oKeywords:Migrated farm youthIrish family farmIdentity and recognitionFarm statusIdentity construction

experiences of belonging and identity construction, this paper specically focuses on farm youth to

nities in which they grew up. The distinct social, cultural andpractical organisation of family farming imprints on the bi-ographies of all family members. A farm upbringing usually re-quires the involvement of all members in the running of the farm

distinct lifescapeso be considered as, knowledge andhome, work, land's relationships tonto experiences ofg, 2004; Leyshon,arranted given the

particularities in which they are socialised that distinguish themfrom other rural youth.

This paper seeks to address a signicant research gap byfocussing on Irish farm youth who have migrated to the city inpursuit of third level education. While the study reects the ex-periences of young Irish adults, the ndings are likely to resonatewith other countries sharing similar family farm cultures such asFinland (Silvasti, 2003) and the UK (Gray, 1998; Riley, 2009). As agroupwho have experienced both life on and away from the farm, it

* Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: anne.cassidy@nuigalway.ie (A. Cassidy), brian.mcgrath@

Contents lists availab

Journal of Ru

els

Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28nuigalway.ie (B. McGrath).Most young people born into farming families in Ireland do notcontinue farming as an occupation but typically migrate to urbanlocations in pursuit of educational and career opportunities. Infarming succession arrangements such as Ireland's e where thenorm is for one family member to succeed and operate the holdinge this mobility for other family members is not unusual. However,this arrangement has repercussions for non-succeeding familymembers' sense of connection to farming and the rural commu-

Brandth, 1995; Little, 2006; Silvasti, 2003). As a(Convery et al., 2005) or domain the farm can almultiple place where young people's emotiondiscourses are framed within a combination ofand nature. While studies of rural young peopleplace continue to provide illuminating insights ibelonging and identity construction (e.g. Wibor2008, 2011), a specic focus on farm youth is wperformances and succession stakes and expectations (see e.g.

1. Introductionhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2014.11.0060743-0167/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.explore the connection between involvement in the farm and its inuence on their relationship andconnection with their local community. The paper is based on qualitative narrative research with a groupof thirty university students who grew up on the farm but are highly unlikely to pursue farming as acareer or return to the farm. Their farm experiences reect different levels of farming engagement sincetheir childhood. The paper outlines how the nature of roles and farm involvement inform wider socialrecognition and identications, which signicantly shape their connections with the places they wereborn and bred. Early farm role allocations into worker/'helper positions are shown to inuence in-teractions with the wider locality and farming community and have a distinct impact on how youngpeople build their identities. The ndings of this research show that the kinds of gendered work rolesand farm involvement while growing up inuenced their wider social recognition and identications,which signicantly shaped and continues to shape their feelings of connection to where they were bornand bred. Despite having moved to urban locations e and relatively varied internal relationships withfarm/rural community culture e a more abstract rural identication persists in opposition to a nega-tively imagined external urban other. A key conclusion from this is that young people from this back-ground, who are socially and spatially mobile, continue to afrm farm identities as they build a life awayfrom their homeplace and local community.

2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

and household and invokes different gendered roles, identities,Article history:Available online 10 December 2014While studies of rural young people's relationship to place continue to provide illuminating insights intoFarm, place and identity construction ammigrate

Anne Cassidy, Brian McGrath*

School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

journal homepage: www.ng Irish farm youth who

le at ScienceDirect

ral Studies

evier .com/locate/ j rurstud

l of Roffers a distinct opportunity to explore to what extent past expe-riences of farm and rural community life inuence present identi-ties and perspectives. The ndings of this research show that thekinds of gendered work roles and farm involvement while growingup inuenced their wider social recognition and identications,which signicantly shaped and continues to shape their feelings ofconnection to where they were born and bred. Despite havingmoved to urban locations e and relatively varied internal re-lationships with farm/rural community culture e a more abstractrural identication persists in opposition to a negatively imaginedexternal urban other. These aspects of recognition and identi-cation are examined among a group of thirty young adult universitystudents who recounted different aspects of farm involvement andsocial recognition within their family and at local community level.

The paper rst explores literature on recognition and identi-cation within farming and rural communities focussing on the in-uence of succession norms and status differentiation in ruralcommunities. It then outlines the details of the research study withyoung farm adults in third level education. The ndings sectionexplores and describes the division of on-farm roles into workersand helpers. It then looks at how this inuences identity recog-nition within the community and how the community can act as asource of attachment or detachment for individuals. Subsequently,attention shifts to the concept of othering and how this is used byparticipants to afrm their farm identities even as they build a lifeaway from their geographical and cultural background.

2. Identications and recognition within farming and ruralplaces

The main concern of this paper is to explore how the nature ofinvolvement with the farm and farminge through its dened roles,statuses, performances and forms of interaction e shape the socialconnections and attachments that young people establish whilegrowing up. The analysis takes as its starting point the active natureof farm involvement (its performance) as the lens through which tounderstand how wider social connections and attachments areestablished. In developing these connections, the analysis placesparticular emphasis on a critical dimension in understandingidentity formation; social and self identication. Identication canbe described as a process of knowing who we are, knowing whoothers are, them knowing who we are, us knowing who they thinkwe are etc., (Jenkins, 2008, p.12). Identication has key implica-tions for how people are assigned roles and responsibilities as wellas accorded status by others. The terms of farm involvement areintrinsically associated with forms of family identication and so-cial recognition. The nature of this recognition and identicationbears on how young people subsequently identify themselves. Foras Leyshon (2008, p.21) argues: [identity is] not xed or immutablebut always a subjective reinterpretation of the self in an ongoingdaily process. At the same time, in constructing and managingidentities, actors seek to convey an impression of stability andcoherence as they make sense of themselves and others.

