Abstracted/indexed

Based on a critique of statistical and cartographic analyses of migration patterns of young adults in rural areas of Central Germany, we conclude that there is an emergence of cultures of (out-)migration in some rural regions and discuss possible approaches from psychoanalytically informed migration research and complex systems theory that may help us to understand why, in these regions, adolescents often consider leaving the most viable option.

The field of population geography in the last few years has intensively focussed on populations that are on the move. While the topic of migration is of great interest and will also be in the future, researchers have also started to focus more on immobile populations. In this paper, literature on immobile populations has been collected and analysed. The paper concludes on what we already know about immobilities from extant research and makes suggestions for future research.