The Role of Gender in the Migration Practices and Aspirations of Australian Rural Youth

Youth out-migration, and youth net migration loss, have been prevailing trends in Australia's population geography since the early decades of the twentieth century (Hugo 2004). In the second decade of the twenty-first century this trend has become more entrenched, with it being almost de rigueur for many Australian youth to leave their rural towns and regions in search of new opportunities and experiences elsewhere (Argent and Walmsley 2008). In recent years there has been much public and academic debate around why rural youth, both in Australia and in other countries, have a higher propensity to migrate than their metropolitan counterparts and what this means for those communities they leave behind (Argent and Gibson 2008, Connell and McManus 2011, Stockdale 2006). Concern centres not just on the sheer loss of young people from demographically and economically struggling regions and communities but also on the extent to which they can be encouraged to return at some later stage of their life course and assume, inter alia, key local leadership and volunteer roles (Stockdale 2006). Gender has formed an important dimension in analyses of rural youth out-migration (Ni Laoire 1999,2001, Alston 2004). However, the prevalence of return migration among young out-migrants, and the role of gender in influencing this process, has largely remained anecdotal. This chapter focuses on the contemporary rural population issue of youth out- and return- migration in Australia with a specific concern to understand how gender influences the 'cultures of migration' that inform decisions to leave rural locations and how gender might influence the return migration aspirations of rural youth out-migrants.