Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28

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Journal of Rural Studies

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud

Farm, place and identity construction among Irish farm youth who
migrate
Anne Cassidy, Brian McGrath*
School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Available online 10 December 2014

While studies of rural young people's relationship to place continue to provide illuminating insights into
experiences of belonging and identity construction, this paper specically focuses on farm youth to
explore the connection between involvement in the farm and its inuence on their relationship and
connection with their local community. The paper is based on qualitative narrative research with a group
of thirty university students who grew up on the farm but are highly unlikely to pursue farming as a
career or return to the farm. Their farm experiences reect different levels of farming engagement since
their childhood. The paper outlines how the nature of roles and farm involvement inform wider social
recognition and identications, which signicantly shape their connections with the places they were
born and bred. Early farm role allocations into worker/'helper positions are shown to inuence interactions with the wider locality and farming community and have a distinct impact on how young
people build their identities. The ndings of this research show that the kinds of gendered work roles
and farm involvement while growing up inuenced their wider social recognition and identications,
which signicantly shaped and continues to shape their feelings of connection to where they were born
and bred. Despite having moved to urban locations e and relatively varied internal relationships with
farm/rural community culture e a more abstract rural identication persists in opposition to a negatively imagined external urban other. A key conclusion from this is that young people from this background, who are socially and spatially mobile, continue to afrm farm identities as they build a life away
from their homeplace and local community.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Migrated farm youth
Irish family farm
Identity and recognition
Farm status
Identity construction

1. Introduction
Most young people born into farming families in Ireland do not
continue farming as an occupation but typically migrate to urban
locations in pursuit of educational and career opportunities. In
farming succession arrangements such as Ireland's e where the
norm is for one family member to succeed and operate the holding
e this mobility for other family members is not unusual. However,
this arrangement has repercussions for non-succeeding family
members' sense of connection to farming and the rural communities in which they grew up. The distinct social, cultural and
practical organisation of family farming imprints on the biographies of all family members. A farm upbringing usually requires the involvement of all members in the running of the farm

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: anne.cassidy@nuigalway.ie (A. Cassidy), brian.mcgrath@
nuigalway.ie (B. McGrath).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2014.11.006
0743-0167/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

and household and invokes different gendered roles, identities,

performances and succession stakes and expectations (see e.g.
Brandth, 1995; Little, 2006; Silvasti, 2003). As a distinct lifescape
(Convery et al., 2005) or domain the farm can also be considered a
multiple place where young people's emotions, knowledge and
discourses are framed within a combination of home, work, land
and nature. While studies of rural young people's relationships to
place continue to provide illuminating insights into experiences of
belonging and identity construction (e.g. Wiborg, 2004; Leyshon,
2008, 2011), a specic focus on farm youth is warranted given the
particularities in which they are socialised that distinguish them
from other rural youth.
This paper seeks to address a signicant research gap by
focussing on Irish farm youth who have migrated to the city in
pursuit of third level education. While the study reects the experiences of young Irish adults, the ndings are likely to resonate
with other countries sharing similar family farm cultures such as
Finland (Silvasti, 2003) and the UK (Gray, 1998; Riley, 2009). As a
group who have experienced both life on and away from the farm, it

