From the rural exodus to the new rural residents

In the mid-1950s, the rural exodus signalled the progressive movement of population from rural areas to urban environments. This process responded to the modernising economic model in which the city became the vector for economic growth and social transformation. Whilst the metropolitan phenomenon spread, rural areas were relegated to the background, with a clear lag with regard to modernisation and development processes. In contrast to the city, which was a source of employment opportunities, a centre for cultural life and the support for generalised welfare state services (schools, health centres), villages represented culturally backward places, with scant employment opportunities beyond working in increasingly mechanised farming, which was demanding less and less manual labour. (De Miguel, 1972). The rural exodus in that period was intense and very selective from the point of view of generation. It drastically altered generational balances and conditioned demographic reproduction. The roots of that demographic decline are, to a great extent, firmly placed in those years. (Camarero et al., 2009).

A new phase began at the end of the 1980s, in which there was an incipient population recovery in some rural areas that is not explained by natural population growth, but by urban inhabitants arriving in certain rural areas in a movement resembling the counterurbanisation already previously seen in other neighbouring countries (Camarero, 1993; Champion, 1989; Fielding, 1982; Kontuly, 1998). That moment coincided with Spain’s entry into the European Economic Community, as it was known at the time, and which enabled the establishment of rural development programmes seeking to integrate the de-agrarianised rural world into economic activity as a whole. This led to a major transformation of rural activities, moving away from merely agricultural production towards the integration of environmental, tourism and quality food processing services. Thus, a new rural medium started to take shape, one which was less peasant, more multi-functional and linked to a new economy of signs (Lash and Urry, 1994). The natural parks or zones of special relevance in matters of biodiversity (at different levels) that were established began to attract new visitors who, in turn, required service facilities (hotels and rural houses, restaurants, café bars, etc.). What had previously been a medium suffering from ongoing abandonment and which was barely valued initiated a transformation into a medium with a high landscape and identity value and which was attractive to certain population groups. This transformation is part of a global change in which nature has begun to be valued differently (Shucksmith, 2018), with the “authentic” and artisan become rising values with major symbolic power.

Figure 2 Details of the migratory balances for 2011-2021 by strata of municipality size

Source: Residential Variations Statistics. INE. Own elaboration.

This transformation of the rural setting did not just convert it into a new rural tourism space, but, as seen in other neighbouring countries, the urban inhabitants also “discovered” the rural setting as a residential destination and thus a counterurbanisation trend developed. This trend was initially associated with a professional middle class that could even commute to work in the city yet reside in the countryside at the end of their working day (Brown et al., 2015). Nevertheless, as different studies started to expand their view, it was observed that the profile of these new rural residents was broadening to different profiles: retired people, commuters, neo-rural dwellers… (Phillips et al., 2020; Rivera, 2007).

The population exoduses in the 1960s and 1970s and the influxes at the end of the last century and start of the present century configured a rural population which was not necessarily native to the areas. According to the 2022 census, using data as of 1 January, 48% of those living in municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants were born in municipalities from the same population stratum. This figure indicates that approximately half of the inhabitants (52%) residing in those small municipalities had come from other places. If we contrast that data with larger sized municipalities (>30,000 inhabitants) we can see that 68% of their inhabitants were born in those municipalities (table 1). This means that there are proportionally more local people among the people living in large municipalities than among those living in small municipalities.

The result is quite the opposite to what we would have expected under the hypothesis of the transfer of the rural population to urban locations. The data show that contrary to the idea-force of rural emptying there are in fact rural areas that experienced the arrival of population from differing origins and, consequently, also a growing social heterogeneity.

Although the counterurbanisation trend started in the past century and has continued into the 21^st century, with its migration current linked to the search for and expression of a particular life style (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009; Benson and Osbaldiston, 2016), nowadays it is joined by the incorporation of foreign people who find work in the agricultural sector, in construction, or in the care economy. The foreign population, due to its sheer size and its young profile and being of a more family and natalist nature, becomes a key group when it comes to reducing the effects of the demographic winter (Sampedro and Camarero, 2020).

These data indicate that, beneath the population outflows, there are inflows of persons and, likely associated with them, different rooting and life projects of a pro-rural nature coexist. Specifically in the context of depopulation the interest resides in knowing, in addition to the processes of the autochthonous population remaining in the place, the processes of taking roots of those persons arriving in the rural setting driven by different motivations. Thus, whilst some villages lose population, others will be becoming the destination of professional urban classes seeking a more amenable way of life, but also the attraction of young people searching for new life projects, as well as an immigrant population seeking to make a livelihood.

