Rural Scotland - trajectories of young people and young adults: report
A report by the Scottish Government's Expert Advisory Group on Migration and Population exploring the migration and mobility of young persons and young adults in rural Scotland.
Footnotes
1 See the following publication from the Expert Advisory Group on Migration and Population (EAG): Designing a pilot remote and rural migration scheme – analysis and policy options
2 See the following publication from the Expert Advisory Group on Migration and Population (EAG): Place-based policy approaches to population challenges – lessons for Scotland
3 At 18 years of age an individual in the UK is categorised as an adult. However, the literature reviewed tends to use the term young people to refer to those aged 16-30 years. For the purposes of this report the term ‘young people and adults’ is used to refer to those aged between 16 and 45. Constructing age boundaries, for example where youth begins and ends and adulthood, middle age, etc. starts, is dynamic and contested, particularly as people are living longer and decisions related to employment, family formation, reproduction etc. are being delayed (Office for National Statistics, 2019, ‘Milestones: journeying into adulthood’)
4 See also YouGov (2018). How young are “young people”? And at what age does a person become “old”?
5 The life course as a theoretical orientation/lens has emerged from a desire to understand these social pathways, their developmental effects, and their relation to personal and social-historical conditions. In order to understand how temporal/historical, biographical, social, and cultural contexts influence how lives are ‘socially organised’, the term ‘trajectories’ is used to describe the ‘sequences of roles and experiences, which are themselves made of transitions (our italics), or changes in state or role’. (Elder et al. 2003, 8). For example, leaving home or a place to study, entry into work, and setting up a household all entail changes in status or identity which in turn may result in changes of behaviour and decisions (for more detail, see Elder et al., 2003).
6 There is always a level of uncertainty of population estimates at the small-area level because of the undercount of moves by young people, especially men (see Expert Advisory Group on Population and Migration, 2021).
7 see also Anderson and Roughley, 2018, 181-4.
8 This is also called ‘the vital statistics method’ or ‘the survival rate method’ when deaths are also considered (Hamilton, 1967).
9 Some caution is needed when interpreting the results. Flows of (young) men may be underreported; (young) women normally register GP changes, whereas men do not always register (Expert Advisory Group on Migration and Population, 2021).
10 The extreme example of a town dominating its island is Rothesay, which is home to almost three-quarters of the population of Bute.
11 For a similar pattern around Stornoway see Jamieson and Copus (2018), and further discussion below.
12 Age-cohort depletion methods are less helpful with the oldest age groups because they cannot distinguish between losses from out-migration and from death, but fortunately for our present purposes data on these older age groups are not required.
13 Brofenbrenner (1974) used the term ‘socio-ecological context’ to describe the complex relationships between the individual and the environment (e. g. social, psychological, cultural, physical, etc) and the ways in which it shapes behaviours, experiences and actions. It is a framework that has been adopted by UNICEF as well as being applied in the context of child and youth studies in relation to a wide range of issues (UNICEF, The Social Ecological Model)
14 The parameter set for the literature search was from the 1990s to 2024. Various search terms were used; for example: ‘rural/remote-rural/island - youth/people/adults’; ‘rural-mobilities/migration/outmigration/ retention/attraction/place-attachment/belonging’. Search engines used included: Google Scholar, Semantic and CORE. Geographical searches covered Scotland, Europe, Canada, USA, and Australia.
15 For example see, HIE, 2018; Glass and Atterton, 2022; Youth Work Dumfries and Galloway, 2023; Scottish Government, 2018b; 2019, 2021a&b; Youth Work Dumfries and Galloway, 2023.
16 A workshop was facilitated with a group of nine young people and adults from the Young Islanders Network (YIN) attending the Big Ideas Annual event at Stirling University, 29th August 2024. The majority were from Mainland Orkney, with one participant each from the Islands of Shetland, Western Isles and Skye. Participants were16 to 45 years old. Most participants had some connection with youth services, for example, as part of Community Learning and Development Services. To preserve the anonymity of the small group involved, each participant is identified in this report only by a number.