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28

offers a distinct opportunity to explore to what extent past experiences of farm and rural community life inuence present identities and perspectives. The ndings of this research show that the
kinds of gendered work roles and farm involvement while growing
up inuenced their wider social recognition and identications,
which signicantly shaped and continues to shape their feelings of
connection to where they were born and bred. Despite having
moved to urban locations e and relatively varied internal relationships with farm/rural community culture e a more abstract
rural identication persists in opposition to a negatively imagined
external urban other. These aspects of recognition and identication are examined among a group of thirty young adult university
students who recounted different aspects of farm involvement and
social recognition within their family and at local community level.
The paper rst explores literature on recognition and identication within farming and rural communities focussing on the inuence of succession norms and status differentiation in rural
communities. It then outlines the details of the research study with
young farm adults in third level education. The ndings section
explores and describes the division of on-farm roles into workers
and helpers. It then looks at how this inuences identity recognition within the community and how the community can act as a
source of attachment or detachment for individuals. Subsequently,
attention shifts to the concept of othering and how this is used by
participants to afrm their farm identities even as they build a life
away from their geographical and cultural background.
2. Identications and recognition within farming and rural
places
The main concern of this paper is to explore how the nature of
involvement with the farm and farming e through its dened roles,
statuses, performances and forms of interaction e shape the social
connections and attachments that young people establish while
growing up. The analysis takes as its starting point the active nature
of farm involvement (its performance) as the lens through which to
understand how wider social connections and attachments are
established. In developing these connections, the analysis places
particular emphasis on a critical dimension in understanding
identity formation; social and self identication. Identication can
be described as a process of knowing who we are, knowing who
others are, them knowing who we are, us knowing who they think
we are etc., (Jenkins, 2008, p.12). Identication has key implications for how people are assigned roles and responsibilities as well
as accorded status by others. The terms of farm involvement are
intrinsically associated with forms of family identication and social recognition. The nature of this recognition and identication
bears on how young people subsequently identify themselves. For
as Leyshon (2008, p.21) argues: [identity is] not xed or immutable
but always a subjective reinterpretation of the self in an ongoing
daily process. At the same time, in constructing and managing
identities, actors seek to convey an impression of stability and
coherence as they make sense of themselves and others.
Children and youth growing up on the farm play an active, albeit
variable, role in the farm and household operation from an early
age. However, this has often received little emphasis in many
studies of European farming, which take as their main focus the
farm owner/operator (e.g. Saugeres, 2002; Brandth, 2002; Dessein
and Nevens, 2007; Price and Evans, 2009; Brandth and Overrein,
2013) or farm wife/partner (see O'Hara, 1998; Shortall, 1999; Kelly
and Shortall, 2002; Price, 2010). Existing research concerning
farm offspring in such countries as the UK (Riley, 2009) and Canada
(Leckie, 1996) shows that there are particular forms of socialisation
surrounding the kinds of work they should engage in, reecting
differences in future succession stakes in the farm holding and

21

control over its operation. The identication of the farm successor

has been particularly gendered with one son typically socialised
into taking a more dened farming role in the belief that this will
produce a natural successor, while other siblings, especially sisters,
are encouraged to invest in their education instead (O'Hara, 1998;
Silvasti, 2003). In succeeding to the farm the individual must take
on board more than just the ownership of the farm but also the
values attached to this status (Daugstad, 2010, cited in Bjrkhaug
and Wiborg, 2010). In her work on Finnish farming cultural
scripts, Silvasti (2003) highlights succession as the most signicant
of all norms. This model of male succession e which has strong
resonances in the Irish case e is closely linked to the way labour is
organised and roles allocated on the farm during childhood. The
dynamic surrounding farm life becomes a vital element of the
succession process as it involves interactions and socialisation between parents and children as well as other considerations such as
local and social attachments (Bjrkhaug and Wiborg, 2010). Economic difculties, lack of affordable non-family labour and the
blurring of divisions between business and personal life means that
non-successor children are often required to work in various capacities on the farm and in the household while growing up
(Wallace et al., 1994; Elder and Conger, 2000). In the UK, Riley
(2009) found that children are a vital element of the family's
workforce particularly at peak times such as harvesting. His work
also highlights the early socialisation of children into gendered
roles, where boys' participation is seen a rite of passage in the path
to manhood while girls are more likely to view their work as merely
giving a hand (Riley, 2009). The afliative ties between the family
and the farm ensure that even where children are highly unlikely to
take over the farm they are still willing to help out. While young
people play an active and critical role in farming, it has long been
performed in a very gendered way, giving rise to different degrees
of social recognition and status (Kelly and Shortall, 2002; Brandth,
1995). Many of the activities the recognised farmer has control over
have been privileged and described as real farming whereas other
tasks, typically carried out by women or children, are seen as
ancillary and unskilled. This cultural norm in many European
countries which has long dominated the farming and rural landscape is linked to, for example, controlling and mastering the
physical environment (Bryant, 1999; Saugeres, 2002; Coldwell,
2007). As a result, women and young people occupy a secondary
position in the private and public recognition of farming roles.
If young people occupy quite differentiated roles and engage in
different types of farm performance, the question then becomes
whether and how these farm roles might inuence their place
connections, attachments and afliations with local community
life. Place is central to studies of socio-spatial identities and rural
youth and the multiple ways identities are embodied, negotiated
and stabilised (Leyshon, 2008, 2011; Haukanes, 2013). As Farrugia
(2014, p.295) notes identity construction takes place in and
through the making of places, which means that social divisions,
hierarchies and distinctions should also be viewed as emplaced. As
much scholarship on place shows, attachment to and belonging
within place is not a uniform concept but rather is strongly tied to
the individual's social position and status within a location, and
m, 1996; Wiborg,
infused with differential access to power (Dahlstro
2004; Leyshon, 2011; Gustafson, 2013). How young people feel
about their homeplace can often be a mix of conicting feelings of
belonging, longing, ambivalence and abhorrence (Leyshon, 2008,
p.2).
Farming occupies a distinct domain (Peace, 2001) within rural
life and farm livelihoods create a wider set of norms, expectations,
economic connections and social opportunities beyond the farm
gate for those involved. Engagement in farming is therefore
emplaced in the sense that there are social and cultural aspects of