Children and youth growing up on the farm play an active, albeitvariable, role in the farm and household operation from an earlyage. However, this has often received little emphasis in manystudies of European farming, which take as their main focus thefarm owner/operator (e.g. Saugeres, 2002; Brandth, 2002; Desseinand Nevens, 2007; Price and Evans, 2009; Brandth and Overrein,2013) or farm wife/partner (see O'Hara, 1998; Shortall, 1999; Kellyand Shortall, 2002; Price, 2010). Existing research concerningfarm offspring in such countries as the UK (Riley, 2009) and Canada(Leckie, 1996) shows that there are particular forms of socialisationsurrounding the kinds of work they should engage in, reecting

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journadifferences in future succession stakes in the farm holding andcontrol over its operation. The identication of the farm successorhas been particularly gendered with one son typically socialisedinto taking a more dened farming role in the belief that this willproduce a natural successor, while other siblings, especially sisters,are encouraged to invest in their education instead (O'Hara, 1998;Silvasti, 2003). In succeeding to the farm the individual must takeon board more than just the ownership of the farm but also thevalues attached to this status (Daugstad, 2010, cited in Bjrkhaugand Wiborg, 2010). In her work on Finnish farming culturalscripts, Silvasti (2003) highlights succession as the most signicantof all norms. This model of male succession e which has strongresonances in the Irish case e is closely linked to the way labour isorganised and roles allocated on the farm during childhood. Thedynamic surrounding farm life becomes a vital element of thesuccession process as it involves interactions and socialisation be-tween parents and children as well as other considerations such aslocal and social attachments (Bjrkhaug and Wiborg, 2010). Eco-nomic difculties, lack of affordable non-family labour and theblurring of divisions between business and personal life means thatnon-successor children are often required to work in various ca-pacities on the farm and in the household while growing up(Wallace et al., 1994; Elder and Conger, 2000). In the UK, Riley(2009) found that children are a vital element of the family'sworkforce particularly at peak times such as harvesting. His workalso highlights the early socialisation of children into genderedroles, where boys' participation is seen a rite of passage in the pathtomanhoodwhile girls aremore likely to view their work asmerelygiving a hand (Riley, 2009). The afliative ties between the familyand the farm ensure that evenwhere children are highly unlikely totake over the farm they are still willing to help out. While youngpeople play an active and critical role in farming, it has long beenperformed in a very gendered way, giving rise to different degreesof social recognition and status (Kelly and Shortall, 2002; Brandth,1995). Many of the activities the recognised farmer has control overhave been privileged and described as real farming whereas othertasks, typically carried out by women or children, are seen asancillary and unskilled. This cultural norm in many Europeancountries which has long dominated the farming and rural land-scape is linked to, for example, controlling and mastering thephysical environment (Bryant, 1999; Saugeres, 2002; Coldwell,2007). As a result, women and young people occupy a secondaryposition in the private and public recognition of farming roles.

If young people occupy quite differentiated roles and engage indifferent types of farm performance, the question then becomeswhether and how these farm roles might inuence their placeconnections, attachments and afliations with local communitylife. Place is central to studies of socio-spatial identities and ruralyouth and the multiple ways identities are embodied, negotiatedand stabilised (Leyshon, 2008, 2011; Haukanes, 2013). As Farrugia(2014, p.295) notes identity construction takes place in andthrough the making of places, which means that social divisions,hierarchies and distinctions should also be viewed as emplaced. Asmuch scholarship on place shows, attachment to and belongingwithin place is not a uniform concept but rather is strongly tied tothe individual's social position and status within a location, andinfusedwith differential access to power (Dahlstrom,1996;Wiborg,2004; Leyshon, 2011; Gustafson, 2013). How young people feelabout their homeplace can often be a mix of conicting feelings ofbelonging, longing, ambivalence and abhorrence (Leyshon, 2008,p.2).

Farming occupies a distinct domain (Peace, 2001) within rurallife and farm livelihoods create a wider set of norms, expectations,economic connections and social opportunities beyond the farmgate for those involved. Engagement in farming is therefore

ural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28 21emplaced in the sense that there are social and cultural aspects of

acceptance, recognition and involvement associated with local lifeon and off the farm. There is also some evidence from Norway,

strong normative value attributed to moving away and gaininghigher education, especially among girls (O'Hara, 1998). Compara-

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of R22tively high participation rates in third level education among thefarming youth population in Ireland conrm this strong expecta-tion (Byrne et al., 2008; O'Connell et al., 2006).1

