Young people growing up in the countryside

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges in researching the lives of rural youth is tackling the powerful idea that rural places are ideal places in which to be a child or younger person. When one thinks of the countryside, we conjure up images of rolling green countryside where field boundaries and farm buildings structure a landscape in which wildlife is ordered and that everything is in the right place. Churches and manor house, so symbolic of power, are nestled on hillsides above villages, hewn from local materials, that appear to have organically grown out of the landscape. We imagine rural communities as thriving, where everyone knows and cares for each other. Residents shop in a local store and socialise in an ancient but welcoming pub. All connections to the outside world of modernity, hustle and bustle are conspicuously absent. This evocation of a pastoral idyll where people’s needs, hopes and aspirations are played out in a green a pleasant land is still surprisingly prevalent among many policy makers, the media, and the business sector who carelessly portray rural areas as if not prosperous then abundant with social capital and lifestyle benefits and with few problems that need addressing. As geographers, we have an important role to play in challenging such misrepresentations.