Rethinking lifestyle and middle‐class migration in “left behind” regions

• Published in: Population space and place Vol. 28; no. 8
• Main Authors: Goodwin‐Hawkins, Bryonny, Dafydd Jones, Rhys
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.11.2022
• Subjects: affordability; Case studies; Cultural capital; Employment; Inequality; left behind regions; lifestyle; Lifestyles; Migrants; Migration; Quality of life; Regions; Social classes; spatial inequalities; Wales; Working class
• ISSN: 1544-8444; 1544-8452
• DOI: 10.1002/psp.2495

So‐called “left behind” regions have gained infamy for working‐class discontent. Yet a concurrent phenomenon has gone unremarked: middle‐class lifestyles in peripheral places. This article examines how middle‐class migrants (defined by economic, social, and cultural capital) to peripheral regions envisage and enact their aspirations. Against presumed migration trajectories to growing urban centres or for better‐paid employment, we argue that seeming moves down the “escalator” reveal how inequalities between regions offer some migrants opportunities to enact middle‐class lifestyles affordably. We present a qualitative case study of West Wales and the Valleys, predominantly rural and post‐industrial and statistically among Europe's most deprived regions. Drawing from interviews with EU and UK in‐migrants alongside long‐term residents, we illustrate how three dimensions of quality of life—material, relational, subjective—are mobilised in middle‐class placemaking amidst peripherality. We demonstrate how spatial inequalities and career trade‐offs offer affordable material access to lifestyle and how middle‐class aspirations enable migrants to subjectively transform peripherality into enchantment.