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A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28

acceptance, recognition and involvement associated with local life

on and off the farm. There is also some evidence from Norway,
Ireland and the USA to suggest that farm offspring develop
favourable perspectives towards their rural communities and way
of life compared to non-farm youth (Rye, 2006; McGrath and
NicGabhainn, 2007; Elder and Conger, 2000). However, studies of
large data sets or single gender groups do not reveal much about
the differential attachments, identications and status recognition
which might develop among different siblings, depending on such
aspects as assumed mobility, likelihood of farm succession and
their willingness to continue as farmers.
Of particular relevance to the farm youth population is the
relationship between (im)mobility and place attachment. The
extent to which people feel trapped or can move between places of
origin and destination is likely to inuence their sense of attachment. In the farming context, succession and inheritance are of
course major considerations with some farm youth, who might be
mobile for a period of time, being pulled back by their commitments and expectations to continue the farm operation. Impartible
inheritance remains the dominant cultural system of farm inheritance in Ireland, whereby one child e almost invariably male e
inherits the entire holding. A wide range of studies throughout the
twentieth century revealed that this system of inheritance created
very dened destinations of education and emigration for noninheritors (e.g. McNabb, 1964; Hannan and Katsiaouni, 1977).
However, few recent studies have focused on how this aspect of
inheritance and succession inuences work patterns and expectations of all farm offspring. Within farming, there continues to be a
strong normative value attributed to moving away and gaining
higher education, especially among girls (O'Hara, 1998). Comparatively high participation rates in third level education among the
farming youth population in Ireland conrm this strong expectation (Byrne et al., 2008; O'Connell et al., 2006).1

3. The study e data collection and analytical approach

The paper is based on a narrative approach, drawing on the
biographical experiences of thirty young adults from farming
backgrounds who had left home to attend university. The decision
to focus on university students was taken in part because this
progression is a typical feature of transitions to adulthood in Irish
family farming culture, as mentioned earlier. Secondly, as Halfacree
and Rivera (2012) argue those who have migrated away from a
particular area are usually studied less than those who have
migrated to a place because of the different destination points of
migrants. Therefore, this was an opportunity to gather data about a
geographically disparate but in some ways distinct cultural
grouping, particularly their views on identity and belonging.
However, while this is a relatively similar cohort in terms of coming
from a farming background, the group is internally heterogeneous
with regard to such details as the family farm system (i.e dairying,
beef, mixed livestock), full-time/part-time farm status, family size,
age and birth orders. The study is limited in its scope since comparisons cannot be made with non-university farm youth to detect
differences in perspectives among those who have stayed or do not
proceed to third-level education. Nevertheless, the typically
disparate nature of out-migration further justies why participants
from a single setting were selected. The advantage is that it constitutes a more coherent sample within which patterns and differences could be examined.

