Reworking Im/Mobility Scripts Across Generations: Leaving, Staying and Returning in Rural Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Recent research on rural im/mobility has shown that leaving, staying and returning are meaningful life‐course processes rather than residual outcomes of migration. Building on this discussion, this article develops the concept of rural im/mobility scripts to examine the normative mobility pathways and meanings attached to leaving, staying and returning. These scripts are historically and spatially constituted, but are also reworked through biographical experience as conditions change. Drawing on life‐history interviews with 28 rural returnees and stayers in Yunlin and Chiayi, Taiwan, most born between 1971 and 1990, the analysis identifies 3 interrelated processes across the life course. First, during adolescence, participants inherited a taken‐for‐granted outmigration script in which leaving was highly institutionalised through educational expansion, parental expectations, urban success imaginaries and the devaluation of rural work, yet often weakly planned in practice. Second, in adulthood, they re‐legitimated staying and returning through locally grounded mobility, using transport, commuting, digital platforms, cross‐place markets and skills acquired elsewhere to build adequate lives and pursue local achievement from their hometowns. Third, as parents, they translated their own im/mobility experiences into a conditional expectation of self‐directed mobility for the next generation: children should know their hometown, see the world and ultimately decide whether to leave, stay and return. Following one generation from youth into parenthood, this article shows that rural im/mobility scripts are revised across the life course and translated into expectations for the next generation.