My partner grew up in Bedford, the seat of Bedford County in Pennsylvania. The small town boasts a population of only 2,830 per the 2023 census. In 2012, when she was only 11, her family moved to San Jose, California. This allowed her mother to pursue a J.D. at Santa Clara Law school and gave the family access to many more opportunities and resources.
This isn't uncommon-- patterns of rural depopulation are well documented and a common motivation for leaving rural places is the perceived opportunity offered in more urban areas. (Other aspects of rural population growth and loss discussed here and here.) The story of my partner and her family also provides a prime example of "brain drain," a term used to describe the flight of young individuals bound for professional success from rural places. (More on brain drain and its effects here and here.)
The opportunities that my partner's family chased were real for them. Her mother now practices as an attorney and my partner attends the UC Davis Vet School, an opportunity she says was only possible because of her family's move to California. However, the move also had drawbacks.
My partner described Bedford as a very interconnected community. Her family would attend bible studies at her cousin's home every Wednesday. They would play in the creek (pronounced "crick" and which may or may not be different than a creek) at her cousin's house, catching crayfish and building bridges out of discarded wood planks and branches. If she wasn't at her cousin's house, she was with her grandma catching frogs, playing dodgeball, or sledding in nearby cornfields in the winter. According to my partner, "the people you start kindergarten with are the same people you graduate high school with."
In sociology, the term used to describe community interconnectedness is density of acquaintanceship. The metric is concerned with the portion of people that know each other in a community. As one might imagine, the density of acquaintanceship in cities is low when you consider the sheer number of people compared to how many might recognize each other. This urban isolation can lead to both physical and mental health problems. (Read the US Surgeon General's advisory on the loneliness epidemic here.)
This loneliness was also a very real experience for my partner. Leaving Bedford also meant leaving family, friends, and a support system she says was impossible to truly replace. This suggests that the cost of leaving her rural community was compounded. In addition to having to navigate life in a completely different place with different cultures and norms, she also simultaneously lost her access to a support system that would otherwise be helping manage the stress of such a drastic change.
The move has created a rift between her and those she feels most supported by. Often, her family asks her if she will return to Bedford which she does not plan to do. Often, she asks her grandmother to move to California. In her grandmother's words, she was "planted in Bedford" and cannot leave. My partner still reckons with the consequences of the move and the way it pits her career and life goals against time spent with the people she has left behind.
As I listened to what my partner had to say and as I continue to learn more about the unique problems rural communities face, it has become apparent that the forces which pull young people away from their families and support systems in rural communities stem from the same resource shortage responsible for many of the other challenges rural communities face. (Find information on the legal service shortage here. Find information on the difficulties rural schools face here. For information on law enforcement staffing problems in rural communities here.)
However, I struggled to find research analyzing the specific struggles those who are leaving their rural communities are facing. (Here is a study analyzing the effects of rural outmigration on parents who are left behind out of China. Here is a study analyzing how parents leaving their kids in rural areas to work in cities affects the children.) This seems like an important aspect of rural outmigration to consider and, like many rural issues, deserves to be focused on with the American rural perspective in mind.
1 comment:
I appreciate how you included the “brain drain” phenomenon in your blog post. I’ve mostly heard about it in the context of African communities. My parents grew up in Hindiro, a small town in Rwanda, and were able to study abroad thanks to scholarships. My dad studied in Russia and my mom in Canada. Today, Hindiro is even less populated, as people seem to move to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, in search of career opportunities. If everyone leaves, who will be left to support these rural communities?
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