Lifestyle migration in rural areas of Aragón, Spain

Raúl Lardiés-Bosque, Universidad de Zaragoza

Migration due to lifestyle and amenity has emerged recently at international level, leading to a new type and conceptualization of the migration (lifestyle migration). This migration is basically composed by people who want to take the best environmental quality, the cultural differentiation of the new destinations, achieving greater connection to nature in a more relaxed and peaceful atmosphere. Usually, they are migrants from urban environments and seeking new rural settings in which to develop their lives, so that economic motivation is not the most important for the move, but other issues related to value the quality and lifestyle. Unlike other countries, few studies have highlighted and analyzed this migration profile among immigrants in rural areas of Spain. In this paper, the phenomenon of amenity migration in rural areas of the region of Aragon has been studied, thanks to 331 questionnaires completed by new settlers arrived in rural municipalities of this region. Among all the new immigrants arrived to this areas, a group of them has been identified as 'amenity migrants'; several aspects of this migrants will be analyzed, starting by the definition and conceptualization of this phenomenon from the existing theorizing and the emergence of new forms of mobility in today's society. Also, different aspects and dimensions of this new migration such as sociodemographic characteristics and profile of migrants, migrant diversity and migration motivation, professional and residential history, social life and activities developed before and after the residential relocation, apart from other aspects of housing (previous and current), will be considered. The socio-territorial impact of these migrants at the local scale, the level of attachment and integration, and the potential for this group to influence social and political processes in the target communities will also be discussed.