- Email: [email protected]
Rural young people in regional development—the case of Finland in 1970–2000
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
Rural young people in regional development— the case of Finland in 1970–2000 Toivo Muilu*, Jarmo Rusanen Department of Geography, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 3000, Fin-90014 Oulu, Finland
Abstract In view of the crucial role of young people in society, especially as far as the future of sparsely populated rural areas is concerned, an analysis is made of absolute and relative changes in the 15–24-year age cohort in Finland and their effects on demographic and regional structure, employing GIS methods. The main material for this consists of georeferenced population data based on 1 1 km grid squares produced by Statistics Finland for the period 1970–2000. An example is taken of one rural municipality where the georeferenced data were supplemented with qualitative interview material obtained in 1999. The results show that the number and proportion of young people in the population of Finland have declined since 1970, although not consistently, at the same time as the total population has continued to increase. The dichotomy between the sparsely populated rural areas and the built-up areas has been accentuated by a distortion of the population structure and gender ratio, in that the young people, and particularly young women, have been inclined to move into the growth centres and to the more densely populated areas in general. The georeferenced data clearly point to a worsening regional imbalance in the areal distribution of population in Finland, although the interview material suggests that the young people still living in the countryside do not regard their position as hopeless but are prepared to weigh up their future on the basis of the alternatives open to them. r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Rural young people; Decline of population; GIS; Finland
1. Introduction The drift of population away from the countryside is one of the main factors affecting the regional structure in many countries, and although the temporal course of this effect may differ from one country to another, it is virtually always the case that the consequences are most dramatic in the marginal areas of settlement. Finland is the third most sparsely populated country in Europe, after Iceland and Norway, with a density of 17 inhabitants/km2 in 2000, and its population has become further concentrated in recent years into just 5–7 main growth centres. Thus it will serve as a good example of the impact of dwindling settlement in rural areas, although corresponding processes of concentration of population are also evident in Sweden and Norway (Pettersson, 2001; Hanell et al., 2002). The chief attention in regional demographic studies and planning is usually focused on the total population, the working age population, the labour force or ageing *Corresponding author. E-mail address: toivo.muilu@oulu.fi (T. Muilu).
(e.g. European Commission, 1998), whereas less note has been taken of the young age cohorts, like 15–24 year-olds. We set out here from the assumption that young people are in a key position as far as the future of the more remote rural areas, in particular, is concerned, for without renewal of their population from within, these areas cannot remain viable or maintain their economic functions in the long term, especially as they attract only a few people to move in from more densely populated areas. Kauppinen (2000), e.g. noted that in 1994 only 5.9% of those who moved away from the most densely populated areas in Finland (1001 inhabitants/km2 or more) went to rural areas (100 inhabitants/ km2 or less). Our thesis is thus that young people serve as an ‘‘indicator’’ of the future prospects for rural areas, both demographically and functionally. The present research has four purposes, which are in part interwoven in the treatment below. The first is to analyse areal demographic trends in Finland in terms of absolute and relative changes in the size of the cohort of young people from 1970 onwards on the basis of georeferenced data and to identify regional structures associated with both positive and negative courses. The
0743-0167/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0743-0167(03)00003-2
ARTICLE IN PRESS 296
T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
second is to examine by means of an example municipality the manner in which the reduction in the number of young people is reflected in areas of pronounced population decline and to determine whether there are any differences between men and women in this respect. The third aim is to supplement the statistical and spatial GIS comparisons with information from an international study in which young people in the same example area were asked about their personal feelings regarding this situation (see next section for this study). Finally, we will consider the additional information provided by the georeferenced data relative to analyses employing conventional areal units.
2. Data and methods Where the normal practice is to examine demographic changes in terms of the administrative areas of the countries concerned, e.g. municipalities, provinces, or the Eurostat NUTS territorial units (European Commission, 1998; Hanell et al., 2002), the empirical material used here is based on georeferenced data for grid cells of 1 km2 defined by coordinates on a standard map of Finland. The areal structure of the set of grid cells and the data contained in them can be analysed by GIS techniques (for more details on the data set, see Rusanen et al., 2001). Alongside this approach, however, the municipality is taken as the basic areal unit for the present work, as it is the local authorities at this level that carry the chief responsibility for the welfare of the population in Finland. Municipalities are self-governing and have the right to levy taxes. This choice of unit is particularly well suited to the spatial study of changes in the population of young people, as a high proportion of the administrative decisions that affect this age group are also taken at the municipality level and it is the local authorities who implement youth work in practice, each of them choosing the forms and methods that it deems most appropriate (e.g. Review of National Youth Policy Finland, 1997; Nuorisoasiain neuvottelukunta, 2001). In areas of serious out-migration it is the local authority services that are affected most, on account of the decline in the number of taxpayers while expensive infrastructure investments lie idle. On the other hand, the problems experienced by the municipalities that gain population through these migration flows are of a different kind, involving overloading of their day care, education and health facilities and the need to invest in additional capacity to meet the growing demands (see Kainulainen et al., 2001; Pettersson, 2001). The age cohort of 15–24-year-olds was chosen for examination because it is used both in the Eurostat
statistics (e.g. Eurostat, 2001) and by Statistics Finland (2001). This classification can be criticized because it includes very different kinds of young people, ranging from those who are still receiving their basic education to those who have already gained a university degree and entered the labour market. These differences undoubtedly affect young people’s actions in matters such as migration: where the 15-year-olds probably move with their parents, those who are a couple of years older are likely to make their own migration decisions. Unfortunately it is not possible to separate these age categories and their effects on the basis of the present statistics, since no data are available at 1 year intervals, for example. Also, the question of personal privacy must be taken into account. Finland has a total surface area of 338 145 km2, of which 304 473 km2, or 90%, is land. Dividing the country into 1 km2 grid cells, it is found that 102 658 of these were inhabited in 2000, i.e. the inhabited grid cells were equivalent to one-third of the land area, leaving two-thirds entirely unpopulated. If we add to this the fact that almost a half of the populated grid cells, 46%, have a maximum of five inhabitants, it is easy to understand why Finland is regarded in general as having a sparse settlement structure (Statistics Finland). This also means that the defining of built-up areas for statistical purposes is a difficult and somewhat controversial matter, e.g. on account of the problems of delimiting them in terms of housing density (Rosenqvist, 2002). For the present purpose we will adopt the same GIS-based definition as in earlier works, derived from the population densities of the inhabited grid cells (Rusanen et al., 1995). Since 1987 Finland has no longer conducted formal censuses, as population data have been compiled directly from approx. 30 registers of various kinds which are combined by reference to personal social security numbers. These registers contain many kinds of social and socioeconomic information collected by organizations such as Statistics Finland, the Population Register Centre, the Social Insurance Institution, the Tax Administration and the Ministry of Labour. These data can be produced annually instead of every 5 or 10 years, which is usual in many countries. It is also possible by the same means to compile records of individual items of personal data to an accuracy of 10– 20 m on a coordinate map of the country, thereby enabling any combination of positioning and attribute data to be generated. Such data sets can then be aggregated spatially according to any system of areal units, e.g. in grid cells of size 1 km2 (e.g. Karimaa, 2001; Rusanen et al., 2001). The geographical location of individuals in registers is based on Basic Map coordinates, which can be defined either by the address of the person’s workplace or that of his or her residence (Karimaa, 2001), the latter being
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
employed in this paper. The addresses on which the georeferenced data are based are those where the individuals lived on the last day of the year, and it is not possible to distinguish here those who migrated more than once during the same year. According to Kauppinen (2000), the proportion of those who migrated more than once during 1 year was approx. 13.5% in 1989–1994. The proportion of missing data in georeferenced databases relative to the total population in the official statistics was only 1% in 2000, which indicates that very few people in Finland lack an official address. The greatest advantage of georeferenced data and GIS techniques is that this approach enables a wide range of phenomena to be examined in a manner independent of administrative divisions. This makes it possible to focus on crisis or extreme areas within individual municipalities that would be obscured on account of the ‘‘ecological fallacy’’, i.e. problems caused by the use of averaged data to describe large areal units, or on the contrary, by the use of spatial data to describe individuals (Martin, 1991). According to Openshaw and Turton (1996), this fallacy may be at least partially avoided by using individual-based data. There are large areas in Finland with a very sparse or very concentrated settlement structure, and georeferenced data make it possible to study phenomena on a continuum from the most densely populated urban areas to the most sparsely populated rural ones at a higher level of precision than could be achieved using only the traditional division into urban and rural municipalities (Rusanen et al., 1997; Kauppinen, 2000). Although the principal methodological focus in this work is on GIS techniques for processing georeferenced data, an attempt is made alongside this to examine in greater depth the situation of young people in one remote rural area, the municipality of Suomussalmi in Northern Finland, which was the Finnish representative area studied in the EU-financed international research programme ‘‘Policies and Young People in Rural Development’’ (PAYPIRD).1 A total of 254 interviews with 16–25-year-olds were carried out in rural areas in seven countries, including 34 in Suomussalmi. The age category is thus a little different from that employed in the statistics (15–24), but this is not thought to have any effect on the results, since the statistical material is analysed separately. Both questionnaires, focus group discussions and individual, qualitative in-depth interviews were used (Jentsch, 2001a), the latter two being tape-recorded, so that they are also included in the 1
The PAYPIRD project was financed by EU FAIR programme (FAIR Project 4171) and was coordinated by Professor Mark Shucksmith of the Arkleton Centre for Rural Development, Aberdeen, Scotland. The authors are grateful to the partners from Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and the UK for their cooperation.
297
material on which this article is based. This enables the results of the analysis of the georeferenced data to be compared with the opinions put forward by these young people on the geographical location of their home district.
3. Rural young people and transition problems Young people living in rural areas have not been an especially popular object of research in the past (see Burnett et al., 2001; McGrath, 2001), but the situation appears to be improving, for, as Panelli (2002) states in her editorial article, ‘‘Studies of young people and children have enjoyed a growing popularity throughout the social sciences in recent years [y] In the subsequent decade, studies including the consideration of rural young people steadily increasedy’’ (pp. 113). Panelli’s paper and the issue of the Journal of Rural Studies that she edited on this theme (18:2) contain information on a number of investigations into the situation of rural young people. No attempt will be made here to review these in detail, but a few points relevant to the spatial aspects of the findings should be mentioned. Many of the factors lying behind the problems encountered by young people are connected with areal differences in the availability of educational facilities and job opportunities and the sparsely populated and remote municipalities are in many cases in the worst position in this sense (see Muilu, 2000). Among the extensive comparative surveys carried out within the social sciences in a number of European countries, particular mention should be made of the comparative study of the nature of rural communities, young people’s problems and approaches to these in five countries in Northern, Southern and Central Europe coordinated by the Finnish researcher Helve (1998, 2000). Similarly, the PAYPIRD project (see Arkleton Centre for Rural Development, 1999; McGrath, 2001) focused on alienation and transition problems among rural young people in seven EU countries, and a number of reports have been produced on the problems of unemployed young people in the Nordic countries (e.g. Julkunen and Carle, 1998; Julkunen, 2000). The collection of paper edited by Puuronen (2001) considers youth problems on an east– west dimension within Europe, but not really from a rural viewpoint. There have been a number of smaller case studies concerned with young people in rural areas in Finland, usually concentrating on local problems, mostly the lack of opportunities in certain areas and the resulting outmigration pressures. In particular, it is reported that young people are by no means always accorded the position of actors who are listened to. Paunikallio (1997, 2000), for instance, notes that, in spite of their
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
298
importance for the future of their home areas, rural young people tend to remain in the background when plans are being made and projects devised that will affect them. There are numerous other reports and publications that touch upon the problems of young people as a group in Finland (e.g. Virtanen, 1996; Puustelli, 1999; Vehvil.ainen, 1999; Rouhiainen, 2000). Most investigators conclude that the social identification and alienation problems experienced by rural (and urban) young people are connected with transition phases in their lives. In fact, our modern society, with its emphasis on temporary jobs and project assignments, has caused transition to be a permanent state of existence for many young people, as in extreme cases they may be drifting for years between education, work, unemployment and working practice. As noted by Green et al. (2001), young people are in a very similar situation in many EU countries, as transition phases have become longer, more ambiguous and more diverse, ‘‘moulded by the demographic and economic context, the organization of the education/training system and the labour market, the role of the state in shaping labour supply and the organization of the family economy’’ (pp. 315). This would seem to be reflected in the opinions of young people, as according to the Eurobarometer, they see the main significance of the EU for them as lying in the fact that they can move about, live and look for work in the member countries with the maximum of freedom (European Commission, 2001). In the context of the PAYPIRD project (Jentsch, 2001b), this change was examined from the point of view of the notions of the risk society and individualization as put forward by Beck (2000).
