On "non-rural rural" folks

That's the brain teaser in the title of Kristin Lunz Trujillo's latest paper in Political Behavior.  The full title is "Feeling Out of Place: Who Are the Non‐Rural Rural Identifiers, and Are They Unique Politically?"  Here's the abstract: 

Previous work suggests rural identity often stems from direct experience living in a rural area, and that categorical group membership occurs before social identification. Puzzlingly, however, some U.S. survey takers not living in a rural area indicate that being rural is part of their identity. Using ANES data from 2020 (N=8280) and 2019 (N=3165), as well as original survey data from YouGov (N=2615), I find that these non-rural rural identifiers are similar to rural identifiers in rural areas in terms of group-based affect and values, and are more right-leaning and populist than people who do not identify as rural (regardless of their location). Few consistent demographic differences between rural and non-rural rural identifiers exist. I conclude that: (1) rural identification has similar political, attitudinal, and demo- graphic tendencies regardless of respondent location, and (2) non-rural rural identifiers have either been socialized in a rural area but moved away, or they personally affiliate with values and norms of rural areas despite not categorically being part of the group. This study has implications for the study of urban–rural political behavior, and for our understanding of identity and politics more broadly.

Here's the introduction to the article, which is more illuminating for a lay reader: 

There has been a widening urban–rural political divide over recent decades in the U.S. and elsewhere (Gimpel et al., 2020; Rodden, 2019). One explanation for this divide involves identity-centered considerations, including rural identity and its relationship with place-based grievances (Cramer, 2016; Lunz Trujillo & Crowley, 2022; Lyons & Utych, 2021; Munis, 2020). Recent work has found rural identity to be politically relevant in various ways and is predictive of anti-urban sentiment (Lyons & Utych, 2022), Trump vote (Lunz Trujillo & Crowley, 2022), support for anti-establishment candidates (Cramer, 2016), anti-intellectualism (Lunz Trujillo, 2022), and more.

However, in many of these survey-based studies, a nontrivial number of people indicate that being rural is part of their identity—that is, they say being rural is where they feel they belong or is important to their self-image—yet they are not actually from a rural area (e.g., Lunz Trujillo, 2022; Nemerever & Rogers, 2021). This poses a theoretical puzzle. First, ethnographic work argues that rural identity is a place-based identity stemming directly from lived experience of that place (Bell, 1992; Ching & Creed, 1997), e.g., rural identity comes from having lived and experienced rural life. Second, and relatedly, Social Identity Theory (SIT) suggests one is typically a group member (e.g., a rural resident) before socially identifying with the group (e.g., adopting a rural social identity) (Huddy, 2003; Scheepers & Ellem- ers, 2019; Tajfel, 1970). People who identify as rural but are not rural residents—the “non-rural rural identifiers”—also pose an issue in accounting for the urban–rural divide: if many non-rural people hold rural identities, then how rural is this identity really?

Here, I investigate why some people indicate they are rural identifiers—strong ones even—but also say they do not live or have not grown up in a rural area. In addition, I examine whether rural versus non-rural rural identifiers differ in their political dispositions. This question is related to, but still distinct from, recent work investigating a similar puzzle: why do some non-rural individuals score high on rural resentment measures? (Dawkins et al., 2023). In the case of rural resentment, the survey questions used to measure rural resentment are conducive to “rural empathy” while not necessarily capturing the group identification aspect. For instance, one could think that rural areas do not get their fair share of resources in society while not indicating that rurality is important or central to their self-image. Rather, I examine why people adopt a rural social identity, which goes beyond simply empathizing with rural-based grievances into what constitutes ones’ self-view and identity.

I argue that rural identifiers, regardless of where they live, should psychologically affiliate with the group’s perceived values and intergroup affect, which forms the basis for identification even if group membership is not achieved. Since non-rural rural identifiers should have a shared set of norms and affect, rural identity’s political correlates are similar regardless of current location. Relatedly, I expect most rural identifiers have either grown up in a rural area (e.g., socialized as rural) or currently live in a rural area.

This reminds me of my long-standing theory that people one generation removed from a rural area still identify as rural, in part because they still have extended family like grandparents, even parents there. But, this excerpt suggests, it's also because they embrace what they consider to be rural values.