1
O'Connell et al. estimated a rate of 89 percent in comprehensive study conducted in 2004.

The gender of participants was split evenly, while the age range
was eighteen to thirty-three years. Ten participants were below the
age of twenty. The farm systems they came from included: dairy
only; mixed livestock; cattle only; sheep only; cattle/tillage; livestock/poultry and dairy/cattle. From their narratives, two groups
emerged that can be separated loosely into workers and helpers.
Sixteen young adults described themselves as primarily helping
out when growing up on the farm and fourteen described themselves as very much involved as workers. This distinction is further
elaborated on in the ndings section. While seventeen do not
foresee any possibility of succeeding to the farm, ten possibly will,
two probably will and only one afrmed she will denitely inherit
the farm.
All respondents attended the same university and recruited
using purposive sampling. The duration range of interviews ranged
was forty ve minutes to one hour and forty ve minutes, averaging
approximately one hour in length. The researcher was also from a
farming background whose insider status afforded some advantages for the process, namely establishing an early rapport with
participants through shared knowledge and experiences (cf Neal
and Walters, 2006). Narrative inquiry was adopted as the overall
methodological approach for the data collection phase, where the
focus is on the stories that individuals tell about their lives and
serve as a mechanism for researchers to enter participants' worlds
(Connelly and Clandinin, 2006 cited in Clandinin and Rosiek, 2007).
Stories are constantly produced as a means of organising experiences and usually involve a temporal element where events are
chronologically linked with a beginning, middle and end (Moen,
2006; Clandinin and Rosiek, 2007; Creswell, 2007).
The biographical narratives were analysed thematically (Braun
and Clarke, 2006). For the purposes of this study, themes are understood at a fundamental level as illustrating and classifying
events and at a higher one as interpreting different elements of
events, experiences and stories (Boyatzis, 1998), while a threedimensional temporal, context and space narrative axis was also
kept in mind throughout (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000). This
involved a series of analytical stages including the compilation of
detailed biographical details for each participant to the development of more abstract concepts and patterns integrated under
thematic headings.
The research questions in the context of this paper are: do differences in the roles performed within the working life of the farm
impact how individuals are socially recognised beyond the farm?
Might these differences affect their opportunities to connect with
others locally and the nature of attachments? How do these experiences shape how they identify themselves and others
elsewhere?
3.1. Role recognition and identication e helpers and workers
While all the participants were involved in some way with the
farm, distinctions can be made between two broad categories:
worker and helper. Interviewees clearly differentiated between
working and helping on the farm through their description of the
kind of roles and tasks they were expected to undertake. Belonging
to either of these categories supports the carving out of a particular
functional or instrumental relationship with the farm, as constructed by both the young person concerned and other actors
around them. These distinctions are notably gendered. With the
exception of three cases, all girls occupied the helper category.
Likewise, all but three males positioned themselves as workers.
Help is associated with tasks that are considered unskilled;
take place on a sporadic basis or in emergency situations; and are
not regarded as essential to the running of the farm. These are
connected to what is traditionally seen as an appropriate feminine

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28

role on the farm. Examples include feeding young animals and

providing auxiliary assistance during peak seasonal periods such as
harvesting or lambing. Certain farm practices are off-limits in the
extent to which they are treated as difcult, cumbersome or inappropriate. Examples here include: skilled tractor work such as
ploughing and planting, crop spraying and animal castration.
Helpers are typically more integrated into the domain of the
household with many providing support to their mothers through
completing chores within this space. Nevertheless, there is usually
an implicit understanding that the needs of the farm take precedence over other activities including household tasks. However,
what is particularly notable is how the term helping is identied at
a supercial level of engagement suggesting a temporary status e as
if the individual could easily walk away from the task should they
so choose. In reality, while their activities were often mundane and
not visibly central or regarded as crucial to the farm, this assistance
was still regularly drawn upon not only in emergencies but also to
speed up a task and ensure it ran more smoothly. Furthermore,
lighter seasonal tasks would also be allocated to them, e.g. feeding
animals in winter. This notion of helping as somehow less obligatory than working also neglects the fact that if young people were
asked to do something they were usually expected to comply
regardless of their own preferences or views on the subject.
Work, on the other hand, is perceived as routine, skilled,
physical and predicated on an expectation of regular commitment,
often after school and at weekends as well as during school holidays. It is linked to what is traditionally regarded as a culturally
normative masculine role within the family and the wider farming
culture. This depends upon a relatively high degree of instruction,
in comparison to what helpers receive about the technical aspects
of farming. It is treated as a type of apprenticeship, where in order
to be able to complete these kinds of tasks, local knowledge of the
farm is required; for example, the peculiarities of the soil in each
eld and the social nuances underpinning dynamics in the farming
community. There is a recognition even if workers were not
automatically inheritors of the farm that they could be called on in
the future to operate the farm in the event that the intended successor was unable to full the role.
However, there is no impenetrable barrier between these two
statuses, with both groups taking on tasks from the other category
on occasion. In some cases these divisions were also temporally
uid with shifts occurring over the years, either because of individual preferences or changing family circumstances. In many instances the relative levels of engagement of both of these groups
with the farm is linked more to perception than reality. Although
workers were believed to be more involved with the farm,
helpers often spent lengthy periods of time on it too and performed tasks that, albeit smaller, could still be essential to the
running of the farm.
3.2. Status and farm(ing) attachment for helpers
The positioning of an individual, by themselves and others, in
the category of helper is important for perceptions concerning the
depth of their connection with farming and the farm. As the role
was typically seen as transient and relatively unimportant, it was
not imagined as leading to a long-term working relationship with
the farm. Helpers were not usually considered future inheritors or
likely operators of the farm down the line. In short, they were
considered mobile and future detached. Despite such characterisation, they themselves expressed a deep and enduring belonging
through, for example, their eagerness or willingness to assist on the
farm. For many this practice extended into adulthood since, as
several noted, they continue to help outside on the farm when they
return home from university to visit. Nevertheless, this status forms

