Two Close-to-Nature Lifestyles, One Benefit for the Cultural Landscape: Comparing Lifestyle Movers and Lifestyle Farmers in the Remote European Eastern Alps

Abstract

Increasing affluence permits economically induced mobilities from mountain valleys in the European Alps downward to (urban) lowlands. Research on crosscurrents beyond economic constraints is still in its infancy, especially in the remote Eastern Alps. Hence, I studied 2 conscious lifestyle mobilities in 3 remote regions of Alpine Austria and Italy: those of lifestyle movers who relocated to a mountain community and lifestyle farmers who entered mountain agriculture without a farming background. I interviewed 25 movers and 24 farmers on their challenges and opportunities on site and their engagement with the local cultural landscape. The results show that their spatial or social mobility enables them to have a close-to-nature lifestyle; housing and land access are key challenges they experience. Due to sociocultural assimilation, lifestyle movers—mostly extra-Alpine urbanites—tend to reproduce the cultural landscape that motivated their relocation. Most lifestyle farmers are locals, which empowers them to rethink conventions and regenerate agriculture. By consciously maintaining the cultural landscape, both groups foster the preservation and development of local socioeconomic and cultural structures that are vital to surviving in the Alpine periphery—and thus key to the survival of the Alpine cultural landscape. Spatial and, even more so, social lifestyle mobility in mountain regions holds significant potential that is often neglected by demographic research and not clearly perceived by local policymakers.