“The young, the stupid, and the outsiders”: urban migrants as heterotopic selves in post-growth Japan

Abstract This article explores heterotopic selves by examining the practices and trajectories of urbanites in their thirties and forties who have relocated to rural areas, some of them as rural revitalization volunteers (chiiki okoshi kyōryokutai). Funded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, this program started in 2009 and has been highly popular with urbanites. Participants have a one- to three-year period to engage in activities in cooperation with the local government that promote rural revitalization and create a niche livelihood for themselves in structurally disadvantaged areas. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research across Japan, I highlight how urbanites perceive their roles in their new places of residence, how their values and identities are impacted by the move, how they approach insecurity, risk, and challenges, and how they envisage their place in the community and in society at large. I argue that urbanites play ambiguous roles between uncertainty, aspiration, hope and precariousness. I examine what strategies and measures individuals use in making efforts to create heterotopic entities in their chosen places of residence. By doing so, the article aims for a more nuanced approach to heterotopia as relational space.