4. Rural young people in Finland in 1970–2000 4.1. Population growth and the concentration of young people The population of Finland has increased slowly over recent decades, by 568 174 persons, or 12.5%, over the interval 1970–2000, and, in common with that of most other EU countries, has aged at the same time, i.e. the proportion of persons over 65 years has increased and that of children under 15 years has decreased (European Commission, 1999). This is also reflected in the figures for young people, i.e. those aged 15–24 years, which declined in Finland by 123 865 persons over the same period, 1970–2000. One interesting feature, however, is that this decline has not been an even one, but rather the outstanding change took place in the 1980s, when the number declined by more than 100 000, whereas the population in this age group even grew somewhat in the 1990s. The proportion of young people in the total population now seems to have settled at just under 13%, having been 17% in 1970 (Table 1). Similarly, the absolute and relative changes in the population of young people are not manifested in all areas in the same way, as urbanization, and particularly migration into the main urban centres, has led to increases in the number of young people in the most densely populated areas. Thus, while almost 30% of young people in 1980 lived in sparsely populated areas (p100 inhabitants/grid cell), by the year 2000 the proportion was no more than 18.5%. In absolute figures, this means that the number of young people living in sparsely populated areas decreased by more than 97 000, or 44.6%, and that by December 2000 there
Table 1 Total population of Finland in given years between 1970 and 2000 and proportions of persons aged 15–24 years by population density Year
Total population 15–24-year-olds Total
1970 1980 1985 1989 1992 1996 1998 2000
4 560 636 4 606 996 4 846 190 4 908 325 4 970 439 5 063 201 5 086 018 5 128 810
Densely populated areasa
Sparsely populated areasa
Total 15–24year-olds
% of total population
% of all 15–24year-olds
Difference (%) from expected valueb
% of all 15–24year-olds
Difference (%) from expected valueb
776 493c 736 249 719 603 649 215 629 627 630 663 649 953 652 628
17.0c 16.0 14.8 13.2 12.7 12.5 12.8 12.7
64.7c 70.4 74.5 77.6 78.7 80.0 80.9 81.5
+0.7c 1.8 +0.3 +2.1 +2.5 +3.0 +3.0 +3.6
35.3c 29.6 25.5 22.4 21.3 20.0 19.1 18.5
0.7c +1.8 0.3 2.1 2.5 3.0 3.0 3.6
Source: Statistics Finland. a Densely populated areas are defined in the grid cell data as cells with 101 inhabitants or more and sparsely populated areas as ones with 100 inhabitants or less. This boundary value is defined on the basis of earlier research (Rusanen et al., 1995) and deviates slightly from the Statistics Finland definition of a built-up area. b Deviation of the distribution of young people between densely and sparsely populated areas from that in the population as a whole. c The data for 1970 refer to persons aged 16–24 years.
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
were 532 010 young people living in densely populated areas and only 120 618 in sparsely populated ones. Likewise, where more young people than would be expected were living in rural areas in 1980, the difference relative to the expected figure has been reversed and has then increased steadily as young people have tended to prefer urban dwelling to an ever-increasing extent, either through force of circumstances or of their own choice (Table 1). A still more detailed picture of the relative change in the population of young people on the centre–periphery axis can be obtained by applying the decile technique to the grid cell data, i.e. by arranging the approx. 102 600 inhabited grid cells in order of population density and dividing these into groups so that each group contains one-tenth of the total population. It is then possible to calculate the proportion of persons aged 15–24 years in each decile and compare these proportions with that for the whole population. If the distribution were an even one, there would be no deviations from the overall mean (on applications of the decile technique to grid cell data, see Naukkarinen et al., 1993). The proportions of young people in the population in 1980, 1989 and 2000 are compared by the decile technique in Fig. 1, where the data are to be interpreted in the sense that the value of 2.56 for the first decile in 1980 means that the proportion of young people in the most densely populated decile of grid cells is 2.56% lower than the proportion in the total population of Finland. In absolute terms, this implies that the most
Fig. 1. Deviation of 15–24-year-olds by deciles of population density in Finland in 1980, 1989 and 2000. Note that the class limits of population deciles are slightly different from 2000 for 1980 and 1989 due to the increase in total population.
299
densely populated areas are ‘‘short of’’ 12 344 young people relative to an even distribution of these people over all the deciles. Correspondingly, the most sparsely populated areas (deciles 8–10) had more than the average proportion of people aged 15–24 years in 1980. After an interval of only 9 years, the situation regarding these most sparsely populated areas had reversed entirely. Now young people were grossly under-represented in the population of the lowest three deciles and over-represented in deciles 2–7, which contained predominantly basic rural areas and the main centres of rural municipalities. By the year 2000, the trend had continued to the point where the proportion of young people was increasing more or less linearly as a function of population density, being highest in the most notable concentrations of population. Thus in absolute terms, the most sparsely populated decile contained 50 310 young people, a shortfall of 15 401 by comparison with an even distribution (Fig. 1). 4.2. Growth centres and the periphery The concentration of young people in the most densely populated areas of Finland, in both relative and absolute terms, was thus most pronounced and most rapid at the very end of the last century, although even then there was considerable variation in this respect between municipalities and between different parts of the country. Absolute changes in the size of the 15–24year age cohort are examined by quintiles of municipalities over the period 1989–2000 in Fig. 2, where it is seen that, of the 448 municipalities in Finland, the loss of young people was most pronounced in a group of small or medium-sized municipalities in Central, Eastern and Northern Finland that were usually located some distance away from the growth centres and typically suffered from high net out-migration, while gains in the number of young people were recorded mostly in municipalities representing one of two types: the largest cities and growth centres, and those areas where primary production was still viable. Between these two extremes lay areas with a mosaic pattern of alternating cases of growth and decline (Fig. 2). Large differences in the proportions of young people were evident between municipalities in the end December 2000 (Fig. 3), the highest figures, 12.7% or more, being recorded predominantly in the ones where the proportion had grown over the preceding decade and the lowest ones where the proportion had decreased. Especially significant, however, is the existence in Northern Finland of some municipalities in which the proportion of young people remains high in spite of a substantial decrease in absolute numbers. These are areas where families traditionally have large number of children, so that the age structure remains consistently young. These may be said to form a kind of
ARTICLE IN PRESS 300
T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
Fig. 2. Change (%) in the number of 15–24-year-olds by municipalities in Finland in 1989–2000 (quintile classification).
Fig. 3. Proportion (%) of 15–24-year-olds by municipalities in Finland in 2000 (quintile classification).
‘‘demographic resource periphery’’ in the spatial structure of the country as a whole, areas from which there has been a constant flow of young and working-age migrants to the growth centres since the 1960s. The situation in these areas is now deteriorating sharply, however, as the population ages and the birth rate begins to decline (Fig. 3).
north-east of the capital, Helsinki (for its location, see Figs. 1 and 2). It has a land area of 5276 km2 and its population in December 2001 was 10 743, giving a population density of only about 2 inhabitants/km2 (Statistics Finland, 2001; Statistics Finland, Population 2002:1). In the EU regional policy classification it falls into the Northern Finland Objective 1 area for 2000– 2006 (Hanell et al., 2002). Suomussalmi is an example of a municipality which was one of those that lost the largest number of young people in the period 1989–2000 but still came into the second highest group in terms of the proportion of young people in its population in December 2000 (Figs. 2 and 3). At the same time, it provides a good example of the advantages to be gained from extending the examination of changes in the number of young people to areas within the municipality by means of grid cell data.
5. Suomussalmi—a local example of a decline in the number of rural young people 5.1. A declining population with less young people, but more sharply concentrated The municipality of Suomussalmi is located on the Russian border in Northern Finland, about 600 km
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
301
Table 2 Trend in the population of Suomussalmi and proportions of young people living in densely and sparsely populated areas in certain years in the interval 1980–2000 Year
Total population
15–24-year-olds Densely populated areasa
Total Total 15–24-year-olds 1970 1980 1985 1989 1992 1996 1998 2000
14 292 13 062 13 006 12 414 12 213 11 858 11 347 10 965
c
2650 2685 2272 1766 1629 1503 1419 1351
% of total population c
18.5 20.6 17.5 14.2 13.3 12.7 12.5 12.3
Total 15–24-year-olds c
608 1128 1017 901 951 907 857 847
Sparsely populated areasa %
Total 15–24-year-olds c
22.9 42.0 44.8 51.0 58.4 60.4 60.4 62.7
c
2042 1557 1255 865 678 596 562 504
% 77.1c 58.0 55.2 49.0 41.6 39.6 39.6 37.3
Source: Statistics Finland. a,c See Table 1.
Demographic trends in Suomussalmi have followed the pattern typical of declining rural areas (Table 2). The number of young people dropped by almost a half over the period 1970–2000 and the proportion in the population fell to 12%. The main change within the municipality, however, consisted of increases in the number of young people in the two built-up areas. The total number living in grid cells with at least 101 inhabitants exceeded that in cells with less inhabitants in the late 1980s, after which the concentration process continued, causing further polarization in the demographic pattern, with the population centre prospering at the expense of the outlying villages. By 2000, there were less than one-fourth of the number of young people living in the sparsely populated areas that were to be found there in the early 1970s. A still more accurate picture of the concentration of young people of Suomussalmi in the main population centre is obtained by means of a comparison in terms of density of population. The absolute changes in the number of young people over the period 1970–2000 are presented for population density classes in Fig. 4, where four classes are recognised, as the number of inhabited grid cells was too small to allow deciles to be used. By far, the greatest decline in the number of young people was observed throughout this period in the density classes 6–20 inhabitants/km2, which in the Finnish context denotes typical rural areas (Rusanen et al., 1995), and 21–100 inhabitants/km2, denoting the rural areas closest to the centres of population. The most disturbing thing as far as the future of the district is concerned, however, is that the number of young people has declined since 1980 even in the built-up areas. Demographic trends and the problems of contracting built-up areas have been discussed in connection with other research carried out in Finland (Niemel.a et al., 2001; Rusanen et al., 2002) and in the Nordic countries
Fig. 4. Number of 15–24-year-olds by population density classes in Suomussalmi in 1970, 1980, 1989 and 2000. Note that the figure of 1970 is for 16–24-year-olds.
in general (Hanell et al., 2002), and it has been noted that this is especially a problem afflicting sparsely populated countries. Population loss in the built-up areas that serve as rural centres is a relatively new phenomenon in Finland, but it could have serious repercussions for the preservation of the settlement structure over extensive areas of the country. The spatial retraction of the young population in Suomussalmi is depicted at the level of 1 km2 grid cells in Figs. 5a and b, representing the situation in 1970 and 2000, respectively. It can be seen that where there were
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
302
Fig. 5. Spatial deviation of (a) 16–24-year-olds in 1970, and (b) 15–24-year-olds in 2000 by 1 1 km grid cells in Suomussalmi.