17 Three pay bands are listed: the ‘highest pay band’ includes managers, directors and senior officials; professional occupations; and associate professional and technical occupations; the mid-pay band includes skilled trades and occupations, process plants and operatives, administrative and secretarial occupation.
18 The report reflects views gathered from 223 young people aged 12-25 from across the island local authorities.
19 LGBTQ is the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Trans, Queer.
20 see also LGBTQ Youth Scotland 2019 report on Dumfries and Galloway.
21 An on-going research project in Dumfries and Galloway by the same research team is focusing on young people’s social connections.
22 Giollagáin et al.’s study involved preschool age groups, secondary school children and local community participants in three vernacular communities: Western Isles, Island of Skye (Staffin) and Tiree (Argyll and Bute).
23 This survey was a follow-up from an earlier one undertaken in 2015, but there are major differences in the age profiles of respondents between the two surveys, which must cast some doubt on the comparability of many of the results, we have therefore confined consideration to the 2018 survey here.
24 52 per cent of the 10-12-year-olds in the Dumfries and Galloway survey said that they did not plan to stay in the region in the future, as did 60 per cent of those aged 13–17 (Youth Work Dumfries and Galloway, 2023). In a follow-up question the most cited reason for planning to leave among the 10 to 12 year olds was ‘Travel’, followed by ‘Study’ and ‘Work’. For the 13 to 17 year olds ‘Travel’ was also the most cited, but ‘Study’ was selected more often than ‘Work’.
25 The D&G Report includes data broken down by ward, but unfortunately these are not controlled for age group. It may nevertheless be significant that the highest figure for ‘planning to leave’ was for Stranraer ward, presumably reflecting the perceived lack of opportunities in what has become a very depressed town now that it is neither the ferry hub nor even has a town centre railway station. The second highest figures were for the predominantly rural most easterly wards of the region. The HIE report at some points contrasts ‘fragile’ and ‘non-fragile’ areas, but presumably includes data for the city of Inverness, which is now an undoubted urban area, with a population of over 80,000, and of many other smaller towns, so its data unfortunately cannot be seen simply to reflect issues relating to ‘rural’ areas.
26 The Highland and Islands Enterprise (HIE) area reports cover Shetland, Orkney, Outer Hebrides, Caithness and Sutherland, Inner Moray Forth Area, Moray, Skye, Lochaber and Wester Ross, Argyll and Islands. Only 28 per cent of those still at school were classified from their responses as ‘committed stayers’, as opposed to 63 per cent of those aged 25 to 30.
27 For a fuller discussion see HIE, 2018, chap.2).
28 An HIE (2017, 10) report on occupational segregation notes that, although data at the local level was not available on the types of apprenticeships undertaken by women and women, the regional trend showed marked gender differences. Men were more likely to take up apprenticeships in sectors such as construction, engineering and energy, transport, ICT, animal care, land and water. Women, by contrast women were disproportionately represented in ‘sectors classed as lower value’ which included personal service and administration as well as sport.
29 Scottish Rural Medicine Collective (see also Maclaren, 2024).
30 Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Technology Placement Programme;
Starting your career and Scottish Enterprise.
31 see also Bjarnason, 2021; Terman, 2020.
32 For example, social class, ethnicity/race, sexuality, disability, language.
33 But only if they are carefully broken down by gender and age/life course stage.
34 Policies are considered to seek explicitly to support relevant outcomes where they make direct reference to the mobility of youth and young adults. Where outcomes with a different focus or intent may produce ‘knock-on’ effects with relevance to attraction or retention, this is described as implicit support.
35 Policy areas: Agriculture, Marine, Economy, Digital, Population, Skills, Social Justice, Housing, Health and Social Care, Environment, Climate Change, Transport, Culture.
37 Young islanders have their say on transport
38 Young Islanders Network housing challenge
39 The Scottish Rural & Islands Youth Parliament
40 Uist Beò
42 Local living and 20 minute neighbourhoods impact assessment
44 e-sgoil
Contact
Email: population@gov.scot
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