in sparsely populated Arctic destinations, comparing Northern Sweden and Finnish Lapland. Our theoretical framework considers destination path plasticity and moments of change through the lens of geographical political economy to understand patterns of uneven development. This perspective helps explain how regional development funding driven by multi-scalar political priorities and global markets set structural conditions for tourism. We present a spatial analysis of public funding between 2007 and 2021 for private firms and public projects, complemented by document analysis and expert interviews. We find that public funding in Finnish Lapland has largely reinforced ‘Arctification’ and export-driven tourism in a few locations. In Northern Sweden, it has focused more on redistributing resources to micro-businesses and broader socio-economic development in lagging regions, yet with limited impacts on changing dominant tourism pathways. Public projects improved knowledge creation and networking among public and private actors but were largely unable to consolidate emerging pathways in the long run. Overall, regional development funding supported incremental change around existing pathways and had limited transformative effects in response to shocks or disruptive moments due to the rigid nature of funding programmes.

This chapter explores the relation between folklore, food, and tourism in the Swedish part of the cross-national country of Sápmi, the land of the indigenous Sámi. Tourism has been labelled as an experience industry, offering opportunities for entrepreneurs in remote regions to create unique stories as a tool for marketing, product development, and branding. However, when heritage is commercialised, issues related to control are vital in order to remain respectful. Two examples of Sámi food tourism initiatives are described here, both based in the region Västerbotten and operated by Sámi organisations. Together, they illustrate how food, heritage, and communication can be performed in virtual as well as tangible ways, offering both economic and sociocultural potential.

This article introduces the special issue Changing dimensions of lifestyle mobilities in turbulent times: impacts of COVID-19 outbreaks and multiple crises. It aims not just to understand the individual drivers and consequences of mobility but their interactions with local manifestations of spatial (in)justice in various meaningful places. This editorial synthesizes the four studies of population flows in proximate and remote rural areas in Europe, and puts their contributions to the fields of lifestyle migration and mobilities in context. We introduce the lifestyle migration hub meeting that inspired this special issue and a mobility spectrum around which the article revolves. We then indicate common interests of lifestyle migration and rural tourism geographies, focusing on the contributors’ use of human geographic perspectives and aided by observations from ongoing ethnographic work about the demographic future of small villages in northern Sweden. A discussion of multiple disruptions, precarity and vulnerability is linked with a review of the papers before elaborating on destinations and communities as meaningful but vulnerable places. The conclusion outlines how concerns with people’s and place’s vulnerability and precarity in multiple disruptions to mobility flows can be further explored in cordial dialogue between scholars of lifestyle migration/mobility and tourism geography.

This chapter increases our understanding of how intra-European lifestyle migrants may transform communities in sparsely populated areas (SPAs) through their engagements in civil society, using the example of a dogsledding community in Arctic Sweden. In-depth narrative analysis of interviews with international migrant dogsledders and longer-term residents shows the heterogeneity of communities in sparsely populated settings and their diverse perspectives on community transformation and renewal in response to challenges of demographic shrinkage (Eimermann et al., 2022). The case study village of Gafsele in Åsele municipality provides an interesting study context as it is home to a relatively large group of international migrants, many of whom were attracted by exceptional opportunities for dogsledding and an internationally renowned trail network. The local dogsledding club organizes an annual dogsledding event (the Gafsele Open) attracting Swedish and international participants. Balancing their incomes and lifestyles around dogsledding activities, migrants are engaging in the club and co-organizing the event as individuals and through their businesses (D.A. Carson et al., 2018; Eimermann & Singleton, 2021). This area is thus exploring its potential for local rural development through community- and nature-based tourism.

This article introduces the special issue ‘Rural hinterland development in sparsely populated areas (SPAs): new challenges and opportunities arising from urbanisation within the periphery’. It problematises the relationships between growing cities and hinterland areas in SPAs, such as those commonly found in Arctic, Outback and similar remote resource peripheries of developed countries. Many SPAs are rapidly urbanising, with polarised development becoming an ever-increasing concern for regional planners and policy-makers. This special issue contributes to debates about the impact that urban growth and city-centric development strategies in SPAs might have on the development prospects for small and distant settlements in the hinterland. We first discuss why SPAs are different from other rural contexts when it comes to urban-rural interactions and introduce the idea of regional disconnectedness as a defining feature of SPAs. We then review the papers in this collection, which include perspectives from northern Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Scotland, Alaska, and Australia, and position them according to their contributions to theory, policy and practice. The special issue challenges assumptions that city-centric regional development in SPAs will automatically generate spillover or backwash effects for the hinterland. It emphasises the need to consider diverse mobility flows within SPAs as part of urban-rural interactions. It also raises attention to micro-scale urbanisation within the hinterland, with housing, services, and amenities increasingly concentrating in a few small towns. The final discussion outlines important areas for research into more effective urban-rural partnership building in SPAs and on how to embrace regional disconnectedness for more targeted hinterland development.

Small villages in northern Sweden have seen a continuing removal of key services, such as schools, shops and public transport, since the 1970s. Disinvestment in public services has not been strategically planned but has happened in response to population loss and increased costs on a case-by-case basis. More recently, there has been a shift in policy thinking to what might be termed a ‘de-growth’ approach where digitalisation and increased personal mobility are used to provide new ways of delivering services. The purpose of this paper is to examine the existence of ‘resource deserts’ in Southern Lapland and the emergence (or consolidation) of village hierarchies in allocating public services. We map out the distribution of neighbourhood services (grocery stores, pre-/schools and petrol pumps) among villages, and explore the lived experiences in accessing these resources in different villages. Our results show that resource deserts clearly exist in the south and east of the region, while villages in the more sparsely populated western mountain areas were generally in a better position to retain resources. We identify a lack of consistent and transparent service planning at the village level as a key shortcoming in municipal and regional service strategies. There appear to be unofficial settlement hierarchies in the differential treatment of villages that are otherwise similar in population size, population change and distance to central places. We find that political decisions on service allocations are likely influenced by several factors. These include legacy effects relating to historic settlement status, the location of villages in relation to key transport or mobility corridors, as well as ideological factors favouring villages with more ‘exotic’ features and development potential in line with the municipalities’ economic, social and political priorities. We finally argue that a shift to de-growth needs to be more strategically planned if it is to eliminate resource deserts and promote equity of service access across all villages.

The paradoxical situation of planning for growth while managing decline has long been a reality for politicians and planners in Nordic peripheries. In recent years, however, attempts to plan for demographic adaptation, smart shrinkage, and ‘right-sizing’ public services have become commonplace. While it has taken decades for this to become an accepted part of municipal planning, new opportunities are now arising in the Swedish North due to several unforeseen giga-investments. These are expected to trigger rapid socio-economic growth along the urbanized coast and in a few select inland locations. Yet the likely effects on shrinking rural and sparsely populated municipalities geographically adjacent to these investment hotspots are much less understood. Previous research suggests that such investment projects might cause pressure for rural labour and housing markets but may also offer a range of positive spillover effects and development opportunities for rural areas. We draw on structural level narratives and interviews with key informants, including local and regional political stakeholders, to identify how the prospects of the giga-investments are viewed in places that are not directly affected, and what opportunities and threats are discussed. An overarching theme identified in the empirical material concerns the a-spatiality of discourses of growth, which we divide into two concrete dilemmas: infrastructure and mobility. Our findings show that, while the investments are seen as ringing in a new ‘golden age’ for the northern region, such a-spatial understandings of regional characteristics might stand in the way of acting fast and being able to make the most of the potential spillover effects.