Their motivations are diverse and very often they have more than one. Different territories attract different profiles of new residents. If at one extreme of pragmatism and need we find a foreign population that finds rural municipalities as an arrival point in the country where they can access niches in the job market linked predominately to farmwork, care, and hospitality (Sampedro and Camarero, 2019), at the other extreme we have an ex-urban population whose motivations are linked to finding a vital connection with nature and a lifestyle change guided by an idealised representation of nature and life in a rural environment (Rivera, 2007; Guirado, 2011). A series of elements are observed between both extremes that are present in the majority of cases, such as the desire to have a better quality of life, distancing from the city and the urban discomfort encountered on a daily basis (in the case of commuters), and access to more affordable housing under certain circumstances, etc.

Along with these diverse motivations and expectations regarding the type and conditions of life sought by the new residents in the rural environment, the expectations themselves can vary as time passes and needs change, especially those linked to life cycles, when expectations and the reality found do not require adjustment (Halfacree and Rivera, 2012).

In the case of young adults, the difficulties that they face to settle may be related to their ability to access affordable housing in settings that are undergoing gentrification or elitisation (Solana, 2006; Guirado, 2011), but also with the achievement or not of some of the motivations that drove their departure from the city to the village. Amongst these, the main reasons are the lack of economic resources and administrative help to set up the businesses that they had in mind, as well as the difficulty in creating a relational environment beyond the new residents. The need for a relational environment can be particularly burdensome in the case of small enclaves with highly aged populations, specifically due to the lack of young people. But adaptation issues are also relevant to the setting with sociocultural idiosyncrasy which may prove vastly different to their own (Rivera, 2021). For the case of the young immigrant population, their opportunities to settle are related to the labour market, but also to family strategies and the opportunity for family reunification (Sampedro and Camarero, 2019).

Consecutive global crises and young adult migrations

The 21^st century has strung together global economic and health crises. Although those crises were vastly different, both had deep-reaching effects on social functioning. From an analytical perspective it is difficult to understand what is happening in rural areas beyond the cycles that mark these crisis periods, and which impel important migratory flows. Figure 3 shows the rupture of the 2008 crisis in terms of the migratory balance; rural attractiveness fell, especially among young adults, whilst the 2019 health crisis supposed, at least momentarily, quite the opposite effect.

The beginning of this century has seen young adults being attracted to both rural as well as to urban areas. The fact that both habitats are growing in unison indicates that the population has come from abroad. Moreover, in consonance with the growing idea of diversity, we note that from the rates the impact is proportionately greater in rural areas, where the proportion of young adults was lower. The so-called Great Recession of 2008 curtailed the migratory flow and led to a population loss in absolute terms among the young age groups ⁴ . The recovery of that group was slow in rural areas and did not become significant until 2018. The growth in the young population was especially notable in the months of 2020 as a consequence of residential movements opened up by the health crisis, favouring settlement as an alternative to mobility restrictions. Nevertheless, the questions that arise for the future concern how long this rural attractiveness will last and whether it will continue to be a place of residence compared to urban areas.

We have seen how the 2008 crisis altered the potential for establishing roots in rural areas with respect to the foreign population, which had been growing at a very high rate. We must not forget that migratory inflows have an effect, not due to their volume, but exclusively if those who arrive remain there permanently. Evidence points to two very different behaviour patterns. On the one hand, it was observed that the effect of the health crisis led to a drastic break from the trend of rural abandonment by the young persons born in Spain, a trend that may be short-lived insofar as, once the pandemic was over and without substantial changes in job markets and access to services, there are unlikely to be opportunities for greater settlement than before (Figure 4). On the other hand, the inflow of young foreigners has also slowed. For that population, which has a key role in the process of rooting population and demographic dynamisation, the health crisis broke the trend of recovery that had followed the post-economic crisis period.

The plot shows the rural population flows but does not enable us to highlight the rooting and long-term settlement processes of the population in rural areas. The 2008 crisis appears as an important breaking point and as a warning of the volatility regarding whether these new residents will remain in rural areas.