young people (aged 16–24 years) living in 717 grid cells in 1970, i.e. 73% of all the inhabited grid cells in the municipality, the figure in the year 2000 (for 15–24-yearolds) was only 271 grid cells, or approx. 32% of all the inhabited ones. The conclusion to be drawn from this is a clear one: young people are becoming concentrated in the main agglomerations of population at the level of individual rural municipalities as well as at the national level. 5.2. Gender aspects Demographic changes seldom apply equally to men and women, and it has been observed in Finland that the position of rural women on the labour market deteriorated particularly markedly at the time of the recession in the 1990s, when there was severe pressure for cut-backs in certain largely female-dominated fields of public sector employment. Similarly, only a minority of rural women make their living from farming nowadays, accounting for only 15% of the total female population aged 18–64 years in 1993 . . (Hogbacka, 1998a, b; Hogbacka & Trast, 2000; see also Muilu et al., 1996). The term ‘‘rural dilution’’ has been applied to the restructuring of the primary production-oriented rural labour markets and
associated social systems towards a more diversified economy and the related functional and social patterns, and part of this change has been said to involve an increase in commuting and a decrease in the proportion of families with children (Smailes, 2002). Ancillary occupations and the broadening of the occupational spectrum as a whole have for a long time been regarded as one means of improving the possibilities for living in the countryside. In Norway, for instance, Eikeland and Lie (1999), in their analysis of ‘‘pluriactivity’’ in rural means of livelihood, maintained that our current ‘‘post-rural’’ society was going through a ‘‘market-led transition’’ in which the areas that would fare best would be the rural fringes closest to the centres and to the markets. The plight of the sparsely populated areas, on the other hand, could only be expected to worsen, on account of constant reductions in support payments for agriculture and other rural occupations. Particularly alarming as far as our present theme is concerned is their final conclusion, ‘‘ythat it is first and foremost the male members of the households that exploit the new opportunities for combining economic activities. Pluriactivity is a male activity, and it is probably increasing the gender difference in rural households’’ (pp. 415).
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
303
Fig. 6. Number of 15–24-year-olds by sex and population density classes in Suomussalmi in 1970, 1980, 1989 and 2000. Note that the figure of 1970 is for 16–24-year-olds.
As may be seen, a number of explanations have been put forward for the alteration in the position of young women in rural areas. The diagram in Fig. 6, depicting changes in the number of young men and young women in Suomussalmi in relation to population density, presents a clear pattern: it is only in the most densely populated areas of all that there are more young women than young men, whereas in all the more sparsely populated areas it is the young men that are in the majority. Although this change is partly a consequence of the smaller age classes, it seems that young women are more prepared to move to the population centres in search of better education and job opportunities than are the men. In the Kainuu region (where Suomussalmi is located), 60% of those who take the matriculation examination are female (Statistics Finland, 2001) and most of them move away from the region to obtain further education (some local opinions on this will be dealt with in the next section). Paunikallio (2001) noted that young women were somewhat more disturbed than men by certain phenomena that they regarded as typical of rural areas, such as loneliness, isolation and the long distances to be travelled. On the other hand, Rouhiainen (2000), who maintains that little research has been carried out into the male predominance in the population of the remote country areas of Finland, notes that a stereotyped image is often attached to these rural young men, that of ‘‘back bedroom boys’’, who are unemployed, unmarried and still living with their parents, although the truth is far more complicated. To conclude, the gender aspect is a complex matter here and no straightforward connections between questions of inequality or different coping strategies between men and women and staying-or-leaving issues can be found in the present material.
5.3. Voices of young people and local experts In this respect, it is interesting to listen to the opinions of young people in the gradually emptying countryside on the geographical location of their home district and the opportunities offered by it, in order to see what lies behind the statistics. A total of 34 young people aged 16–24 years living in Suomussalmi and two focus groups were interviewed in November 1999 in conjunction with the PAYPIRD research programme. Almost all of them were living in the main built-up areas of the municipality at that time, but many had had experience of living in the outlying villages, so that it is possible to use this material to consider briefly both the issue of migration within the area and out-migration. A focus group with local experts and authorities dealing with young people’s matters in education, the youth affairs office, the labour office and the local parish was also convened and the opinions of these instances are considered, as they are important from the point of view of local planning (for more details of the Suomussalmi interviews, see Muilu, 2000). The young people had mostly moved from their own villages to the centre either in order to obtain work or to continue their education. It is not unusual for young people in Suomussalmi to do this at the age of 16 or 17 years, simply because the distance from their home is too great to allow them to attend the upper secondary school or a vocational school or to commute to work. Both the authorities and other experts working with young people and the young people themselves admitted in the interviews that there was no work to be had in the outlying villages, as typified by the following citations. Well, there isn’t really any work to be had in the outlying villages. At most there may be some cleaning
ARTICLE IN PRESS 304
T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
jobs and the like in places where there are a lot of old people, but that’s the most you’ll find, and there are not many of us who want that kind of work. (Interview no. 9, a 25-year old female). The elders in the villages often say that there ought to be work there for the young people to do, but in the end it turns out when we look into the matter that there aren’t very many young people in the whole village. I’ve never heard of a young person turning a job down because it means moving to the centre. (An individual opinion in a focus group interview with local experts). An interesting discussion arose in the focus group for youth work professionals on the good practically skills and high levels of initiative to be found in the young people from the more remote areas. It’s obvious that if you live in Hossa (a village in the northern part of Suomussalmi, close to the Russian border), or somewhere which is 100 kilometres or so from here (the centre of the municipality), there are wonderful opportunities for hunting and fishing. I know a couple of fellows who are not registered as looking for work although they’ve been at home since they finished secondary school. They don’t necessarily register with us; they just enjoy living there and do whatever it seems reasonable to do at home. Chopping wood and the forest and nature, these are riches that they appreciate. And the problems there are by no means of the same magnitude as they are here. They are quite able boys, then. (agreement from other participantsy) And when people like that come to work, when they come to the Youth Workshop from the outlying villages, they know what they’re doing. They’ve got used to doing things at home. (agreementy) But many of the boys from the main village, you even have to teach them to shovel snow. It’s quite funny (Discussion in a focus group interview with local experts). The young people who move to the centre represent a loss to their villages, of course, but they are at least retained by the municipality. On the other hand, as noted above, the number of young people in the more remote areas and municipalities are declining rapidly on a national scale. Similarly, the question of whether to leave or to stay is constantly in the minds of most of the young people interviewed in Suomussalmi. It has been shown by Paunikallio (2001) that almost all the young people who live in the Finnish countryside regard it as important that these areas should remain inhabited and are prepared to work to these ends, and
the same is true in Suomussalmi, where only about onefifth of the respondents definitely intended to move elsewhere or thought it probable that they would do so. Although the sample was a small one, just 34 interviews, we can conclude that at least the young people still living in the area are seriously committed to continuing to do so. This may be especially true in rural municipalities like Suomussalmi where the majority of inhabitants were born locally (Paasi, 2002). For many of the respondents, however, their preference for living in their home area was offset by a critical and realistic attitude towards the opportunities afforded by it. Many of the replies were clouded by uncertainty regarding the future and the prospects of employment on the one hand and by the desire to stay in the area on the other. What is there anywhere else that you can’t find here? If the situation were the same as it is here, there would be no point in movingy Most of our friends live here, and we have our supporting networks and the like here. And what if we were to go to some other place where we didn’t know anybody? We would have to start again from scratch, as it were. And we would still end up by being unemployedy It would be quite a different matter if we were to find work to match our training so that we could earn a normal wage and plan our lives a bit further in advance. (An individual opinion in the focus group interview with unemployed young people). Almost all the young people in the sample interviewed had had experience of living elsewhere at some stage in their lives. The general opinion in the focus groups was that the boys would prefer to remain in the district while the girls would either start a family when relatively young and then stay or would move away. Those who had been to upper secondary school formed another group that was inclined to move elsewhere. The girls leave, except for those who start a family early on, and the boys stay. (An opinion in the focus group interview with local experts). It would seem that the girls find it easier to leavey Many of them have a boy in the back room, and when upper secondary school is over the whole lot troop off somewhere else, away from here. Perhaps just one or two will stay here to work in their parents’ business, or something like thaty They have their work there and don’t need to go off studying to get a job. (An opinion in the focus group interview with unemployed young people). Migration by young people in search of work and further education is by no means a new phenomenon, for opportunities have always been limited on the margins of settlement, but the situation has evidently advanced to a new stage in Finland, in the sense that
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
mobility towards the population centres has reached such proportions that it threatens to destroy the present settlement structure in the most sparsely populated areas within a few decades (see Fig. 4). The rural young people are more dependent than ever on the world outside their home district, since this is able to offer a far wider range of personal opportunities. It is also evident that the young people of today are much more open to considering all the alternatives available. It should be kept in mind that the stay-or-leave issue is a contradictory matter depending on the point of view adopted. For small rural municipalities every young person who leaves is a loss, but for the young people themselves leaving may be a rational behaviour in search of a better life and future, which is only to be found somewhere else, probably in large cities. Who has the right to control their choices if it is not the young people themselves? The task of maintaining settlement in the more remote rural areas and in their population centres calls for political will and the appropriate support measures, but irrespective of the good plans that may be conceived the ultimate responsibility for the future of the young people in such areas lies with these young people themselves. Contrary to what is generally thought, there are many young people in Finland who want to continue living in the rural areas where they were born and have grown up if only it is possible. In the case of Suomussalmi, this desire and confidence in the future can be summed up in the words of one (employed) young woman: Research projects like this are a good thing, which is more than can be said for some of the opinion polls about the presidential election [in spring 2000]! People seem to have the idea at the moment that life is bad in Northern Finland. Some politicians have said that people don’t want to live there in the north. You can tell them from me that I, for one, enjoy living here! (Interview no. 10, a 22-year old female).
