Immigrants, Social Integration and Sustainable Rural Development

Dear Colleagues,

Over the years, migration research has primarily focused on immigrants’ movement to and settlement processes in urban areas. More recently, attention has also turned to investigate the ways immigrants are emplaced and integrated in rural localities and small towns and to study social change and rural restructuring. In this context, it is important to place more emphasis on the processes, the socioeconomic preconditions, the challenges of immigrants’ settlement, and the complex ways in which immigrants’ movements across rural, regional, and peripheral areas are evolving. Numerous factors are considered critical when discussing the size, intensity, and duration of migration flows towards non-metropolitan areas, such as globalization, counter-urbanization, agricultural intensification/restructuring, climate change, changes in the political and/or economic conjuncture, etc.

The placement and social integration of incoming populations raise both opportunities and challenges, and therefore, various aspects and conditions need to be discussed in regard to the attractiveness and/or the resilience of non-metropolitan areas.

Some relevant pressing questions and debates include the following: Which are the major factors affecting the connections between urban and non-urban localities and places in relation to population flows? In which ways do inequalities influence immigration and mobility processes? What is the impact of immigration on the receiving non-metropolitan/rural areas? How does immigration interact with other processes in the receiving areas? What factors enable or hinder immigrants’ social integration into rural areas? Which are the basic roles of internal/international migrants and the new stakeholders in addressing the sustainability goals in rural areas?

This Special Issue seeks to put together a collection of papers presenting original and innovative contributions based on quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods, discussing specific case studies drawn from socioeconomic and/or geographical data, seeking to advance sustainability research in non-metropolitan/rural/peripheral areas by examining the role of immigration (international and/or internal) analysed from different perspectives and angles, and aiming to strengthen social resilience in rural areas and sustainable rural development.

Prof. Dr. Apostolos G. Papadopoulos
Dr. Loukia-Maria Fratsea
Guest Editors

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