3. The study e data collection and analytical approach

The paper is based on a narrative approach, drawing on thebiographical experiences of thirty young adults from farmingbackgrounds who had left home to attend university. The decisionto focus on university students was taken in part because thisprogression is a typical feature of transitions to adulthood in Irishfamily farming culture, as mentioned earlier. Secondly, as Halfacreeand Rivera (2012) argue those who have migrated away from aparticular area are usually studied less than those who havemigrated to a place because of the different destination points ofmigrants. Therefore, this was an opportunity to gather data about ageographically disparate but in some ways distinct culturalgrouping, particularly their views on identity and belonging.However, while this is a relatively similar cohort in terms of comingfrom a farming background, the group is internally heterogeneouswith regard to such details as the family farm system (i.e dairying,beef, mixed livestock), full-time/part-time farm status, family size,age and birth orders. The study is limited in its scope since com-parisons cannot be made with non-university farm youth to detectdifferences in perspectives among those who have stayed or do notproceed to third-level education. Nevertheless, the typicallydisparate nature of out-migration further justies why participantsfrom a single setting were selected. The advantage is that it con-stitutes a more coherent sample within which patterns and dif-ferences could be examined.

1Ireland and the USA to suggest that farm offspring developfavourable perspectives towards their rural communities and wayof life compared to non-farm youth (Rye, 2006; McGrath andNicGabhainn, 2007; Elder and Conger, 2000). However, studies oflarge data sets or single gender groups do not reveal much aboutthe differential attachments, identications and status recognitionwhich might develop among different siblings, depending on suchaspects as assumed mobility, likelihood of farm succession andtheir willingness to continue as farmers.

Of particular relevance to the farm youth population is therelationship between (im)mobility and place attachment. Theextent to which people feel trapped or can move between places oforigin and destination is likely to inuence their sense of attach-ment. In the farming context, succession and inheritance are ofcourse major considerations with some farm youth, who might bemobile for a period of time, being pulled back by their commit-ments and expectations to continue the farm operation. Impartibleinheritance remains the dominant cultural system of farm inheri-tance in Ireland, whereby one child e almost invariably male einherits the entire holding. A wide range of studies throughout thetwentieth century revealed that this system of inheritance createdvery dened destinations of education and emigration for non-inheritors (e.g. McNabb, 1964; Hannan and Katsiaouni, 1977).However, few recent studies have focused on how this aspect ofinheritance and succession inuences work patterns and expecta-tions of all farm offspring. Within farming, there continues to be aO'Connell et al. estimated a rate of 89 percent in comprehensive study con-ducted in 2004.The gender of participants was split evenly, while the age rangewas eighteen to thirty-three years. Ten participants were below theage of twenty. The farm systems they came from included: dairyonly; mixed livestock; cattle only; sheep only; cattle/tillage; live-stock/poultry and dairy/cattle. From their narratives, two groupsemerged that can be separated loosely into workers and helpers.Sixteen young adults described themselves as primarily helpingout when growing up on the farm and fourteen described them-selves as verymuch involved as workers. This distinction is furtherelaborated on in the ndings section. While seventeen do notforesee any possibility of succeeding to the farm, ten possibly will,two probably will and only one afrmed she will denitely inheritthe farm.

All respondents attended the same university and recruitedusing purposive sampling. The duration range of interviews rangedwas forty veminutes to one hour and forty veminutes, averagingapproximately one hour in length. The researcher was also from afarming background whose insider status afforded some advan-tages for the process, namely establishing an early rapport withparticipants through shared knowledge and experiences (cf Nealand Walters, 2006). Narrative inquiry was adopted as the overallmethodological approach for the data collection phase, where thefocus is on the stories that individuals tell about their lives andserve as a mechanism for researchers to enter participants' worlds(Connelly and Clandinin, 2006 cited in Clandinin and Rosiek, 2007).Stories are constantly produced as a means of organising experi-ences and usually involve a temporal element where events arechronologically linked with a beginning, middle and end (Moen,2006; Clandinin and Rosiek, 2007; Creswell, 2007).

The biographical narratives were analysed thematically (Braunand Clarke, 2006). For the purposes of this study, themes are un-derstood at a fundamental level as illustrating and classifyingevents and at a higher one as interpreting different elements ofevents, experiences and stories (Boyatzis, 1998), while a three-dimensional temporal, context and space narrative axis was alsokept in mind throughout (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000). Thisinvolved a series of analytical stages including the compilation ofdetailed biographical details for each participant to the develop-ment of more abstract concepts and patterns integrated underthematic headings.

The research questions in the context of this paper are: do dif-ferences in the roles performed within the working life of the farmimpact how individuals are socially recognised beyond the farm?Might these differences affect their opportunities to connect withothers locally and the nature of attachments? How do these ex-periences shape how they identify themselves and otherselsewhere?

3.1. Role recognition and identication e helpers and workers

While all the participants were involved in some way with thefarm, distinctions can be made between two broad categories:worker and helper. Interviewees clearly differentiated betweenworking and helping on the farm through their description of thekind of roles and tasks they were expected to undertake. Belongingto either of these categories supports the carving out of a particularfunctional or instrumental relationship with the farm, as con-structed by both the young person concerned and other actorsaround them. These distinctions are notably gendered. With theexception of three cases, all girls occupied the helper category.Likewise, all but three males positioned themselves as workers.