6. Conclusions Four purposes were set out for this paper, arising out of the notion of the crucial importance of young people, the 15–24-year age group, for the future of the more remote rural areas of Finland in particular. In the first place, it may be concluded that the present georeferenced data provide a very detailed spatial analysis of the process of concentration of the population, the polarization trend being manifested in losses or gains in population at the extreme ends of the regional structure, i.e. in municipalities contrasting in their geographical location and accessibility and in areas of differing
305
population density. Both rapid population growth and a decline in population can cause problems of infrastructure and the provision of services for local authorities, and these can be predicted on the basis of precise georeferenced data. Examples of such services in the case of young people would be upper secondary schools and vocational schools and measures taken by the employment authorities. The second focal point of this work was the tracing of absolute and relative trends in the number of young people as a function of population density in the municipality of Suomussalmi, which covers a substantial area and is located in a region characterized by high population loss. Although this municipality still has a high proportion of young people in its population by national standards, the absolute number decreased by almost a half over the interval 1970–2000. The GIS analyses indicated, too, that this decline in young people concerned predominantly the sparsely populated periphery of the municipality, which had no more than onefourth of the population of young people that it had had in the 1970s. Another factor revealed by the analysis was the gender selectivity of the change, in that females were in the majority within the young population only in the most densely inhabited areas of all, while males predominated in all the more sparsely inhabited areas. This pattern is not a new one, but if the situation continues it is likely to distort further the already poor demographic structure of many rural municipalities. The circumstances lying behind this highly undesirable situation include the cuts in employment in the low-paid female-dominated public service sectors, particularly social and health care, in the recession years of the 1990s, forcing many rural women to move to the population centres, where better job opportunities exist. Thirdly, the opinions of young people in the example municipality of Suomussalmi remind us that even analyses based on accurate georeferenced statistical data can lead to excessively generalized and simplified conclusions, so that one is justified in filling these out with qualitative findings. Even within a remote rural area classified on a regional scale as recessive, it is certainly not the case that all the young people regard their situation as hopeless. They are prepared to weigh up their options very carefully and are not inclined to exclude out of hand the possibility of remaining in their home district, or of returning to it later. Only one-fifth of the young people definitely intended to move away, and for most the question of whether to leave or to stay would be decided according to the chances of creating a ‘‘good life’’ for themselves. Young people need education and jobs in order to build a future for their home district, and forms of rural youth policy and local decision-making that support individualized education and career paths need more attention in this respect. This is especially important for the young people who
ARTICLE IN PRESS 306
T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
are in danger of dropping out from normal educational and training careers, which are often tightly connected with certain age and qualification categories. There have already been some efforts to move in this direction in Finland, in connection with the renewal of young people’s labour market subsidies. Fourthly, the additional information conveyed by georeferenced data relative to data based on administrative areas is connected with the hierarchy of areal units, in that migration to the centres of population can be detected even within an individual municipality. Thus it is only data of this kind that can provide extremely detailed monitoring tools for local planners and decision-makers. The data normally available at the local authority level will indicate how each municipality stands on a national scale, but will not necessarily be of very much use locally. In the case of an individual municipality beset with out-migration problems, a consideration of the diminishing proportions of young people in the population reveals serious problems for the future. In the case of Suomussalmi, e.g. the population projection produced by Statistics Finland (inclusive of migration) predicts a decline from 10 811 in 2001 to 7154 in 2030, i.e. 33.8% (Statistics Finland, Population 2001:10). This would mean in practice a struggle for survival for large areas of Finland, a struggle which would extend to the internal structures of municipalities and regions and to the structures of individual villages.
References Arkleton Centre for Rural Development, 1999. Policies and Young People in Rural Development. Original Research Proposal. Beck, U., 2000. Living your own life in a runaway world: individualisation, globalisation and politics. In: Hutton, W., Giddens, A. (Eds.), On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism. Jonathan Cape, London. Burnett, J., Jentsch, B., Shucksmith, M., 2001. PAYPIRD—Policies and Young People in Rural Development. Final report for the European Commission Research DG B.1.2, The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, Aberdeen, Scotland/UK, February 2001. Eikeland, S., Lie, I., 1999. Pluriactivity in rural Norway. Journal of Rural Studies 15 (4), 405–415. European Commission, 1998. Demographic Report 1997. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg. European Commission, 1999. Sixth Periodic Report on the Social and Economic Situation and Development of Regions in the European Union. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg. European Commission, 2001. Eurobarometer, Public opinion in the European Union. Report Number 55, Spring 2001, DirectorateGeneral Press and Communication, Brussels. Eurostat, 2001. Regions—Statistical Yearbook 2001. Luxenbourg. Green, A., Owen, D., Wilson, R., 2001. Regional differences in labour market participation of young people in the European Union. European Urban and Regional Studies 8 (4), 297–318. Hanell, T., Aalbu, H., Neubauer, J., 2002. Regional Development in the Nordic Countries 2002. Nordregio Report 2002:2.
Helve, H. (Ed.), 1998. Unification and marginalisation of young people. Youth Research 2000 Programme, The Finnish Youth Research Society, Helsinki. Helve, H. (Ed.), 2000. Rural young people in changing Europe. Comparative Study of Living Conditions and Participation of Rural Young People in Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy and Sweden, Hakapaino Oy, Helsinki. . Hogbacka, R., 1998a. Women’s work in rural Finland—some implications for development. Rural and regional development, University of Helsinki, Mikkeli Institute for Rural Research and Training, pp. 122–140. . . Hogbacka, R., 1998b. Maaseudun tyomarkkinat ja sukupuoli. Vertaileva tutkimus vuosista 1986 ja 1994, Helsingin yliopisto, Maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus, Mikkeli, Julkaisuja 59. . Hogbacka, R., Trast, T. (Eds.), 2000. Monessa mukana. N.akymi.a . on . ja el.am.aa. n maaseudulla, Maaseutupolitiikan naisten tyoh . yhteistyoryhm. an julkaisu. Jentsch, B., 2001a. Methodology. In: Burnett, J., Jentsch, B., Shucksmith, M. (Eds.), PAYPIRD—Policies and Young People in Rural Development, Final report for the European Commission Research DG B.1.2, The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, Aberdeen, Scotland/UK, February 2001, pp. 61–70. Jentsch, B., 2001b. Experiences of rural youth in the ‘risk society’: transitions from education to the labour markets. In: Burnett, J., Jentsch, B., Shucksmith, M. (Eds.), PAYPIRD—Policies and Young People in Rural Development, Final report for the European Commission Research DG B.1.2, The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, Aberdeen, Scotland/UK, February 2001, pp. 230–261. . am.aa. n. Tyo. Julkunen, I., 2000. Pohjoismaisten nuorten tie tyoel. . . Helsinki. poliittinen aikakauskirja 1/2000, 38–44, Tyoministeri o, Julkunen, I., Carle, J. (Eds.), 1998. Young and unemployed in Scandinavia—a Nordic comparative study. Nord 1998:14, Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen. Kainulainen, S., Rintala, T., Heikkil.a, M., 2001. Hyvinvoinnin alueellinen erilaistuminen 1990—luvun Suomessa. Kahtiajakautuva Suomi?—tutkimusprojektin julkaisu (Abstract: the regional differentiation of welfare in 1990s Finland, Report on the Splitting Finland? Project). National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES), Tutkimuksia 114, Helsinki. Karimaa, E. (Ed.), 2001. Perusrekisterit (Basic registers). Yhteiskunnan perustietoj.arjestelmien k.asitteet, tietojen hankinta ja tietopalvelut, Suomen Kuntaliitto, Helsinki. Kauppinen, J., 2000. Muuttoliike Suomessa vuosina 1989–1994 koordinaattipohjaisten paikkatietojen perusteella (Absract: migration of population in Finland in 1989–1994, examined from coordinate-based GIS data). Siirtolaisuusinstituutti, Siirtolaisuustutkimuksia A 22, Turku. Martin, D., 1991. Geographic Information Systems and their Socioeconomic Applications. Routledge, London, New York. McGrath, B., 2001. A problem of resources: defining rural youth encounters in education, work and housing. Journal of Rural Studies 17 (4), 481–495. Muilu, T., 2000. Employment policies and rural young people in Finland. Nordia Geographical Publications 29 (2), 39–57. Muilu, T., Rusanen, J., Naukkarinen, A., Colpaert, A., 1996. . omyyden . Tyott alueellinen rakenne ja sen muutokset Suomessa 1989–1994 (Abstract: trends in the regional structure of unemployment in Finland in 1989–1994). Terra 108 (3), 160–171. Naukkarinen, A., Rusanen, J., Colpaert, A., 1993. The future of rural settlement structure in Finland. Geography Research Forum 13, 61–70. Niemel.a, P., Naukkarinen, A., Urponen, K., Pamilo, S.-L. (Eds.), 2001. New research-based knowledge about peripherality and planning practices in depopulated built-up areas in the Northern Periphery. Kuopio University Occasional Reports E, Social
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307 Sciences 28, Department of Social Sciences, University of Kuopio, pp. 25–55. . arNuorisoasiain neuvottelukunta, 2001. Kunnallisen nuorisotyon viointihanke (Evaluation project on the youth work in municipalities). Nuorisoasiain neuvottelukunta, julkaisuja 18. Openshaw, S., Turton, I., 1996. New opportunities for geographical cencus analysis using individual level data. Area 28, 167–176. Paasi, A., 2002. Bounded spaces in the mobile world: deconstructing ‘regional identity’. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 92 (3), 137–148. Panelli, R., 2002. Young rural lives: strategies beyond diversities. Journal of Rural Studies 18 (2), 113–122. Paunikallio, M., 1997. Kuka j.aa. maaseudulle? Maaseudun nuorten . elinymp.ariston. . a. Helsingin n.akemyksi.a maaseudusta asuin-, tyo-ja yliopisto, maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus, sarja B:17, Sein.ajoki. Paunikallio, M., 2000. Maaseudun voimavara—nuorten halu osallistua kotikuntansa kehitt.amiseen. Helsingin yliopisto, maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus, sarja B:19, Sein.ajoki. Paunikallio, M., 2001. Nuoret maaseudun ja kaupungin vuorovaikutuksessa. Tutkimus arvoista, asenteista ja odotuksista (Abstract: the youth in the interaction between rural and urban areas, A study on values, attitudes and expectations). Helsingin yliopisto, maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus, sarja B:23, Sein.ajoki. . 2001. Contemporary population changes in north Pettersson, O., Swedish rural areas. Fennia 179 (2), 159–173. Puuronen, V. (Ed.), 2001. Youth on the threshold of 3rd millenium. University of Joensuu, Publications of Karelian Institute No 131, Joensuu. . Puustelli, P., 1999. Koulutus—ja tyomarkkinauudistuksilla syrj.aytymist.a vastaan—vertaileva katsaus nuorille suunnattuihin tukitoimiin EU-maissa. University of Turku, Research Unit for the Sociology and Education, Report 47, Turku. Review of National Youth Policy Finland, National Report, 1997. Ministry of Education, Finland.
307
Rosenqvist, O., 2002. ‘‘Maaseudun’’ ja ‘‘kaupungin’’ rakentuminen Tilastokeskuksen taajamam.aa. rittelyyn perustuvassa aluekehikossa (abstract: construction of the ‘rural’ and the ‘urban’ in statistics Finland’s localities-based regional framework). Terra 114 (1), 3–12. Rouhiainen, V., 2000. Maaseudun nuoret miehet. Helsingin yliopiston maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus. Mikkeli, Julkaisuja 69, Mikkeli. Rusanen, J., R.ais.anen, S., Naukkarinen, A., Colpaert, A., 1995. Alkutuotantoon perustuvan toiminnallisen maaseudun m.aa. rittely paikkatiedon perusteella (abstract: definition of rural area based on primary production by means of GIS). Terra 107 (2), 101–111. Rusanen, J., Naukkarinen, A., Colpaert, A., Muilu, T., 1997. Differences in the spatial structure of the population between Finland and Sweden in 1995—A GIS viewpoint. Statistics Finland, Research Reports 221, Helsinki. Rusanen, J., Muilu, T., Colpaert, A., Naukkarinen, A., 2001. Finnish socio-economic grid data, GIS and the hidden geography of unemployment. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 92 (2), 139–147. . v.aestokeskittym. . Rusanen, J., Muilu, T., Colpaert, A., 2002. Myos at ohentuvat. Tietoaika 5/2002, Statistics Finland. Smailes, P.J., 2002. From rural dilution to multifunctional countryside: some pointers to the future from South Australia. Australian Geographer 33 (1), 79–95. Statistics Finland, 2001. Statistical yearbook 2001. Statistics Finland, Population, 2001, 10. Population projection by municipalities 2001–2030. Statistics Finland, Population 2002, 1. Statistics Finland, Grid cell data from different years. Vehvil.ainen, J., 1999. Polun rakentajat. Nuorten sijoittuminen . am.aa. n, Tyoministeri. . ammatilliseen koulutukseen ja tyoel. o, ESF Julkaisuja 49/99, Helsinki. Virtanen, P., 1996. The making of a new underclass among the unemployed youth? Emerging social exclusion, the mechanism of integration and the need for active and network-based employment . . . Helsinki. strategies, Tyopoliittinen tutkimus 150, Tyoministeri o,
Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
Rural young people in regional development— the case of Finland in 1970–2000 Toivo Muilu*, Jarmo Rusanen Department of Geography, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 3000, Fin-90014 Oulu, Finland
Abstract In view of the crucial role of young people in society, especially as far as the future of sparsely populated rural areas is concerned, an analysis is made of absolute and relative changes in the 15–24-year age cohort in Finland and their effects on demographic and regional structure, employing GIS methods. The main material for this consists of georeferenced population data based on 1 1 km grid squares produced by Statistics Finland for the period 1970–2000. An example is taken of one rural municipality where the georeferenced data were supplemented with qualitative interview material obtained in 1999. The results show that the number and proportion of young people in the population of Finland have declined since 1970, although not consistently, at the same time as the total population has continued to increase. The dichotomy between the sparsely populated rural areas and the built-up areas has been accentuated by a distortion of the population structure and gender ratio, in that the young people, and particularly young women, have been inclined to move into the growth centres and to the more densely populated areas in general. The georeferenced data clearly point to a worsening regional imbalance in the areal distribution of population in Finland, although the interview material suggests that the young people still living in the countryside do not regard their position as hopeless but are prepared to weigh up their future on the basis of the alternatives open to them. r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Rural young people; Decline of population; GIS; Finland
1. Introduction The drift of population away from the countryside is one of the main factors affecting the regional structure in many countries, and although the temporal course of this effect may differ from one country to another, it is virtually always the case that the consequences are most dramatic in the marginal areas of settlement. Finland is the third most sparsely populated country in Europe, after Iceland and Norway, with a density of 17 inhabitants/km2 in 2000, and its population has become further concentrated in recent years into just 5–7 main growth centres. Thus it will serve as a good example of the impact of dwindling settlement in rural areas, although corresponding processes of concentration of population are also evident in Sweden and Norway (Pettersson, 2001; Hanell et al., 2002). The chief attention in regional demographic studies and planning is usually focused on the total population, the working age population, the labour force or ageing *Corresponding author. E-mail address: toivo.muilu@oulu.fi (T. Muilu).
