01-12-2023
30-11-2024
The project YOUNG PEOPLE RETURNING focuses on the biographies and experiences of young adults (aged 22-35) who have left rural and sparsely populated areas to pursue higher education.
It aims to explore rationales and determinants for their decision to return to their home regions after graduation. In this alignment, we explore, among other things, the importance of emotional geographies, analysing ties and sense of belonging that are maintained even when they are distant, but also new priorities in terms of well-being and quality of life that seem to support the return. We also want to examine the role that returnees currently play in the life of their regions, the strategies and tools they use, and identify the areas in which they invest. Finally, the project will identify policies and initiatives, especially at the local level, that are activated to motivate and support the return of high qualified populations. The study will be conducted methodologically with a non-sequential mixed methods design. It will be conducted at the national level (mainland and islands), both quantitatively and qualitatively. In addition to the analysis of official statistics on the mobility trends of the young population over the last 10 years in the low population density regions and the analysis of policies to settle the young population in these areas, the study includes the development and application of a questionnaire and biographical interviews with the same population group: young adults and adults who have returned to their regions of origin after higher education.
The questionnaire aims to identify reasons for leaving, sense of belonging to the context of origin, motives for return and post-return experiences. The interviews aim to consider return decisions and itineraries within a biographical ecology, where the intersection of spatial aspects with social class, gender and ethnicity may be relevant to the analysis of mobilities that cannot be explained by the typical economic perspectives used to understand young people's destinations after higher education.
JEDI – Youth, Education, Diversity and Innovation
Projeto apoiado através do Financiamento Plurianual do CIIE (Financiamento Base, com a ref.ª UIDB/00167/2020), atribuído pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, IP. (no quadro da 2ª edição do concurso interno de apoio a projetos de investigação 2020-2023 do CIIE) (Grant no. 167/2020_conc2_04)
Educational and social trajectories
Imperative of mobility
Returning youth migration
Highly qualified youth
Regional development
Sara Faria (JEDI – FPCEUP – Departamento de Psicologia)
Prudencia Gutierrez-Esteban (Universidade da Extremadura)