Australia’s rural towns and cities are experiencing significant social transformation with young people front and centre of this change. Today youth from diverse migration, class and ethnic backgrounds from around the world are forging rural pathways across the country and making a home for themselves, their families and communities.

This includes those who have moved to rural Australia from other countries for work or with family members, young people from humanitarian refugee backgrounds, international students, and those from local intergenerational migrant and settler backgrounds.

At the same time, rural Australia continues to undergo profound economic and environmental change, all of which impact on the types of rural futures that young people today imagine, pursue, and are able to sustain.

Under these conditions, this research examined how young people are generating and sustaining relationships with people and places as they build their lives in rural Australia. The study, Young People’s Mobilities, Relationships and Place-Making in Rural Australia, drew on qualitative research with participants from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds in one rural city of Victoria over a three-year period. It heard from young people themselves about what it’s like to grow up and build a future in rural Australia today.

This research was funded by the Australian Research Council (2019-2024) and led by Dr Rose Butler, Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Humanities & Social Sciences at Deakin University. It was supported by research assistance from Dr Jehonathan Ben (Deakin), Dr Alexandra Coleman (Western Sydney University) and Dr Ivy Vuong (University of Technology Sydney).

This site also reports on research undertaken for a related project on  Rural Pacific Youth: Pathways to IT and Other Career Trajectories funded by a Scanlon Foundation Community Grant (2022-2025) and led by Dr Makiko Nishitani (La Trobe University) with Dr Rose Butler and Dr Maryanne Pale (Swinburne University of Technology).