Drivers of and Barriers to Rural Youth Retention: A Scoping Review

Rural depopulation, driven largely by youth out-migration, threatens the future of rural communities worldwide. Understanding what motivates or prevents young people from staying or returning is central to rural renewal. This scoping review, conducted in accordance with the PRISMA extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR), synthesises 35 peer-reviewed empirical studies published from 2010 onwards from five continents, all selected through a systematic search of Scopus and Web of Science. Narrative synthesis was used to identify and organise the factors shaping rural youth’s residential decisions into seven categories: social, economic, educational, quality of life and environmental, infrastructural and service-related, personal and psychological, and demographic. The absence of local employment and limited access to education were the most frequently cited barriers to staying, while family ties and attachment to place and community were the retention factors reported most often. As both material conditions and personal and relational ties are reported consistently in studies of young generations’ residential decisions, the review argues that staying deserves further study, whether young people remain out of preference or out of necessity.