Help is associated with tasks that are considered unskilled;take place on a sporadic basis or in emergency situations; and arenot regarded as essential to the running of the farm. These are

ural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28connected to what is traditionally seen as an appropriate feminine

l of Rrole on the farm. Examples include feeding young animals andproviding auxiliary assistance during peak seasonal periods such asharvesting or lambing. Certain farm practices are off-limits in theextent to which they are treated as difcult, cumbersome or inap-propriate. Examples here include: skilled tractor work such asploughing and planting, crop spraying and animal castration.Helpers are typically more integrated into the domain of thehousehold with many providing support to their mothers throughcompleting chores within this space. Nevertheless, there is usuallyan implicit understanding that the needs of the farm take prece-dence over other activities including household tasks. However,what is particularly notable is how the term helping is identied ata supercial level of engagement suggesting a temporary statuse asif the individual could easily walk away from the task should theyso choose. In reality, while their activities were often mundane andnot visibly central or regarded as crucial to the farm, this assistancewas still regularly drawn upon not only in emergencies but also tospeed up a task and ensure it ran more smoothly. Furthermore,lighter seasonal tasks would also be allocated to them, e.g. feedinganimals in winter. This notion of helping as somehow less oblig-atory than working also neglects the fact that if young peoplewereasked to do something they were usually expected to complyregardless of their own preferences or views on the subject.

Work, on the other hand, is perceived as routine, skilled,physical and predicated on an expectation of regular commitment,often after school and at weekends as well as during school holi-days. It is linked to what is traditionally regarded as a culturallynormative masculine role within the family and the wider farmingculture. This depends upon a relatively high degree of instruction,in comparison to what helpers receive about the technical aspectsof farming. It is treated as a type of apprenticeship, where in orderto be able to complete these kinds of tasks, local knowledge of thefarm is required; for example, the peculiarities of the soil in eacheld and the social nuances underpinning dynamics in the farmingcommunity. There is a recognition even if workers were notautomatically inheritors of the farm that they could be called on inthe future to operate the farm in the event that the intended suc-cessor was unable to full the role.

However, there is no impenetrable barrier between these twostatuses, with both groups taking on tasks from the other categoryon occasion. In some cases these divisions were also temporallyuid with shifts occurring over the years, either because of indi-vidual preferences or changing family circumstances. In many in-stances the relative levels of engagement of both of these groupswith the farm is linked more to perception than reality. Althoughworkers were believed to be more involved with the farm,helpers often spent lengthy periods of time on it too and per-formed tasks that, albeit smaller, could still be essential to therunning of the farm.

3.2. Status and farm(ing) attachment for helpers

The positioning of an individual, by themselves and others, inthe category of helper is important for perceptions concerning thedepth of their connection with farming and the farm. As the rolewas typically seen as transient and relatively unimportant, it wasnot imagined as leading to a long-term working relationship withthe farm. Helpers were not usually considered future inheritors orlikely operators of the farm down the line. In short, they wereconsidered mobile and future detached. Despite such characteri-sation, they themselves expressed a deep and enduring belongingthrough, for example, their eagerness or willingness to assist on thefarm. For many this practice extended into adulthood since, asseveral noted, they continue to help outside on the farmwhen they

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journareturn home fromuniversity to visit. Nevertheless, this status formsa barrier preventing them from considering the farm as a possiblechoice of employment, with repercussions for their lifestyle, senseof belonging, spatial and emotional attachments and how they arerecognised by others. In part, help is framed in this way because it isnot conceived as having the same time commitment as work.Whileit might not have been as regular a punctuation of their lives as forothers in the worker category it still however marks a signicantimprint on their childhoods, youth and adulthoods.

Workers on the other hand were considered mobile but futuretied to the farm. Those who worked were expected to spend sub-stantial amounts of time labouring on the farm; some in the eve-nings after school and all at weekends and during school holidays.This intense and differentiated participation is shown in thefollowing quote from Brendan who described himself as a workerwho will probably succeed to the farm:

I remember being a very young kid [] I used to work my ass off[] before school I used to get up and feed animals... rush homein the evenings for the harvest. [] Your parents as well put alittle bit of pressure on at times especially busy times of the year.

Where there was a readily identiable male worker, girls rarelytook on a similar instrumental role on the farm. Repeatedly in in-terviews, young men described their sisters as detached from thiswork aspect of the farm and family life. However, this assumeddisconnect from the physical demands of farming is not necessarilylinked to their emotional links to the farm. Formost it never becamea viable option as a future livelihood, irrespective of their love of theland and interest in farming. By contrast, in most families there wasan expectation that boys should take an instrumental role on thefarm. It is important to note that in cases where they might be asdisinterested as their female siblings, it was still assumed by theirparents that they would play this part. This was the case for Jameswho spoke of his sister being allowed to disengage from farming asshe got older while he still had to continue in this position, despitehatingmost farmwork. The gendered nature of such identicationswith the farm did not however cause resentment amongst partici-pants, regardless of whether they liked working or not. Some of theperspectives were expressed as follows:

She's [his sister] the youngest, she's a girl, she gets awaywith notdoing a lot but, do you know, who cares really? She's happywithit, we're happy with it it's ok, we got a good thing going [Ben];

Sinead [his sister] certainly was always very much her ownperson [...] I suppose even just followed her own way becausethere was noway shewas ever going to take the farm or had anyinterest in it [James].

