Migration into rural areas is an increasingly important phenomenon in the global north. It is significant in terms of rising numbers of rural immigrants and the demographic and socioeconomic shifts it causes in host and home regions. Yet its importance results also from the processes of social change that it reflects as well as produces, and the new chances and risks it generates in terms of social equality and social integration. Moreover, current trends of rural immigration grant new insights into modern migration as well as rural development. It is insightful as it portrays a modern, mobile image of the rural that contradicts the traditional notion of the rural as stagnant and immobile, points at the importance of extra-local relations and mobile residents, and underlines the interrelationships between urban and rural regions.
