Open AccessBEATING BROKE BY GETTING OUT? EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERSONAL DEBT AND COMMUNITY-OUTMIGRATION
Author(s) -
Alyssa Gerhardt,
Karen Foster
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of child, youth and family studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1920-7298
DOI - 10.18357/ijcyfs122202120232
Subject(s) - debt , extant taxon , scholarship , mobilities , identity (music) , sociology , personal network , social psychology , psychology , economics , economic growth , social science , finance , physics , evolutionary biology , acoustics , biology
Scholarship on young people’s geographical mobilities tells us that young adults move away from their childhood communities for a complex mix of economic “push-pull” reasons, including relationships, aspirations, attachments to place, identity, and belonging. In this abundant research, particularly that which focuses on youth outmigration from rural and peripheral communities, there is surprisingly little attention paid to an issue that is top-of-mind for many young adults today: personal debt. In this paper, we draw insights from extant literature on youth mobilities to make the case for a greater examination of the role of personal debt in young people’s migration decisions. We hypothesize that youth and debt increase a person’s likelihood of moving away from peripheral regions. We test this hypothesis using data from a 2019 survey of Atlantic Canadians and find some support for it, and some interesting nuance, suggesting that there is good reason to examine debt’s role in youth mobilities in greater detail.