Figure 3 Rural and urban migratory flows. Population aged 25-34 years

Source: Own elaboration based on the Residential Variations Statistics and continuous census records. INE. Rural municipalities: fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

Figure 4 Rural migratory flows according to place of birth. Population aged 25-34 years ⁵

Source: Own elaboration based on the Residential Variations Statistics and continuous census records. INE. Rural municipalities: fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

Permanence and autochthony: young adults who stay and young adults who arrive

The data for the first two decades of this century show that there are fewer young rural adults, but that same effect can also be seen in the urban population. As we have indicated, the cohorts are increasingly smaller, given the downward trend in the birth rate. Thus, each year the group of young persons will be smaller in number than that for the previous year. The fact that the control group we wish to observe shrinks year on year should not be considered as a strange phenomenon. Nevertheless, rural emigration could indeed aggravate this fall in the number of young people, but it could also cushion that fall. The contraction in the youth group is clearly seen in Figure 5. The graph shows the 2021 population born in municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants and it can be seen that current cohorts are one sixth ⁶ of those of the generations born in those same rural municipalities in the 1960s, highlighting a demographic contraction.

There are clearly fewer young persons both in number and in proportion, but that is primarily owing to the effect of fertility contraction. In fact, if nobody had emigrated from the rural areas there would be just one 20-year-old for every six 60-year-olds, thereby indicating that even if there had been no emigration, there would still only be very few young persons in those rural areas.

Figure 5 Persons born in Spain in municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants who lived in Spain, by age in 2021.

Source: Population census 2021. Own elaboration.

In order to study demographic challenge policies, the question to be answered concerns the specific effect that migratory movements have on the age composition, and particularly so in the young generations. Two indicators will be utilised in the analysis presented below. The first indicator of permanence reports on the weightings of those young adults who continue living in the places of origin, compared to a hypothetical situation in which all those born had remained in the rural municipalities. The second indicator refers to the degree of autochthony and indicates the weight that those born in the location has on the rural population structure.

The indicators were calculated using 2021 Population Census data for each age group and refer to the group of municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants.

The permanence indicator is defined as the proportion of persons born in the municipality who continued residing in the municipality ⁷ in 2021. The indicator of the degree of autochthony is defined as the proportion of residents in 2021 in the municipality who were born in the same municipality ⁸ . Both indicators are shown for each age group in Figure 6.

Figure 6 Indicators of permanence and autochthony by age for municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants in 2021.

Note: Residents born in Spain. Source: Population census 2021. Own elaboration.

As can be seen from the data in Figure 6, by the time they are 20 years old only half of the young adults born in municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants still live in those municipalities. At 35 years of age, the population of those who continue to reside there has fallen to one third of the cohort of those born. In parallel, if we observe the proportion of those born there over the total number of residents, we can see that the autochthony index falls drastically after 25 years old. Autochthonous young adults are only a very small fraction of rural young people. In other words, the majority of the young adults abandon their birth municipality, but those that do remain are a minority compared to the young adults of their same cohort who have arrived as new residents. This is an unexpected effect, and therefore said finding warrants more in-depth attention.

A complementary indicator would be to consider the ratio of residents to those born there. That is to say, the weight that immigrants would have among the residents of rural areas if those persons born in the area had remained in the areas -hypothesis of zero emigration-. This information is given in Figure 7. It shows the ratio of all residents -both those born in Spain as well as those born abroad- over all those persons born in municipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants.

Figure 7 presents the hypothetical impact of people incorporated as residents into rural areas under the assumption that all those born there had remained there. The results are revealing. Although the group of 25-45-year-olds is, given the ageing of the rural population and the drop in the fertility rate, numerically small, it is also a proportionally small group compared to the population arriving as new residents. The data indicate that for that generational group we find more than two people who were not born in that place for each person born there. This figure is the opposite of that for the degree of autochthony series (Figure 6). Figure 6 in the permanence series shows that young adults born in rural areas depart, but it is also true that the rural young adults are above all young adults born outside rural areas, as shown by the degree of autochthony series (Figure 6) and which is verified more visibly in Figure 7.

Figure 7 Ratio of current residents over those born in municipalities of fewer than 1,000 inhabitants by age in years.

Source: Population census. Own elaboration.

The corollary is clear: there is an important renewal of the young rural population. Diversity significantly increases, particularly among the late-young groups. The study by Camarero and Sampedro (2020) highlighted the importance of diversity by origin of those known as the 1.5 generation (under 13 years of age). The results of those authors analysed not only the proportion of persons born abroad, but also that of those who, despite being born in Spain, have mothers who were born abroad. The figures denote that over one fifth of rural children and adolescents had roots outside of Spain.

In short, the drop in fertility has meant that there are fewer young people and that the reduced numbers of young people have been interpreted in the context of depopulation as a reflection of emigration. However, although the emigration of autochthonous persons does exist, the incorporation of young people into rural areas is also significant.