Translocal community actors: New voices in rural development.

Several Nordic islands seem to be hotspots for attracting people, who do not live there, but who, nevertheless, engage themselves in the development of local products, places and projects such as music festivals, cultural events, local foods and crafts. We can observe a number of characteristics about these engagements. Firstly, there seems to be a community of people who come together in order to engage themselves in the development of these local projects, which perhaps function as `hubs of engagement´. Secondly, the communities consist of both permanent residents, second home owners and more occasional `tourists´. Thirdly, that such `engagement hubs´ seem to take place within certain domains: the cultural sector and the quality foods sectors, but also in activities that promote more sustainable living.

These observations have motivated a research pilot project with the aim to improve our understanding of 1) the motivations behind such engagements, 2) the community and place-based contexts thereof, and 3) the developmental outcomes of these engagements, which we understand as being facilitated by translocal relations and networks.

This study explores how these `translocal community actors´ contribute to local development because people who do not live full-time in a locality nevertheless choose to engage themselves, their resources and their networks there. We argue that today’s increasingly trans-local lives render the often used dichotomy between residents and non-residents of little use, when we want to understand the different resources available to and activated in today’s rural development. We suggest that rural development strategies should consider more translocal approaches and work to increase the integration of rural places into the flows of people and their resources by supporting the development of networks, relations and nodes of engagement.

Empirically, we analyse networks and initiatives on Bornholm, Samsø, Fanø and Gotland. Methodologically, we combine three empirical elements in our analysis. A place branding policy study, a register-data analysis of residents, second home owners and tourists; and qualitative interview-based analysis of selected `communities of engagement´ in each of the four islands.

Theoretically, we take a trans-disciplinary approach and include translocal approaches to rural development and community engagements, whereby increased mobility and multi-local attachments create new development opportunities (migration-development nexus); which in turn affect approaches to place branding and planning.