However, there were exceptions and two young men, Conor andHarry, rejected this status of worker, taking on what theyperceived to be a girl's role in their family. They shifted into thehelper position, which enabled them to escape the genderedrequirement of working outside on the farm. Both were aware ofthe masculine expectations they were supposed to be framedwithin but in spite of this, constructed a role focussing more onhousehold work as a core feature of their functional relationshipthan farm labour. This stance is demonstrated in Harry's identi-cation of himself:

I mean I'm kind of, I'm not going to say... yeah I'm sort of the girlif you know what I mean like.

Although this positioning allowed them to assert their own

ural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28 23agency and both were relatively content with the arrangement,

worker role he has occupied since childhood. However, this publicperformativity is also not without complications and can at times

learn at twelve, thirteen or fourteen years old to drive thetractor.

Aside from public participation in farming rituals and practices

l of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28generate certain social pressure and conict for those who struggleto discharge their responsibilities to the farm. In one case, Seamus,revealed a bitter story of his efforts to drive a tractor, which revealsmore generally the practical and symbolic expression of farmingmasculinity:

If you're just driving the tractor slowly into the yard cos you'reshit, a lad might slow down [on the road] to gawk [stare] at youand I remember Luke Murphy [a neighbour] doing it [] he wasslowing down and I felt embarrassed, but why should I feelembarrassed? First time learning to drive a tractor. He thought itchallenging the status quo was not uncomplicated or unconten-tious. While Harry was satised with this role because he couldlighten his mother's workload in the house, it was also renderedproblematic by a fractious relationship with his father and astruggle to other himself from the world of the farm. Similarly,Conor was relieved not to be burdened by too much work on thefarm but, nevertheless, was somewhat uncomfortable with the rolehe had assumed. For example, he resented having to cook dinnerfor his brother who works on the farm, role which he felt wasnatural for his mother to perform as part of her maternal instinct.

3.3. Workers e wider community recognition, identication &involvement

For most, the status of worker leads to the development of adifferent kind of instrumental relationship with the farm as theindividual shifts into a more central and temporally enduring po-sition. This should not be interpreted as meaning/implying thathelpers are less capable of tting into this bracket but rather thatthey are not expected to be engaged to the same extent and therebyare not included as much. In some cases this working status is anorientation towards the future by both parents and young peoplesince it is connected to longer term formal ownership. Workingimplies a relatively xed status akin to having a job, which bringswith it a set of ongoing responsibilities and clearly dened anddenite roles in the dynamics of the farm. In a practical sense, theseactors are viewed as a reliable and regular source of labour, whilesymbolically the public and social performance of farming leads toeventual recognition as a farmer by others. George noted the twosides to this worker role:

The local community would've seenme out helpingmy dad, andthen as I got older they would've seen my dad leaving work forme and me going out doing the work on the farm myself, if itwas even driving the jeep that we had down to, the other farmand putting out nuts [food for cattle]. Like I'm sure people didsee me and they did you know. Yeah, I had that identity in thecommunity.

He acknowledged that, in certain ways, this granted him pref-erential treatment and status within his family. Participants in theworker position were also initiated into the local communitynetwork through, for example, driving tractors on local roads orbeing asked to borrow farm machinery from neighbours. Whetherthey liked it or not, male workers were identied as part of thefarming fraternity, which increased their social embeddedness aswell as the level and kind of contact they havewith members of thelocal community beyond what most female participants couldexpect. For example, James argued that when he returns home hets straight back into the community, which he attributed in largemeasure to how well known and integrated he is through the

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journa24was weird cos I was seventeen. The social view in society is youmost participants portrayed their local communities as havingrelatively homogenous cultural channels revolving around partic-ular sports and music with few alternatives for those who areinterested in other hobbies, social outlets, etc. Of these vehicles, it isthe GAA2 with its dynamic role as a major rural social outlet thatfeaturedmost prominently in the interviews as a cultural inuence.As part of this it can be interpreted as having the power to act as aninclusionary/exclusionary mechanism. The GAA can signal a com-munity marker of belonging so that a decision to abstain from anyinvolvement in it or to actively withdraw can have practical andsymbolic implications for the social connections an individual hasto where they are from. Although no one indicated that individualswould be ostracised for not playing sport, it does potentiallyweaken the ties an individual has with the community. Someparticipants participated in the GAA when they were younger butgave up principally for non-sporting reasons such as frustrationwith its cliquish nature. However, for others it was a way ofretaining a foothold in local community life as it allowed them tocontinue to participate in the public ritual and act of belonging tothe area even as they built their adult life away from it. For example,Oisin is still heavily involved with his club and returns home everyweekend to play with his team.

3.4. Helpers e privacy and the household sphere

For those, mostly young women, who occupied the helper role,there was a notable degree of discomfort in being publicly recog-nised as engaged in farming. Bridget, for instance, was acutelyembarrassed about working with cattle in public, which appearslinked to her fear of being perceived as occupying a manly role andcontravening gendered norms of behaviour. She hated whenneighbours noticed and commented on her herding cattle on theroads near her homeplace. She also added that neighbours wouldnormally not discuss the subject of farming with girls. While sheshrank away from being associated with the physical aspects offarming, she is proud of her background and has developed a senseof belonging in ways she sees as more socially and personallybetting for women. She does this through helping with theadministration of the farm and reading the liturgy at Sunday massrather than through manual labour on the farm:

I t in just ne [in the community]. Because I'm a girl I have aclear girl's role. Culturally I suppose girls don't take on a farmingrole, so you go home and you slot into your role as you doaround the house and you slot into your role in the parish andthings like that. So it's [farming] not something I feel like I'mbeing left out of or anything like that. I feel like if I wanted to getinvolved I could, but I choose not to because I'm happy enoughwith the role I am in.

