FACT SHEETRight Livelihood, Free Agency, and Lifestyle Migrants |
Rural America is hardly the only place to witness the rapidly changing workplace and the type of employment some are now seeking. However, rural America does have many qualities which lend itself to those searching for a quality of life over jumbo-sizing their mortgage, smog-alert days, or commute times.
If it would all end tomorrow, who wants to be sitting around in a cubicle?
About 1 out of every 4 American workers are a free agent.
Home-based small businesses are booming.
Running a business or earning a living is more than about making money.
- "Many of the young people who left to raise their families and seek higher salaries in the large cities are calling home to see what's changed here. They want to know about the price and availability of housing, insurance, food, healthcare, high quality education ... all those factors that make up the essense of life's quality. They want to make a living, not just a salary." -- Rick Killion, Editor of Prairie Business
Rather than focus on earning a living, more and more people are re-making their lives.
- "Because lifestyle migrants are typically those who have been downsized, displaced or voluntarily downshifted from other, frequently corporate, jobs, this has meant that they generally begin in urban or suburban areas. But it's a mistake to overemphasize the impact of economic factors in this group's relocation to the country. Lifestyle migrants "go ex-urban" as a deliberate step on a personal quest to remake themselves." -- Dr. Brian Hoey, Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Center for Ethnography of Everyday Life, in Michigan Today, August, 2004 article.
- "Lifestyle migration is a category or subset of this larger phenomenon of non-economic migration that I use to emphasize the central concerns that include lifestyle and a concern for quality of life. Relocation is a necessary part of the equation for lifestyle migration. -- Dr. Brian Hoey, Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Center for Ethnography of Everyday Life, in Michigan Today, August, 2004 article.
- "...people of all ages will take a fresh look at lives wasted on accumulating material goods and will, instead, opt for new lives that celebrate the truly valuable things in life. Things like fresh air, clean water, low crime rates, orderly streets, dedicated teachers and professionals and businesspeople ... all contributing to an inner satisfaction that isn't contingent on more money and more toys." -- Rick Killion, Editor of Prairie Business