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‘It is hard for me to live in the city’: local identities and place belonging of young rural Russians
The contemporary youth studies are developing as mostly metrocentric. As a result, rural youth often find themselves out of the focus of attention of researchers, and they are marginalised in comparison with urban youth, whose experience and lifestyle are perceived as the normative model for all areas. In these conditions, rural space is labelled as illegitimate and structurally depriving for youth. This approach is criticised by researchers working in the tradition of cultural geographies of childhood and youth, who take into account the multiple, complex, often contradictory, but still unique and autonomous experiences of today's young people living in rural areas. Following this approach, this article based on 59 qualitative biographical interviews demonstrates how Russian rural youth conceive their places, spaces and local belongings in the context of three rural localities and defines three types of place attachment that constitute local identities of young people: rational choice, biographical rootedness, and community rootedness.