Similarly, Aisling spoke about her father asking her to do tractorwork in a eld when she was a teenager. Although she carried outthe task and enjoyed doing so shewas also uneasy because the eldwas so close to the road and made her visible to passersby. While

2 The GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) is one of the foremost sporting organi-sations in Ireland and represents a major social and cultural outlet in both urbanand rural settings through local clubs. Given its centrality to rural life, involvement

or non-involvement in this would at least partially determine the depth of personalengagement with local society.

friends in school or whatever. So I think since then I don't thinkI've felt I've tted in at home, like not at home sorry, but in my

l of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28 25she attributed these feelings to teenage insecurities, youngmen didnot mention a comparable embarrassment about being seen tocarry out farm-based tasks. This suggests that relative invisibilitywithin the farming community was a source of relief for some fe-males in conforming as it does to prevailing social norms.

Some women, on the other hand, reected on the performanceof agriculture among young menwith a certain degree of nostalgia.Shauna, for example, enviously referred to the bonds of communityshe saw in collective events of farm work (such as silage harvest-ing). A number of young women felt that their brothers had deeperrelationships with the community because of their publiclyperformative role. Furthermore, some women noted the broaderrange of opportunities available to their male siblings to forge re-lationships with the community outside of farm work, throughsocialising, involvement with the GAA and a stable network offriends. By contrast she did not have access to these possibilities forreasons such as the absence of a local peer group and lack ofinvolvement in collective farming activities. This shows that therecan be differentiated social belonging within families where thosewho have publicly identiable roles are more deeply embedded inthe local community because of the working relationships andsocial networks they develop. In turn, for some young women, thisgives rise to shallower social ties and distances them from the ideaof constructing a strongly embedded relationship with the com-munity in the long-term.

Their relative invisibility within the farming community did notappear to cause conict for young women and in fact waswelcomed by some. It did, however, have implications for the kindof future they imagined for themselves as it often detached themfrom the possibility of socially belonging to the agricultural worldin the same way as their brothers or other male members of thiscommunity. As they were largely viewed as non-vital to therunning of the farm, parents were happy to let these offspringgradually withdraw from a working role outside in the farmyard oron the land. Instead, pursuing a successful education became theirpriority, which was recognised as important by both the individualand their parents. Several spoke of reaching secondary school anddisengaging from the farm and turning attention to education. Onthe other hand, most young men were likely to be racked withobligation even as their education progressed and less likelyallowed to pull away by their parents. For example, one participantJane spoke of how, from a young age, her brother wasmarked out asdifferent from his sisters by being expected to assist on the farmwhile they did homework. While her mother was strident in herdemands that her daughters studied hard her brother was notencouraged to the same degree.

Similar to the case mentioned earlier, those who did not engagewith the sporting and cultural institution of the GAA felt that therewere practical implications for developing relationships with thecommunity during their childhood. As adults this typically affectstheir embeddedness in local social networks since their non-participation in the GAA militated against forming meaningfulconnections with other young people from the local area. Severallamented the enduring pub and club culture, a feature identiedby Campbell (2000) as the scenario also facing many rural dwellersin New Zealand. A male helper, Thomas, alluded to the role of theGAA as a mechanism for inclusion and exclusion in his discussion ofhis reasons to stop playing hurling. As he was not going to succeedto the farm and wanted to build a life elsewhere, his decision tofocus on alternative social networks was a symbolic statement ofintentional detachment:

I think when I stopped playing hurling I very much-not cut myties but reducedmy ties anywaywith the home community and,

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journathen, I started placing more emphasis on my community ofparish3 or in my local village, or in my community at home. Idon't know why that [is]? I think because hurling is such a hugepart of life there.

3.5. The practice of othering

The differentiated and nuanced patterns across this cohort interms of on-farm role allocations and levels of social embeddednessreveal a degree of internal heterogeneity in their belonging to thelocal or farming community. Regarding their identity representa-tion in relation to the external world there is, however, a signi-cant shift towards homogeneity. For the vast majority ofparticipants, regardless of the nature of their social attachmentsand embeddedness in their homeplace or their role as workers/helpers, there is a continued afliation with the idea of the rural.Most repeatedly self-labelled and self-othered themselves asdifferent from the urban, which is constructed as a type ofexternal other. While distinctions of varying subtleties weredrawn between themselves and others within the local ruraldomain, these were usually replaced by a stance of unity and uni-formity when speaking of interactions with the urban. Despite atransition to adulthood often based on a spatial shift away fromtheir rural background, they neither want to consider themselvesnor be recognised by those from their home communities as out-siders or as having fully embraced an urban lifestyle. They continueto strongly identify with the rural, with participants feeling thisway irrespective of whether they have disengaged from the prac-tical manifestation of their identity as workers/helpers or in sit-uations where they yearned to discard their farming background.Since many will not be formally acknowledged as belonging to thefarming community e through ownership of the farm or recog-nised as farmers in an occupational or cultural sense e connec-tions with this particular background are maintained throughmechanisms such as self-labelling; for example, young women arehappy to position themselves as a farmer's daughter. This is oftenbolstered by an aspiration to return to live in the countryside, eitherto their homeplace or another similar rural locality.

