Return to the rural: Ambivalent place attachment among youth in rural Spain
研究了西班牙农村青年从城市返回家乡的过程，发现他们对乡村既有积极情感（自然环境、社区），也有消极感受（匮乏感），这种矛盾源于城市社会的价值标准。
Although the Spanish rural areas continue to face significant challenges of depopulation and demographic imbalances due to the selective exodus of young people, there has been a recent increase in return migration, where these young people choose to return to their places of origin after training and living in urban environments. This study aims to explore these return processes, with a focus on the meanings of place that shape the affective ties to rural territories. A qualitative methodology, based on 16 semi-structured in-depth interviews, was employed in two study areas, corresponding to rural mountain regions in central and northern Spain. The results reveal important ambivalences in the attachment to place among young returnees. While they associate the return with positive meanings of rurality, primarily linked to the natural environment and the community fabric, they also describe negative meanings related to perceptions of deprivation. These meanings are framed within the symbolic hierarchy typical of urban normative societies and are accentuated in the case of returnees, due to the expectations generated during their time in urban environments.