Understanding place attachment profiles among natives, internal and international migrants

Abstract

In recent years, migration and people’s mobility have raised questions on how people bond with places, as mobility challenges traditional views on rootedness and fixed bonds with a place. Thus, this paper tackles the relationship between people and the places they live in by investigating place attachment profiles among different mobility-experienced groups. Specifically, the present study set out to identify attachment profiles based on different types of attachment – traditional, active, and place relative – and characterize these emerging latent profiles in terms of place identity motives, socio-demographics, and how they are expressed differently among natives and migrants. Six hundred and forty-four participants’ survey answers were collected in two densely migrant-populated urban case studies in Belgium and Portugal. The results reveal four distinct attachment profiles: non-traditional, active non-relative, active relative, and traditional-active. The first three were found to be more prominent among recently arrived international migrants, while internal migrants are present in all profiles, and natives in the traditional-active profile. With regard to place identity motives: Distinctiveness, continuity, and belonging needs were less fulfilled for migrants, while self-efficacy was similar among groups. These findings help us understand how migrants bond with their new place and how people’s attachment profiles can be nuanced in terms of their type of attachment and acceptance of change in their place.