The process of moving away to an urban location prompteddisquiet among a number of participants that theymight be viewedas no longer belonging to the rural. The self-othering and labellingthat participants were eager to embrace in the interviews revolvedaround not being a townie or, where this term was not explicitlyused, sentiments to that effect. Townie is a particularly dismissiveterm denoting ignorance of appropriate ways to behave and often alack of knowledge about farming. The use of the label almostinvariably has negative connotations and is used, for example,when actors feel under threat from outsiders' encroachments ontheir rights and when they are angry about the power and resourcedistribution balance between urban and rural areas. To be accusedof being a townie would symbolise having lost awareness of theintricate knots that bind communities together and the intangibleunderstandings contained within this. There seemed to be anapprehension amongst females that by moving away to universitythey could be recast within this imagined identity. This worry doesnot appear to have been shared by the young men, since the ex-pected embedded relationship with their home community is suchthat they do not usually have to fear a similar fate. In fact for somethe opposite could be the case-where they might have wished to

3 This is a small administrative district, which usually includes a church. Itsboundary lines are often used by individuals to delimit their home community.

school one day and I remember just being in there and she wasjust [] laying down on the couch after school and I was likehave you no jobs to do? [] she was like no, no I'll do myhomework later.

l of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28pull away, they were prohibited by a normative male role that tiedthem to a dominant narrative of the dutiful son preserving thefamily's relationship with the land. For some young women inparticular they went farther than the self-othering of not being atownie and explicitly positioned themselves as culchies. Culchieis usually used as a pejorative label and stereotype by Irish urbandwellers to describe rural individuals and has derogatory conno-tations of being backward, old fashioned and dim-witted.While theterm culchie is often used by outsiders in a sneering manner, inemploying the word culchie to describe themselves the word waspositively appropriated by participants, signalling deant pride inbelonging to and membership of this community. These wereSusan's views:

I'm proud to be a culchie [] when I was in Dublin I worked-Iwas the only girl on the team with six other lads and theywere all from the city and they used [to] always slag off [makefun of] the country people and they'd always slag off farmingand they'd slag off everything. They basically thought nothingexisted outside of Dublin. [] I'd standmy ground and,I was likethere's so much more on offer outside of Dublin than in Dublinin terms of what you can do andwhat you can see and all that so[] I'm always very proud to say I'm a farmer's daughter []. Ifsomebody askedme [] where you're from? I'm always like ohI'm a farmer's daughter, I'm just very proud to say it, I just thinkit's fantastic. I love the fact that I grew up on a farm [] I feel likemaybe I've experienced a lot more than let's say a city child likethat I'd understand a lot more than a city person would Isuppose.

Both the label of townie and culchie are used therefore as ameans of othering the opposite, urban, community despite thestrong connections and exchanges between both sides in terms ofemployment, leisure, social and kin networks. Furthermore, byascribing specic attributes, often unattering ones, to this groupthey are marked out as separate and what they themselves are not.It demonstrates where loyalties lie and equally importantly thevalues embraced and connected with. Numerous participantsmeasured themselves favourably against specic urban-basedcousins, friends or vague others in their willingness and desire towork. Thus, farming life and by extension social embeddedness arelinked to a particular moral and value framework. This is portrayedas an underpinning component of their community and way of lifethat is absent from the other. Some, such as Conor and Harry, whobegrudged the time they spent working on the farm when theywere younger, nevertheless, sought to distance themselves fromtheir off-farm counterparts. For instance, both emphasised theiramazement at how unappreciative these individuals were of theircircumstances. They both imputed that they were grateful becausethey had to work hard and/or because they had tougher, lesscomfortable childhoods than their off-farm counterparts. Partici-pants felt there were substantive lifestyle differences since as agroup they have had to make a greater contribution to the family,either as helpers or workers, than other individuals they knewfrom different backgrounds. George described his childhoodastonishment at seeing his urban cousins spend all day watchingtelevision while he was needed to work outside with his father.These were Jane's views on the subject:

when I went into secondary school and I saw some of my friendsin town-their parents did everything for them. When they wereseventeen [] if they said oh I'm hungry their mamwould getup and cook them something. [] At home we were askingmam and dad did they want a cup of tea if we went out to the

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journa26kitchen. [] I remember going into my friend's house afterIn addition to using labels to contemporaneously distancethemselves from the urban other both males and females (re)constructed their childhoods in opposition to an urban imaginary,which it should be noted does not necessarily tally with theirmainly positive experiences of urban living at the present time. Thisis used as a way of further positioning themselves as different toother groups and as a means of shaping and understanding theirprimary sense of social belonging. However, as already mentionedthis was not always welcomed since some resented theirembeddedness and at times longed to have had a different up-bringing. For others who were positive about their experiences,their childhoods were (re)constructed in the interviews in oppo-sition to urban ones, especially estate4 upbringings, which inspire ashuddering horror among some. This attitude is shown in Oisin'scomments about the wasted life one of his ex-schoolmates hasfashioned:

[] he's a bum, does nothing -ah he lives in an estate.....he'd donothing with himself.

