Not wanting to be “Stuck”: Exploring the role of mobility for young people´'s wellbeing in Northern Finland

It is common for rural young people in Finland to leave the town where they were born. Far from being a solely Finnish phenomenon, however, the outmigration of rural youth is a global trend that affects the entire Arctic area. In this chapter, we suggest that it could be fruitful to understand the phenomenon of rural youth outmigration in Northern Finland in the context of a prevailing “culture of migration”. We direct our focus onto young people’s understandings of wellbeing and on the role mobility plays in these. Our findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork among young people living in the northern Finnish municipality of Kolari. We argue that mobility is necessary for the wellbeing of young people, whose rural lives are characterized by remoteness. Moreover, outmigration has become a key transitional phase in young rural Finns’ journey towards the good life, as members of a modern, mobile society.