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Where The Home Fires Burn: The Heart Of Geographic Mobility In Rural Southern America, Mariah Moran

Theses and Dissertations

In the context of the recent surge of interest in domestic U.S. geographic mobility, this study presents findings on the reasons people choose to move or not move that challenge the predominant explanations of geographic mobility and responds to the need for theoretical expansion. This qualitative study is set in a rural county of Georgia, further situating the findings alongside the rural-urban continuum literature. In-depth interviews were conducted with thirty participants from the rural county that represent three different mobility decisions: people who stayed, left, and returned. The findings suggest that there are multiple connected reasons for mobility including three …