The image they have of their childhoods, which strongly reectsthe rural idyll framework is sketched as a place and time of purityand innocence. By contrast those who grew up in towns and estateswere pitied for their perceived early exposure to the perils ofmodern life, such as drugs or idleness. For example, Katie describedher upbringing on the farm as sheltered and prolonged in com-parison to the experiences of friends who lived in towns. At the ageof thirteen or fourteen when she was still paddling in streams, sheclaimed theywere secretly drinking alcohol behind buildings in thelocal town.

It is interesting to note that while there is an overarchingidealistic narrative connected to a desire to be recognised as aninsider in a community looking out at the other, the minutiae ofthe participants' own stories often appears to contradict this pre-sentation. Individuals can carry forward versions of childhood thatpresent or serve to maintain positive orientations and identica-tions with their backgrounds. This can be seen in several cases, suchas Rita, who, insistently described her childhood as carefree andhappy yet in her narrative described a life burdened by an over-bearing, controlling mother and a harassed father. Likewise, whileJane spoke of her early years and her relationship with home inglowing terms, she also hinted at difculties caused by her parents'poverty and the taunting she endured because of her father's reli-gious afliations. Another participant Katie rhapsodised about herworry-free childhood and, yet, told stories of losing a multitude ofbeloved pets not to mention vividly recalling her sister's near deathin a farmyard accident.While it was sheltered from the peculiaritiesand dangers of the outside world Katie was not protected fromthose located within the domain of her home. These stories areperhaps more indicative of conceptualisations of what a ruralchildhood should bee especially in comparison to the constructionof an imagined urban counterpart e than any objective reality.However, it is not simply the case that this group constructs theirbelonging in opposition to an urban ideal; instead, it is also about

4 These were not really dened by any of the participants but seem to involve

housing estates most likely located in working class areas rather than suburbs thatthe participants see as less than salubrious environments to be brought up in.

carry these aspects of themselves forward while constructing their

the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at the National

l of Ridentifying with their own background and continuing to hold ontoa culture they are deeply familiar with. This membership providessecurity and satises a desire to belong and still be considered aninsider.

4. Conclusion

Within rural communities, farming occupies a distinct set ofprivately and publicly identiable roles that mark out degrees ofrecognition and status among different family members and morewidely in the local community. Recognition concerns the nature ofacknowledgement about the role young people play in keeping thefarm going, particularly in terms of the labour contribution theymake. The analysis makes a distinction between workers andhelpers in how young people generally experienced their social-isation, identication and recognition from an early age. Whilethese are not wholly discrete boundaries, they constitute a clearpattern, which impacts how the instrumental relationship tofarming is framed by and for the individual. This substantivedistinction was present across the entire cohort, regardless of theinternal variability of characteristics, such as birth order, farm type,size, and so forth.Whatever the practical and emotional orientationto farming activity, the analysis argues that beyond the farm gate,public recognition and (in)visibility, concerning these performativeaspects of farming can inuence how young people feel part of awider community and rural culture, while also shaping their per-spectives in new urban contexts. For those with clearly identiablefarming roles, this gave rise to particular sets of working relation-ships, social networks and engagements, which reinforce com-munity and cultural connections. While many embrace this as apositive sense of belonging, others clearly resent these communityand cultural features or try hard to accommodate this backgroundwith other aspects of their identities. Such conicting experienceswith community and culture created the potential for beingregarded as an outsider in the place where onewas born and bred;a feature which is invariably associated with incomer status (seee.g. Elias and Scotson [1965], 1994; Crow et al., 2001; Peace, 2001;Karn, 2007). Indeed, as this latter position illustrates, it is not thecase that those within a worker role experience a greater sense ofbelonging or inclusion than those more rmly identied in thehelper role. Some of those who were not connected with thepublic performance of farming appeared to develop positive ver-sions of rurality, based on the experiences they saw among siblingsand friends and their own role on the farm These idyllic narrativesof the experience of community may indeed serve to reinforce asense of rural belonging as something stable and enduring(Leyshon, 2008). Since the opportunities for recognition andengagement differ for those less visibly recognised with farming athome, it can have implications for the kind of future they imaginefor themselves since it is often detached from the possibility ofsocially belonging to the agricultural world in the same way asother family members.

From the perspective of inside their communities, the partici-pants reveal a considerable heterogeneity in their roles and ori-entations. On the other hand a stronger homogeneity can beobservedwhen these young people encounter values or ways of lifethey wish to position as distinctly different from. While theseyoung adults nd themselves situated in urban settings, theyarticulate a sense of belonging and identity in opposition to anurban other. An important component of belonging is the way inwhich it is used as a signier of inclusion and exclusion. By markingoneself out as attached to and from a particular place, actorsessentially make a statement about themselves and the kind ofattributes they can be presumed by others and themselves to have.

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / JournaThrough identifying oneself as belonging to a particular culture,University of Ireland, Galway.

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A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e2828

Farm, place and identity construction among Irish farm youth who migrate1. Introduction2. Identifications and recognition within farming and rural places3. The study data collection and analytical approach3.1. Role recognition and identification helpers and workers3.2. Status and farm(ing) attachment for helpers3.3. Workers wider community recognition, identification & involvement3.4. Helpers privacy and the household sphere3.5. The practice of othering

4. ConclusionAcknowledgementsReferences