New mobilities - new economies? : temporary populations and local innovation capacity in sparsely populated areas

• Temporary population mobilities – including short-term labour, residential and recreational mobilities – have long been a prominent feature of human geography in sparsely populated areas. Such mobilities are often considered from a problem-centric perspective, with both academic and public discourses focusing extensively on the negative impacts that temporary populations have on local communities. Yet, temporary mobilities may also have a range of positive impacts, as they bring new people, ideas, skills, knowledge and network connections to remote communities, and thus potentially contribute to processes of local innovation. This chapter examines how different types of temporary populations contribute to local innovation capacity and new socio-economic development in remote communities. We propose a framework for analysing how different mobile populations with their particular temporal, spatial, motivational and interactional mobility characteristics impact on various forms of community capital, and subsequent innovation outcomes through the mobilisation of such capital. We then apply the framework to review five common examples of temporary mobilities in northern Scandinavia and Outback Australia, ranging from voluntary international lifestyle migrants to displaced refugee migrants, from seasonal second home-owners to short-term transit tourists, and from service to leisure-oriented Indigenous travellers. The review suggests that temporary populations offer substantial potential to boost innovation and new socio-economic development in remote communities, but that communities and institutional structures often fail to recognise and capitalise on such potential.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Keyword

temporary population mobilities

community capital

innovation capacity

lifestyle migrants

second home-owners

grey nomads

refugee migrants

Indigenous travellers

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)