(e.g. European Commission, 1998), whereas less note has been taken of the young age cohorts, like 15–24 year-olds. We set out here from the assumption that young people are in a key position as far as the future of the more remote rural areas, in particular, is concerned, for without renewal of their population from within, these areas cannot remain viable or maintain their economic functions in the long term, especially as they attract only a few people to move in from more densely populated areas. Kauppinen (2000), e.g. noted that in 1994 only 5.9% of those who moved away from the most densely populated areas in Finland (1001 inhabitants/km2 or more) went to rural areas (100 inhabitants/ km2 or less). Our thesis is thus that young people serve as an ‘‘indicator’’ of the future prospects for rural areas, both demographically and functionally. The present research has four purposes, which are in part interwoven in the treatment below. The first is to analyse areal demographic trends in Finland in terms of absolute and relative changes in the size of the cohort of young people from 1970 onwards on the basis of georeferenced data and to identify regional structures associated with both positive and negative courses. The
0743-0167/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0743-0167(03)00003-2
ARTICLE IN PRESS 296
T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
second is to examine by means of an example municipality the manner in which the reduction in the number of young people is reflected in areas of pronounced population decline and to determine whether there are any differences between men and women in this respect. The third aim is to supplement the statistical and spatial GIS comparisons with information from an international study in which young people in the same example area were asked about their personal feelings regarding this situation (see next section for this study). Finally, we will consider the additional information provided by the georeferenced data relative to analyses employing conventional areal units.
2. Data and methods Where the normal practice is to examine demographic changes in terms of the administrative areas of the countries concerned, e.g. municipalities, provinces, or the Eurostat NUTS territorial units (European Commission, 1998; Hanell et al., 2002), the empirical material used here is based on georeferenced data for grid cells of 1 km2 defined by coordinates on a standard map of Finland. The areal structure of the set of grid cells and the data contained in them can be analysed by GIS techniques (for more details on the data set, see Rusanen et al., 2001). Alongside this approach, however, the municipality is taken as the basic areal unit for the present work, as it is the local authorities at this level that carry the chief responsibility for the welfare of the population in Finland. Municipalities are self-governing and have the right to levy taxes. This choice of unit is particularly well suited to the spatial study of changes in the population of young people, as a high proportion of the administrative decisions that affect this age group are also taken at the municipality level and it is the local authorities who implement youth work in practice, each of them choosing the forms and methods that it deems most appropriate (e.g. Review of National Youth Policy Finland, 1997; Nuorisoasiain neuvottelukunta, 2001). In areas of serious out-migration it is the local authority services that are affected most, on account of the decline in the number of taxpayers while expensive infrastructure investments lie idle. On the other hand, the problems experienced by the municipalities that gain population through these migration flows are of a different kind, involving overloading of their day care, education and health facilities and the need to invest in additional capacity to meet the growing demands (see Kainulainen et al., 2001; Pettersson, 2001). The age cohort of 15–24-year-olds was chosen for examination because it is used both in the Eurostat
statistics (e.g. Eurostat, 2001) and by Statistics Finland (2001). This classification can be criticized because it includes very different kinds of young people, ranging from those who are still receiving their basic education to those who have already gained a university degree and entered the labour market. These differences undoubtedly affect young people’s actions in matters such as migration: where the 15-year-olds probably move with their parents, those who are a couple of years older are likely to make their own migration decisions. Unfortunately it is not possible to separate these age categories and their effects on the basis of the present statistics, since no data are available at 1 year intervals, for example. Also, the question of personal privacy must be taken into account. Finland has a total surface area of 338 145 km2, of which 304 473 km2, or 90%, is land. Dividing the country into 1 km2 grid cells, it is found that 102 658 of these were inhabited in 2000, i.e. the inhabited grid cells were equivalent to one-third of the land area, leaving two-thirds entirely unpopulated. If we add to this the fact that almost a half of the populated grid cells, 46%, have a maximum of five inhabitants, it is easy to understand why Finland is regarded in general as having a sparse settlement structure (Statistics Finland). This also means that the defining of built-up areas for statistical purposes is a difficult and somewhat controversial matter, e.g. on account of the problems of delimiting them in terms of housing density (Rosenqvist, 2002). For the present purpose we will adopt the same GIS-based definition as in earlier works, derived from the population densities of the inhabited grid cells (Rusanen et al., 1995). Since 1987 Finland has no longer conducted formal censuses, as population data have been compiled directly from approx. 30 registers of various kinds which are combined by reference to personal social security numbers. These registers contain many kinds of social and socioeconomic information collected by organizations such as Statistics Finland, the Population Register Centre, the Social Insurance Institution, the Tax Administration and the Ministry of Labour. These data can be produced annually instead of every 5 or 10 years, which is usual in many countries. It is also possible by the same means to compile records of individual items of personal data to an accuracy of 10– 20 m on a coordinate map of the country, thereby enabling any combination of positioning and attribute data to be generated. Such data sets can then be aggregated spatially according to any system of areal units, e.g. in grid cells of size 1 km2 (e.g. Karimaa, 2001; Rusanen et al., 2001). The geographical location of individuals in registers is based on Basic Map coordinates, which can be defined either by the address of the person’s workplace or that of his or her residence (Karimaa, 2001), the latter being
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
employed in this paper. The addresses on which the georeferenced data are based are those where the individuals lived on the last day of the year, and it is not possible to distinguish here those who migrated more than once during the same year. According to Kauppinen (2000), the proportion of those who migrated more than once during 1 year was approx. 13.5% in 1989–1994. The proportion of missing data in georeferenced databases relative to the total population in the official statistics was only 1% in 2000, which indicates that very few people in Finland lack an official address. The greatest advantage of georeferenced data and GIS techniques is that this approach enables a wide range of phenomena to be examined in a manner independent of administrative divisions. This makes it possible to focus on crisis or extreme areas within individual municipalities that would be obscured on account of the ‘‘ecological fallacy’’, i.e. problems caused by the use of averaged data to describe large areal units, or on the contrary, by the use of spatial data to describe individuals (Martin, 1991). According to Openshaw and Turton (1996), this fallacy may be at least partially avoided by using individual-based data. There are large areas in Finland with a very sparse or very concentrated settlement structure, and georeferenced data make it possible to study phenomena on a continuum from the most densely populated urban areas to the most sparsely populated rural ones at a higher level of precision than could be achieved using only the traditional division into urban and rural municipalities (Rusanen et al., 1997; Kauppinen, 2000). Although the principal methodological focus in this work is on GIS techniques for processing georeferenced data, an attempt is made alongside this to examine in greater depth the situation of young people in one remote rural area, the municipality of Suomussalmi in Northern Finland, which was the Finnish representative area studied in the EU-financed international research programme ‘‘Policies and Young People in Rural Development’’ (PAYPIRD).1 A total of 254 interviews with 16–25-year-olds were carried out in rural areas in seven countries, including 34 in Suomussalmi. The age category is thus a little different from that employed in the statistics (15–24), but this is not thought to have any effect on the results, since the statistical material is analysed separately. Both questionnaires, focus group discussions and individual, qualitative in-depth interviews were used (Jentsch, 2001a), the latter two being tape-recorded, so that they are also included in the 1
The PAYPIRD project was financed by EU FAIR programme (FAIR Project 4171) and was coordinated by Professor Mark Shucksmith of the Arkleton Centre for Rural Development, Aberdeen, Scotland. The authors are grateful to the partners from Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and the UK for their cooperation.
297
material on which this article is based. This enables the results of the analysis of the georeferenced data to be compared with the opinions put forward by these young people on the geographical location of their home district.
3. Rural young people and transition problems Young people living in rural areas have not been an especially popular object of research in the past (see Burnett et al., 2001; McGrath, 2001), but the situation appears to be improving, for, as Panelli (2002) states in her editorial article, ‘‘Studies of young people and children have enjoyed a growing popularity throughout the social sciences in recent years [y] In the subsequent decade, studies including the consideration of rural young people steadily increasedy’’ (pp. 113). Panelli’s paper and the issue of the Journal of Rural Studies that she edited on this theme (18:2) contain information on a number of investigations into the situation of rural young people. No attempt will be made here to review these in detail, but a few points relevant to the spatial aspects of the findings should be mentioned. Many of the factors lying behind the problems encountered by young people are connected with areal differences in the availability of educational facilities and job opportunities and the sparsely populated and remote municipalities are in many cases in the worst position in this sense (see Muilu, 2000). Among the extensive comparative surveys carried out within the social sciences in a number of European countries, particular mention should be made of the comparative study of the nature of rural communities, young people’s problems and approaches to these in five countries in Northern, Southern and Central Europe coordinated by the Finnish researcher Helve (1998, 2000). Similarly, the PAYPIRD project (see Arkleton Centre for Rural Development, 1999; McGrath, 2001) focused on alienation and transition problems among rural young people in seven EU countries, and a number of reports have been produced on the problems of unemployed young people in the Nordic countries (e.g. Julkunen and Carle, 1998; Julkunen, 2000). The collection of paper edited by Puuronen (2001) considers youth problems on an east– west dimension within Europe, but not really from a rural viewpoint. There have been a number of smaller case studies concerned with young people in rural areas in Finland, usually concentrating on local problems, mostly the lack of opportunities in certain areas and the resulting outmigration pressures. In particular, it is reported that young people are by no means always accorded the position of actors who are listened to. Paunikallio (1997, 2000), for instance, notes that, in spite of their
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
298
importance for the future of their home areas, rural young people tend to remain in the background when plans are being made and projects devised that will affect them. There are numerous other reports and publications that touch upon the problems of young people as a group in Finland (e.g. Virtanen, 1996; Puustelli, 1999; Vehvil.ainen, 1999; Rouhiainen, 2000). Most investigators conclude that the social identification and alienation problems experienced by rural (and urban) young people are connected with transition phases in their lives. In fact, our modern society, with its emphasis on temporary jobs and project assignments, has caused transition to be a permanent state of existence for many young people, as in extreme cases they may be drifting for years between education, work, unemployment and working practice. As noted by Green et al. (2001), young people are in a very similar situation in many EU countries, as transition phases have become longer, more ambiguous and more diverse, ‘‘moulded by the demographic and economic context, the organization of the education/training system and the labour market, the role of the state in shaping labour supply and the organization of the family economy’’ (pp. 315). This would seem to be reflected in the opinions of young people, as according to the Eurobarometer, they see the main significance of the EU for them as lying in the fact that they can move about, live and look for work in the member countries with the maximum of freedom (European Commission, 2001). In the context of the PAYPIRD project (Jentsch, 2001b), this change was examined from the point of view of the notions of the risk society and individualization as put forward by Beck (2000).
