Abstract ID: 3.12386 | Accepted as Talk | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

This paper focuses on “thick” urban-rural socioeconomic networks in the mountainous Appalachian region of the United States. Popular media images have long depicted Appalachia as geographically isolated and backwards, while research on the region frequently focuses on its history in rural contexts. Yet most of Appalachia’s population lives on the edges of the mountains in urban or suburban sites—places that have long played an essential role in the economic livelihood of residents. Migration and mobility between rural and urban areas is deeply ingrained in Appalachia’s cultural memory. Rural geography and boom and bust economic conditions related to coal mining, lumber, agricultural cycles, and de-industrialization have necessitated periodic and usually temporary migrations for work outside of the region. Current work opportunities and access to resources, including manufacturing plants, are largely clustered on the metropolitan edges of the region, leading to uneven development and a rural workforce who draws on cultural strategies of livelihood mobility that link rural and urban economies. My anthropological analysis draws on 10 years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Appalachian region to explore geographic, cultural, and economic strategies of mobility. I discuss various models of mobility in which residents engage including: 1) frequent short term moves or long commutes for work as a response to flexible and uncertain labor markets (ex. complex and varied regional work histories), 2) reversible migration that balances urban work with familial obligations to rural homes across space and time (ex. weekday migrants from rural towns who live in camper trailers in cities returning home on weekends), and 3) the cultivation of new ties to urban areas through technological networks (ex. tech jobs that involve work taking place in home rural communities but that connect people to large urban technology hubs within and outside of the region). As Appalachia grapples with its future, I argue that “thick” urban-rural socioeconomic networks (Halperin 1991) sustain the cultural relevance of the region’s rural counties and serve as essential livelihood strategies that allow people to adapt to a changing economy.