| Summary: | The overall aim of this thesis is to survey and analyse young peoples’ geographical movements, and illustrate the similarities and differences that exist between different individuals. The aim of the thesis is also to examine and discuss youth’s attitudes and motivation for different forms of geographical mobility. The youth focused on in this project reside in Norrland. The first phase, Mapping of the Geographical Movement of Youth, was carried out through the use of a questionnaire, sent to graduating students in upper secondary school. The second phase, Umeå Students Abroad, was carried out by interviewing Umeå students who had either completed or were about to begin a period of foreign exchange. The third phase, Emigrants from Sweden, is based on statistics acquired from Sweden Statistics’ (SCB) and from the TOPSWING database. Home: The starting point of this thesis is the conception of “home”. The choice of path to take in life, and where students wanted to live in the future had significance for how they examined the choice between moving and staying; and the role of the home town in a longer perspective as to how the students viewed Umeå. Away: It is not just the place that a person comes from that says something about who she is, but also the place where she is going and the way in which she takes herself there. Many of the upper secondary school students that took part in the questionnaire had been abroad one or more times. Furthermore, many of the students would like to travel abroad again. At the same time, it can be said that there are also young people that do not have extensive experiences in travelling to other countries. Somewhere between home and away: The study shows that students may have very different views of their time abroad. The Tourist Student is one who chooses his/her destination in order to fulfil certain criteria and then mainly stays in the university town, “taking one day at a time.” He or she does not have a thought-out strategy for how the stay abroad should be carried out. The ...
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