4. Rural young people in Finland in 1970–2000 4.1. Population growth and the concentration of young people The population of Finland has increased slowly over recent decades, by 568 174 persons, or 12.5%, over the interval 1970–2000, and, in common with that of most other EU countries, has aged at the same time, i.e. the proportion of persons over 65 years has increased and that of children under 15 years has decreased (European Commission, 1999). This is also reflected in the figures for young people, i.e. those aged 15–24 years, which declined in Finland by 123 865 persons over the same period, 1970–2000. One interesting feature, however, is that this decline has not been an even one, but rather the outstanding change took place in the 1980s, when the number declined by more than 100 000, whereas the population in this age group even grew somewhat in the 1990s. The proportion of young people in the total population now seems to have settled at just under 13%, having been 17% in 1970 (Table 1). Similarly, the absolute and relative changes in the population of young people are not manifested in all areas in the same way, as urbanization, and particularly migration into the main urban centres, has led to increases in the number of young people in the most densely populated areas. Thus, while almost 30% of young people in 1980 lived in sparsely populated areas (p100 inhabitants/grid cell), by the year 2000 the proportion was no more than 18.5%. In absolute figures, this means that the number of young people living in sparsely populated areas decreased by more than 97 000, or 44.6%, and that by December 2000 there
Table 1 Total population of Finland in given years between 1970 and 2000 and proportions of persons aged 15–24 years by population density Year
Total population 15–24-year-olds Total
1970 1980 1985 1989 1992 1996 1998 2000
4 560 636 4 606 996 4 846 190 4 908 325 4 970 439 5 063 201 5 086 018 5 128 810
Densely populated areasa
Sparsely populated areasa
Total 15–24year-olds
% of total population
% of all 15–24year-olds
Difference (%) from expected valueb
% of all 15–24year-olds
Difference (%) from expected valueb
776 493c 736 249 719 603 649 215 629 627 630 663 649 953 652 628
17.0c 16.0 14.8 13.2 12.7 12.5 12.8 12.7
64.7c 70.4 74.5 77.6 78.7 80.0 80.9 81.5
+0.7c 1.8 +0.3 +2.1 +2.5 +3.0 +3.0 +3.6
35.3c 29.6 25.5 22.4 21.3 20.0 19.1 18.5
0.7c +1.8 0.3 2.1 2.5 3.0 3.0 3.6
Source: Statistics Finland. a Densely populated areas are defined in the grid cell data as cells with 101 inhabitants or more and sparsely populated areas as ones with 100 inhabitants or less. This boundary value is defined on the basis of earlier research (Rusanen et al., 1995) and deviates slightly from the Statistics Finland definition of a built-up area. b Deviation of the distribution of young people between densely and sparsely populated areas from that in the population as a whole. c The data for 1970 refer to persons aged 16–24 years.
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
were 532 010 young people living in densely populated areas and only 120 618 in sparsely populated ones. Likewise, where more young people than would be expected were living in rural areas in 1980, the difference relative to the expected figure has been reversed and has then increased steadily as young people have tended to prefer urban dwelling to an ever-increasing extent, either through force of circumstances or of their own choice (Table 1). A still more detailed picture of the relative change in the population of young people on the centre–periphery axis can be obtained by applying the decile technique to the grid cell data, i.e. by arranging the approx. 102 600 inhabited grid cells in order of population density and dividing these into groups so that each group contains one-tenth of the total population. It is then possible to calculate the proportion of persons aged 15–24 years in each decile and compare these proportions with that for the whole population. If the distribution were an even one, there would be no deviations from the overall mean (on applications of the decile technique to grid cell data, see Naukkarinen et al., 1993). The proportions of young people in the population in 1980, 1989 and 2000 are compared by the decile technique in Fig. 1, where the data are to be interpreted in the sense that the value of 2.56 for the first decile in 1980 means that the proportion of young people in the most densely populated decile of grid cells is 2.56% lower than the proportion in the total population of Finland. In absolute terms, this implies that the most
Fig. 1. Deviation of 15–24-year-olds by deciles of population density in Finland in 1980, 1989 and 2000. Note that the class limits of population deciles are slightly different from 2000 for 1980 and 1989 due to the increase in total population.
299
densely populated areas are ‘‘short of’’ 12 344 young people relative to an even distribution of these people over all the deciles. Correspondingly, the most sparsely populated areas (deciles 8–10) had more than the average proportion of people aged 15–24 years in 1980. After an interval of only 9 years, the situation regarding these most sparsely populated areas had reversed entirely. Now young people were grossly under-represented in the population of the lowest three deciles and over-represented in deciles 2–7, which contained predominantly basic rural areas and the main centres of rural municipalities. By the year 2000, the trend had continued to the point where the proportion of young people was increasing more or less linearly as a function of population density, being highest in the most notable concentrations of population. Thus in absolute terms, the most sparsely populated decile contained 50 310 young people, a shortfall of 15 401 by comparison with an even distribution (Fig. 1). 4.2. Growth centres and the periphery The concentration of young people in the most densely populated areas of Finland, in both relative and absolute terms, was thus most pronounced and most rapid at the very end of the last century, although even then there was considerable variation in this respect between municipalities and between different parts of the country. Absolute changes in the size of the 15–24year age cohort are examined by quintiles of municipalities over the period 1989–2000 in Fig. 2, where it is seen that, of the 448 municipalities in Finland, the loss of young people was most pronounced in a group of small or medium-sized municipalities in Central, Eastern and Northern Finland that were usually located some distance away from the growth centres and typically suffered from high net out-migration, while gains in the number of young people were recorded mostly in municipalities representing one of two types: the largest cities and growth centres, and those areas where primary production was still viable. Between these two extremes lay areas with a mosaic pattern of alternating cases of growth and decline (Fig. 2). Large differences in the proportions of young people were evident between municipalities in the end December 2000 (Fig. 3), the highest figures, 12.7% or more, being recorded predominantly in the ones where the proportion had grown over the preceding decade and the lowest ones where the proportion had decreased. Especially significant, however, is the existence in Northern Finland of some municipalities in which the proportion of young people remains high in spite of a substantial decrease in absolute numbers. These are areas where families traditionally have large number of children, so that the age structure remains consistently young. These may be said to form a kind of
ARTICLE IN PRESS 300
T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
Fig. 2. Change (%) in the number of 15–24-year-olds by municipalities in Finland in 1989–2000 (quintile classification).
Fig. 3. Proportion (%) of 15–24-year-olds by municipalities in Finland in 2000 (quintile classification).
‘‘demographic resource periphery’’ in the spatial structure of the country as a whole, areas from which there has been a constant flow of young and working-age migrants to the growth centres since the 1960s. The situation in these areas is now deteriorating sharply, however, as the population ages and the birth rate begins to decline (Fig. 3).
north-east of the capital, Helsinki (for its location, see Figs. 1 and 2). It has a land area of 5276 km2 and its population in December 2001 was 10 743, giving a population density of only about 2 inhabitants/km2 (Statistics Finland, 2001; Statistics Finland, Population 2002:1). In the EU regional policy classification it falls into the Northern Finland Objective 1 area for 2000– 2006 (Hanell et al., 2002). Suomussalmi is an example of a municipality which was one of those that lost the largest number of young people in the period 1989–2000 but still came into the second highest group in terms of the proportion of young people in its population in December 2000 (Figs. 2 and 3). At the same time, it provides a good example of the advantages to be gained from extending the examination of changes in the number of young people to areas within the municipality by means of grid cell data.
5. Suomussalmi—a local example of a decline in the number of rural young people 5.1. A declining population with less young people, but more sharply concentrated The municipality of Suomussalmi is located on the Russian border in Northern Finland, about 600 km
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
301
Table 2 Trend in the population of Suomussalmi and proportions of young people living in densely and sparsely populated areas in certain years in the interval 1980–2000 Year
Total population
15–24-year-olds Densely populated areasa
Total Total 15–24-year-olds 1970 1980 1985 1989 1992 1996 1998 2000
14 292 13 062 13 006 12 414 12 213 11 858 11 347 10 965
c
2650 2685 2272 1766 1629 1503 1419 1351
% of total population c
18.5 20.6 17.5 14.2 13.3 12.7 12.5 12.3
Total 15–24-year-olds c
608 1128 1017 901 951 907 857 847
Sparsely populated areasa %
Total 15–24-year-olds c
22.9 42.0 44.8 51.0 58.4 60.4 60.4 62.7
c
2042 1557 1255 865 678 596 562 504
% 77.1c 58.0 55.2 49.0 41.6 39.6 39.6 37.3
Source: Statistics Finland. a,c See Table 1.
Demographic trends in Suomussalmi have followed the pattern typical of declining rural areas (Table 2). The number of young people dropped by almost a half over the period 1970–2000 and the proportion in the population fell to 12%. The main change within the municipality, however, consisted of increases in the number of young people in the two built-up areas. The total number living in grid cells with at least 101 inhabitants exceeded that in cells with less inhabitants in the late 1980s, after which the concentration process continued, causing further polarization in the demographic pattern, with the population centre prospering at the expense of the outlying villages. By 2000, there were less than one-fourth of the number of young people living in the sparsely populated areas that were to be found there in the early 1970s. A still more accurate picture of the concentration of young people of Suomussalmi in the main population centre is obtained by means of a comparison in terms of density of population. The absolute changes in the number of young people over the period 1970–2000 are presented for population density classes in Fig. 4, where four classes are recognised, as the number of inhabited grid cells was too small to allow deciles to be used. By far, the greatest decline in the number of young people was observed throughout this period in the density classes 6–20 inhabitants/km2, which in the Finnish context denotes typical rural areas (Rusanen et al., 1995), and 21–100 inhabitants/km2, denoting the rural areas closest to the centres of population. The most disturbing thing as far as the future of the district is concerned, however, is that the number of young people has declined since 1980 even in the built-up areas. Demographic trends and the problems of contracting built-up areas have been discussed in connection with other research carried out in Finland (Niemel.a et al., 2001; Rusanen et al., 2002) and in the Nordic countries
Fig. 4. Number of 15–24-year-olds by population density classes in Suomussalmi in 1970, 1980, 1989 and 2000. Note that the figure of 1970 is for 16–24-year-olds.
in general (Hanell et al., 2002), and it has been noted that this is especially a problem afflicting sparsely populated countries. Population loss in the built-up areas that serve as rural centres is a relatively new phenomenon in Finland, but it could have serious repercussions for the preservation of the settlement structure over extensive areas of the country. The spatial retraction of the young population in Suomussalmi is depicted at the level of 1 km2 grid cells in Figs. 5a and b, representing the situation in 1970 and 2000, respectively. It can be seen that where there were
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
302
Fig. 5. Spatial deviation of (a) 16–24-year-olds in 1970, and (b) 15–24-year-olds in 2000 by 1 1 km grid cells in Suomussalmi.
