Education, identity, and intensive youth mobility on the ferry-dependent island of Ameland

The lives of young adults on Ameland, a small island off the northern coast of Friesland (the Netherlands), are defined by a particular kind of migratory rhythm between the island and the mainland. This is because all students in the Netherlands are required by the ‘leerplicht’ (compulsory education) law to finish high school with a so-called ‘starting qualification’, but the lone school on Ameland does not offer this diploma. For this reason, each year’s graduating high school class undertakes the rite of passage of moving to the mainland to finish their education, usually in the nearby city of Leeuwarden. Most live together in Amelander houses in Leeuwarden, where they learn to live as independent adults from a young age, form friendships with Amelanders from other social networks and age cohorts, redefine and strengthen their sense of island identity, and bring these new connections home to the island each weekend. As a result, the social life of Ameland is renewed and remade through weekly acts of leaving and returning. In this multi-sited ethnographic study, we describe young adult mobility on Ameland and its implications for the island’s social identity.