‘Making It Their Home’: In-migration, Time, Social Change and Belonging in a Rural Community

Abstract

In this chapter, I seek to demonstrate how time and the life course combine with other factors including age, generation and social change, to affect the chances in-migrants to a rural community have of successfully making it their home. I begin by outlining developments in the literature pertaining to ‘belonging’, migration and social change, focusing largely on rural Britain. I go on to examine a particular rural community, the parish of ‘Beulach’ in the Highlands of Scotland. I show how in Beulach, the personal characteristics and behaviour of any individual in-migrant were set within a specific context of social change which had resulted in the community being relatively open to newcomers, but more so to those with time and life course factors operating in their favour. The concluding section of the chapter compares the Beulach case with the wider literature in a discussion of the relative salience of a range of factors in processes of migration and belonging.