young people (aged 16–24 years) living in 717 grid cells in 1970, i.e. 73% of all the inhabited grid cells in the municipality, the figure in the year 2000 (for 15–24-yearolds) was only 271 grid cells, or approx. 32% of all the inhabited ones. The conclusion to be drawn from this is a clear one: young people are becoming concentrated in the main agglomerations of population at the level of individual rural municipalities as well as at the national level. 5.2. Gender aspects Demographic changes seldom apply equally to men and women, and it has been observed in Finland that the position of rural women on the labour market deteriorated particularly markedly at the time of the recession in the 1990s, when there was severe pressure for cut-backs in certain largely female-dominated fields of public sector employment. Similarly, only a minority of rural women make their living from farming nowadays, accounting for only 15% of the total female population aged 18–64 years in 1993 . . (Hogbacka, 1998a, b; Hogbacka & Trast, 2000; see also Muilu et al., 1996). The term ‘‘rural dilution’’ has been applied to the restructuring of the primary production-oriented rural labour markets and
associated social systems towards a more diversified economy and the related functional and social patterns, and part of this change has been said to involve an increase in commuting and a decrease in the proportion of families with children (Smailes, 2002). Ancillary occupations and the broadening of the occupational spectrum as a whole have for a long time been regarded as one means of improving the possibilities for living in the countryside. In Norway, for instance, Eikeland and Lie (1999), in their analysis of ‘‘pluriactivity’’ in rural means of livelihood, maintained that our current ‘‘post-rural’’ society was going through a ‘‘market-led transition’’ in which the areas that would fare best would be the rural fringes closest to the centres and to the markets. The plight of the sparsely populated areas, on the other hand, could only be expected to worsen, on account of constant reductions in support payments for agriculture and other rural occupations. Particularly alarming as far as our present theme is concerned is their final conclusion, ‘‘ythat it is first and foremost the male members of the households that exploit the new opportunities for combining economic activities. Pluriactivity is a male activity, and it is probably increasing the gender difference in rural households’’ (pp. 415).
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
303
Fig. 6. Number of 15–24-year-olds by sex and population density classes in Suomussalmi in 1970, 1980, 1989 and 2000. Note that the figure of 1970 is for 16–24-year-olds.
As may be seen, a number of explanations have been put forward for the alteration in the position of young women in rural areas. The diagram in Fig. 6, depicting changes in the number of young men and young women in Suomussalmi in relation to population density, presents a clear pattern: it is only in the most densely populated areas of all that there are more young women than young men, whereas in all the more sparsely populated areas it is the young men that are in the majority. Although this change is partly a consequence of the smaller age classes, it seems that young women are more prepared to move to the population centres in search of better education and job opportunities than are the men. In the Kainuu region (where Suomussalmi is located), 60% of those who take the matriculation examination are female (Statistics Finland, 2001) and most of them move away from the region to obtain further education (some local opinions on this will be dealt with in the next section). Paunikallio (2001) noted that young women were somewhat more disturbed than men by certain phenomena that they regarded as typical of rural areas, such as loneliness, isolation and the long distances to be travelled. On the other hand, Rouhiainen (2000), who maintains that little research has been carried out into the male predominance in the population of the remote country areas of Finland, notes that a stereotyped image is often attached to these rural young men, that of ‘‘back bedroom boys’’, who are unemployed, unmarried and still living with their parents, although the truth is far more complicated. To conclude, the gender aspect is a complex matter here and no straightforward connections between questions of inequality or different coping strategies between men and women and staying-or-leaving issues can be found in the present material.
5.3. Voices of young people and local experts In this respect, it is interesting to listen to the opinions of young people in the gradually emptying countryside on the geographical location of their home district and the opportunities offered by it, in order to see what lies behind the statistics. A total of 34 young people aged 16–24 years living in Suomussalmi and two focus groups were interviewed in November 1999 in conjunction with the PAYPIRD research programme. Almost all of them were living in the main built-up areas of the municipality at that time, but many had had experience of living in the outlying villages, so that it is possible to use this material to consider briefly both the issue of migration within the area and out-migration. A focus group with local experts and authorities dealing with young people’s matters in education, the youth affairs office, the labour office and the local parish was also convened and the opinions of these instances are considered, as they are important from the point of view of local planning (for more details of the Suomussalmi interviews, see Muilu, 2000). The young people had mostly moved from their own villages to the centre either in order to obtain work or to continue their education. It is not unusual for young people in Suomussalmi to do this at the age of 16 or 17 years, simply because the distance from their home is too great to allow them to attend the upper secondary school or a vocational school or to commute to work. Both the authorities and other experts working with young people and the young people themselves admitted in the interviews that there was no work to be had in the outlying villages, as typified by the following citations. Well, there isn’t really any work to be had in the outlying villages. At most there may be some cleaning
ARTICLE IN PRESS 304
T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
jobs and the like in places where there are a lot of old people, but that’s the most you’ll find, and there are not many of us who want that kind of work. (Interview no. 9, a 25-year old female). The elders in the villages often say that there ought to be work there for the young people to do, but in the end it turns out when we look into the matter that there aren’t very many young people in the whole village. I’ve never heard of a young person turning a job down because it means moving to the centre. (An individual opinion in a focus group interview with local experts). An interesting discussion arose in the focus group for youth work professionals on the good practically skills and high levels of initiative to be found in the young people from the more remote areas. It’s obvious that if you live in Hossa (a village in the northern part of Suomussalmi, close to the Russian border), or somewhere which is 100 kilometres or so from here (the centre of the municipality), there are wonderful opportunities for hunting and fishing. I know a couple of fellows who are not registered as looking for work although they’ve been at home since they finished secondary school. They don’t necessarily register with us; they just enjoy living there and do whatever it seems reasonable to do at home. Chopping wood and the forest and nature, these are riches that they appreciate. And the problems there are by no means of the same magnitude as they are here. They are quite able boys, then. (agreement from other participantsy) And when people like that come to work, when they come to the Youth Workshop from the outlying villages, they know what they’re doing. They’ve got used to doing things at home. (agreementy) But many of the boys from the main village, you even have to teach them to shovel snow. It’s quite funny (Discussion in a focus group interview with local experts). The young people who move to the centre represent a loss to their villages, of course, but they are at least retained by the municipality. On the other hand, as noted above, the number of young people in the more remote areas and municipalities are declining rapidly on a national scale. Similarly, the question of whether to leave or to stay is constantly in the minds of most of the young people interviewed in Suomussalmi. It has been shown by Paunikallio (2001) that almost all the young people who live in the Finnish countryside regard it as important that these areas should remain inhabited and are prepared to work to these ends, and
the same is true in Suomussalmi, where only about onefifth of the respondents definitely intended to move elsewhere or thought it probable that they would do so. Although the sample was a small one, just 34 interviews, we can conclude that at least the young people still living in the area are seriously committed to continuing to do so. This may be especially true in rural municipalities like Suomussalmi where the majority of inhabitants were born locally (Paasi, 2002). For many of the respondents, however, their preference for living in their home area was offset by a critical and realistic attitude towards the opportunities afforded by it. Many of the replies were clouded by uncertainty regarding the future and the prospects of employment on the one hand and by the desire to stay in the area on the other. What is there anywhere else that you can’t find here? If the situation were the same as it is here, there would be no point in movingy Most of our friends live here, and we have our supporting networks and the like here. And what if we were to go to some other place where we didn’t know anybody? We would have to start again from scratch, as it were. And we would still end up by being unemployedy It would be quite a different matter if we were to find work to match our training so that we could earn a normal wage and plan our lives a bit further in advance. (An individual opinion in the focus group interview with unemployed young people). Almost all the young people in the sample interviewed had had experience of living elsewhere at some stage in their lives. The general opinion in the focus groups was that the boys would prefer to remain in the district while the girls would either start a family when relatively young and then stay or would move away. Those who had been to upper secondary school formed another group that was inclined to move elsewhere. The girls leave, except for those who start a family early on, and the boys stay. (An opinion in the focus group interview with local experts). It would seem that the girls find it easier to leavey Many of them have a boy in the back room, and when upper secondary school is over the whole lot troop off somewhere else, away from here. Perhaps just one or two will stay here to work in their parents’ business, or something like thaty They have their work there and don’t need to go off studying to get a job. (An opinion in the focus group interview with unemployed young people). Migration by young people in search of work and further education is by no means a new phenomenon, for opportunities have always been limited on the margins of settlement, but the situation has evidently advanced to a new stage in Finland, in the sense that
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
mobility towards the population centres has reached such proportions that it threatens to destroy the present settlement structure in the most sparsely populated areas within a few decades (see Fig. 4). The rural young people are more dependent than ever on the world outside their home district, since this is able to offer a far wider range of personal opportunities. It is also evident that the young people of today are much more open to considering all the alternatives available. It should be kept in mind that the stay-or-leave issue is a contradictory matter depending on the point of view adopted. For small rural municipalities every young person who leaves is a loss, but for the young people themselves leaving may be a rational behaviour in search of a better life and future, which is only to be found somewhere else, probably in large cities. Who has the right to control their choices if it is not the young people themselves? The task of maintaining settlement in the more remote rural areas and in their population centres calls for political will and the appropriate support measures, but irrespective of the good plans that may be conceived the ultimate responsibility for the future of the young people in such areas lies with these young people themselves. Contrary to what is generally thought, there are many young people in Finland who want to continue living in the rural areas where they were born and have grown up if only it is possible. In the case of Suomussalmi, this desire and confidence in the future can be summed up in the words of one (employed) young woman: Research projects like this are a good thing, which is more than can be said for some of the opinion polls about the presidential election [in spring 2000]! People seem to have the idea at the moment that life is bad in Northern Finland. Some politicians have said that people don’t want to live there in the north. You can tell them from me that I, for one, enjoy living here! (Interview no. 10, a 22-year old female).
6. Conclusions Four purposes were set out for this paper, arising out of the notion of the crucial importance of young people, the 15–24-year age group, for the future of the more remote rural areas of Finland in particular. In the first place, it may be concluded that the present georeferenced data provide a very detailed spatial analysis of the process of concentration of the population, the polarization trend being manifested in losses or gains in population at the extreme ends of the regional structure, i.e. in municipalities contrasting in their geographical location and accessibility and in areas of differing
305
population density. Both rapid population growth and a decline in population can cause problems of infrastructure and the provision of services for local authorities, and these can be predicted on the basis of precise georeferenced data. Examples of such services in the case of young people would be upper secondary schools and vocational schools and measures taken by the employment authorities. The second focal point of this work was the tracing of absolute and relative trends in the number of young people as a function of population density in the municipality of Suomussalmi, which covers a substantial area and is located in a region characterized by high population loss. Although this municipality still has a high proportion of young people in its population by national standards, the absolute number decreased by almost a half over the interval 1970–2000. The GIS analyses indicated, too, that this decline in young people concerned predominantly the sparsely populated periphery of the municipality, which had no more than onefourth of the population of young people that it had had in the 1970s. Another factor revealed by the analysis was the gender selectivity of the change, in that females were in the majority within the young population only in the most densely inhabited areas of all, while males predominated in all the more sparsely inhabited areas. This pattern is not a new one, but if the situation continues it is likely to distort further the already poor demographic structure of many rural municipalities. The circumstances lying behind this highly undesirable situation include the cuts in employment in the low-paid female-dominated public service sectors, particularly social and health care, in the recession years of the 1990s, forcing many rural women to move to the population centres, where better job opportunities exist. Thirdly, the opinions of young people in the example municipality of Suomussalmi remind us that even analyses based on accurate georeferenced statistical data can lead to excessively generalized and simplified conclusions, so that one is justified in filling these out with qualitative findings. Even within a remote rural area classified on a regional scale as recessive, it is certainly not the case that all the young people regard their situation as hopeless. They are prepared to weigh up their options very carefully and are not inclined to exclude out of hand the possibility of remaining in their home district, or of returning to it later. Only one-fifth of the young people definitely intended to move away, and for most the question of whether to leave or to stay would be decided according to the chances of creating a ‘‘good life’’ for themselves. Young people need education and jobs in order to build a future for their home district, and forms of rural youth policy and local decision-making that support individualized education and career paths need more attention in this respect. This is especially important for the young people who
ARTICLE IN PRESS 306
T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307
are in danger of dropping out from normal educational and training careers, which are often tightly connected with certain age and qualification categories. There have already been some efforts to move in this direction in Finland, in connection with the renewal of young people’s labour market subsidies. Fourthly, the additional information conveyed by georeferenced data relative to data based on administrative areas is connected with the hierarchy of areal units, in that migration to the centres of population can be detected even within an individual municipality. Thus it is only data of this kind that can provide extremely detailed monitoring tools for local planners and decision-makers. The data normally available at the local authority level will indicate how each municipality stands on a national scale, but will not necessarily be of very much use locally. In the case of an individual municipality beset with out-migration problems, a consideration of the diminishing proportions of young people in the population reveals serious problems for the future. In the case of Suomussalmi, e.g. the population projection produced by Statistics Finland (inclusive of migration) predicts a decline from 10 811 in 2001 to 7154 in 2030, i.e. 33.8% (Statistics Finland, Population 2001:10). This would mean in practice a struggle for survival for large areas of Finland, a struggle which would extend to the internal structures of municipalities and regions and to the structures of individual villages.
