View article

Migration to rapidly expanding global urban landscapes and the questions surrounding population growth in these places continue to fuel interest amongst academics, policy makers, and news outlets. Less attention is paid to those individuals who do not head for the big city, immobile populations in rural places. In this paper, we argue that rather than being “those left behind,” immobile populations play a key role in maintaining and perpetuating cultural narratives for ethnic minority populations by anchoring cultural narratives to place. These narratives become reinterpreted and reimagined by outmigrants but remain firmly connected to place through immobile populations. The concept of place elasticity allows us to imagine how these local narratives of place remain intact. It describes the ways in which individuals maintain a continuous, meaningful engagement with a place, even if they reside a long distance from …