References Arkleton Centre for Rural Development, 1999. Policies and Young People in Rural Development. Original Research Proposal. Beck, U., 2000. Living your own life in a runaway world: individualisation, globalisation and politics. In: Hutton, W., Giddens, A. (Eds.), On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism. Jonathan Cape, London. Burnett, J., Jentsch, B., Shucksmith, M., 2001. PAYPIRD—Policies and Young People in Rural Development. Final report for the European Commission Research DG B.1.2, The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, Aberdeen, Scotland/UK, February 2001. Eikeland, S., Lie, I., 1999. Pluriactivity in rural Norway. Journal of Rural Studies 15 (4), 405–415. European Commission, 1998. Demographic Report 1997. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg. European Commission, 1999. Sixth Periodic Report on the Social and Economic Situation and Development of Regions in the European Union. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg. European Commission, 2001. Eurobarometer, Public opinion in the European Union. Report Number 55, Spring 2001, DirectorateGeneral Press and Communication, Brussels. Eurostat, 2001. Regions—Statistical Yearbook 2001. Luxenbourg. Green, A., Owen, D., Wilson, R., 2001. Regional differences in labour market participation of young people in the European Union. European Urban and Regional Studies 8 (4), 297–318. Hanell, T., Aalbu, H., Neubauer, J., 2002. Regional Development in the Nordic Countries 2002. Nordregio Report 2002:2.
Helve, H. (Ed.), 1998. Unification and marginalisation of young people. Youth Research 2000 Programme, The Finnish Youth Research Society, Helsinki. Helve, H. (Ed.), 2000. Rural young people in changing Europe. Comparative Study of Living Conditions and Participation of Rural Young People in Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy and Sweden, Hakapaino Oy, Helsinki. . Hogbacka, R., 1998a. Women’s work in rural Finland—some implications for development. Rural and regional development, University of Helsinki, Mikkeli Institute for Rural Research and Training, pp. 122–140. . . Hogbacka, R., 1998b. Maaseudun tyomarkkinat ja sukupuoli. Vertaileva tutkimus vuosista 1986 ja 1994, Helsingin yliopisto, Maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus, Mikkeli, Julkaisuja 59. . Hogbacka, R., Trast, T. (Eds.), 2000. Monessa mukana. N.akymi.a . on . ja el.am.aa. n maaseudulla, Maaseutupolitiikan naisten tyoh . yhteistyoryhm. an julkaisu. Jentsch, B., 2001a. Methodology. In: Burnett, J., Jentsch, B., Shucksmith, M. (Eds.), PAYPIRD—Policies and Young People in Rural Development, Final report for the European Commission Research DG B.1.2, The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, Aberdeen, Scotland/UK, February 2001, pp. 61–70. Jentsch, B., 2001b. Experiences of rural youth in the ‘risk society’: transitions from education to the labour markets. In: Burnett, J., Jentsch, B., Shucksmith, M. (Eds.), PAYPIRD—Policies and Young People in Rural Development, Final report for the European Commission Research DG B.1.2, The Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, Aberdeen, Scotland/UK, February 2001, pp. 230–261. . am.aa. n. Tyo. Julkunen, I., 2000. Pohjoismaisten nuorten tie tyoel. . . Helsinki. poliittinen aikakauskirja 1/2000, 38–44, Tyoministeri o, Julkunen, I., Carle, J. (Eds.), 1998. Young and unemployed in Scandinavia—a Nordic comparative study. Nord 1998:14, Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen. Kainulainen, S., Rintala, T., Heikkil.a, M., 2001. Hyvinvoinnin alueellinen erilaistuminen 1990—luvun Suomessa. Kahtiajakautuva Suomi?—tutkimusprojektin julkaisu (Abstract: the regional differentiation of welfare in 1990s Finland, Report on the Splitting Finland? Project). National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES), Tutkimuksia 114, Helsinki. Karimaa, E. (Ed.), 2001. Perusrekisterit (Basic registers). Yhteiskunnan perustietoj.arjestelmien k.asitteet, tietojen hankinta ja tietopalvelut, Suomen Kuntaliitto, Helsinki. Kauppinen, J., 2000. Muuttoliike Suomessa vuosina 1989–1994 koordinaattipohjaisten paikkatietojen perusteella (Absract: migration of population in Finland in 1989–1994, examined from coordinate-based GIS data). Siirtolaisuusinstituutti, Siirtolaisuustutkimuksia A 22, Turku. Martin, D., 1991. Geographic Information Systems and their Socioeconomic Applications. Routledge, London, New York. McGrath, B., 2001. A problem of resources: defining rural youth encounters in education, work and housing. Journal of Rural Studies 17 (4), 481–495. Muilu, T., 2000. Employment policies and rural young people in Finland. Nordia Geographical Publications 29 (2), 39–57. Muilu, T., Rusanen, J., Naukkarinen, A., Colpaert, A., 1996. . omyyden . Tyott alueellinen rakenne ja sen muutokset Suomessa 1989–1994 (Abstract: trends in the regional structure of unemployment in Finland in 1989–1994). Terra 108 (3), 160–171. Naukkarinen, A., Rusanen, J., Colpaert, A., 1993. The future of rural settlement structure in Finland. Geography Research Forum 13, 61–70. Niemel.a, P., Naukkarinen, A., Urponen, K., Pamilo, S.-L. (Eds.), 2001. New research-based knowledge about peripherality and planning practices in depopulated built-up areas in the Northern Periphery. Kuopio University Occasional Reports E, Social
ARTICLE IN PRESS T. Muilu, J. Rusanen / Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003) 295–307 Sciences 28, Department of Social Sciences, University of Kuopio, pp. 25–55. . arNuorisoasiain neuvottelukunta, 2001. Kunnallisen nuorisotyon viointihanke (Evaluation project on the youth work in municipalities). Nuorisoasiain neuvottelukunta, julkaisuja 18. Openshaw, S., Turton, I., 1996. New opportunities for geographical cencus analysis using individual level data. Area 28, 167–176. Paasi, A., 2002. Bounded spaces in the mobile world: deconstructing ‘regional identity’. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 92 (3), 137–148. Panelli, R., 2002. Young rural lives: strategies beyond diversities. Journal of Rural Studies 18 (2), 113–122. Paunikallio, M., 1997. Kuka j.aa. maaseudulle? Maaseudun nuorten . elinymp.ariston. . a. Helsingin n.akemyksi.a maaseudusta asuin-, tyo-ja yliopisto, maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus, sarja B:17, Sein.ajoki. Paunikallio, M., 2000. Maaseudun voimavara—nuorten halu osallistua kotikuntansa kehitt.amiseen. Helsingin yliopisto, maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus, sarja B:19, Sein.ajoki. Paunikallio, M., 2001. Nuoret maaseudun ja kaupungin vuorovaikutuksessa. Tutkimus arvoista, asenteista ja odotuksista (Abstract: the youth in the interaction between rural and urban areas, A study on values, attitudes and expectations). Helsingin yliopisto, maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus, sarja B:23, Sein.ajoki. . 2001. Contemporary population changes in north Pettersson, O., Swedish rural areas. Fennia 179 (2), 159–173. Puuronen, V. (Ed.), 2001. Youth on the threshold of 3rd millenium. University of Joensuu, Publications of Karelian Institute No 131, Joensuu. . Puustelli, P., 1999. Koulutus—ja tyomarkkinauudistuksilla syrj.aytymist.a vastaan—vertaileva katsaus nuorille suunnattuihin tukitoimiin EU-maissa. University of Turku, Research Unit for the Sociology and Education, Report 47, Turku. Review of National Youth Policy Finland, National Report, 1997. Ministry of Education, Finland.
307
Rosenqvist, O., 2002. ‘‘Maaseudun’’ ja ‘‘kaupungin’’ rakentuminen Tilastokeskuksen taajamam.aa. rittelyyn perustuvassa aluekehikossa (abstract: construction of the ‘rural’ and the ‘urban’ in statistics Finland’s localities-based regional framework). Terra 114 (1), 3–12. Rouhiainen, V., 2000. Maaseudun nuoret miehet. Helsingin yliopiston maaseudun tutkimus—ja koulutuskeskus. Mikkeli, Julkaisuja 69, Mikkeli. Rusanen, J., R.ais.anen, S., Naukkarinen, A., Colpaert, A., 1995. Alkutuotantoon perustuvan toiminnallisen maaseudun m.aa. rittely paikkatiedon perusteella (abstract: definition of rural area based on primary production by means of GIS). Terra 107 (2), 101–111. Rusanen, J., Naukkarinen, A., Colpaert, A., Muilu, T., 1997. Differences in the spatial structure of the population between Finland and Sweden in 1995—A GIS viewpoint. Statistics Finland, Research Reports 221, Helsinki. Rusanen, J., Muilu, T., Colpaert, A., Naukkarinen, A., 2001. Finnish socio-economic grid data, GIS and the hidden geography of unemployment. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 92 (2), 139–147. . v.aestokeskittym. . Rusanen, J., Muilu, T., Colpaert, A., 2002. Myos at ohentuvat. Tietoaika 5/2002, Statistics Finland. Smailes, P.J., 2002. From rural dilution to multifunctional countryside: some pointers to the future from South Australia. Australian Geographer 33 (1), 79–95. Statistics Finland, 2001. Statistical yearbook 2001. Statistics Finland, Population, 2001, 10. Population projection by municipalities 2001–2030. Statistics Finland, Population 2002, 1. Statistics Finland, Grid cell data from different years. Vehvil.ainen, J., 1999. Polun rakentajat. Nuorten sijoittuminen . am.aa. n, Tyoministeri. . ammatilliseen koulutukseen ja tyoel. o, ESF Julkaisuja 49/99, Helsinki. Virtanen, P., 1996. The making of a new underclass among the unemployed youth? Emerging social exclusion, the mechanism of integration and the need for active and network-based employment . . . Helsinki. strategies, Tyopoliittinen tutkimus 150, Tyoministeri o,