23

a barrier preventing them from considering the farm as a possible

choice of employment, with repercussions for their lifestyle, sense
of belonging, spatial and emotional attachments and how they are
recognised by others. In part, help is framed in this way because it is
not conceived as having the same time commitment as work. While
it might not have been as regular a punctuation of their lives as for
others in the worker category it still however marks a signicant
imprint on their childhoods, youth and adulthoods.
Workers on the other hand were considered mobile but future
tied to the farm. Those who worked were expected to spend substantial amounts of time labouring on the farm; some in the evenings after school and all at weekends and during school holidays.
This intense and differentiated participation is shown in the
following quote from Brendan who described himself as a worker
who will probably succeed to the farm:
I remember being a very young kid [] I used to work my ass off
[] before school I used to get up and feed animals... rush home
in the evenings for the harvest. [] Your parents as well put a
little bit of pressure on at times especially busy times of the year.
Where there was a readily identiable male worker, girls rarely
took on a similar instrumental role on the farm. Repeatedly in interviews, young men described their sisters as detached from this
work aspect of the farm and family life. However, this assumed
disconnect from the physical demands of farming is not necessarily
linked to their emotional links to the farm. For most it never became
a viable option as a future livelihood, irrespective of their love of the
land and interest in farming. By contrast, in most families there was
an expectation that boys should take an instrumental role on the
farm. It is important to note that in cases where they might be as
disinterested as their female siblings, it was still assumed by their
parents that they would play this part. This was the case for James
who spoke of his sister being allowed to disengage from farming as
she got older while he still had to continue in this position, despite
hating most farm work. The gendered nature of such identications
with the farm did not however cause resentment amongst participants, regardless of whether they liked working or not. Some of the
perspectives were expressed as follows:
She's [his sister] the youngest, she's a girl, she gets away with not
doing a lot but, do you know, who cares really? She's happy with
it, we're happy with it it's ok, we got a good thing going [Ben];
Sinead [his sister] certainly was always very much her own
person [...] I suppose even just followed her own way because
there was no way she was ever going to take the farm or had any
interest in it [James].
However, there were exceptions and two young men, Conor and
Harry, rejected this status of worker, taking on what they
perceived to be a girl's role in their family. They shifted into the
helper position, which enabled them to escape the gendered
requirement of working outside on the farm. Both were aware of
the masculine expectations they were supposed to be framed
within but in spite of this, constructed a role focussing more on
household work as a core feature of their functional relationship
than farm labour. This stance is demonstrated in Harry's identication of himself:
I mean I'm kind of, I'm not going to say... yeah I'm sort of the girl
if you know what I mean like.
Although this positioning allowed them to assert their own
agency and both were relatively content with the arrangement,

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A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28

challenging the status quo was not uncomplicated or uncontentious. While Harry was satised with this role because he could
lighten his mother's workload in the house, it was also rendered
problematic by a fractious relationship with his father and a
struggle to other himself from the world of the farm. Similarly,
Conor was relieved not to be burdened by too much work on the
farm but, nevertheless, was somewhat uncomfortable with the role
he had assumed. For example, he resented having to cook dinner
for his brother who works on the farm, role which he felt was
natural for his mother to perform as part of her maternal instinct.
3.3. Workers e wider community recognition, identication &
involvement
For most, the status of worker leads to the development of a
different kind of instrumental relationship with the farm as the
individual shifts into a more central and temporally enduring position. This should not be interpreted as meaning/implying that
helpers are less capable of tting into this bracket but rather that
they are not expected to be engaged to the same extent and thereby
are not included as much. In some cases this working status is an
orientation towards the future by both parents and young people
since it is connected to longer term formal ownership. Working
implies a relatively xed status akin to having a job, which brings
with it a set of ongoing responsibilities and clearly dened and
denite roles in the dynamics of the farm. In a practical sense, these
actors are viewed as a reliable and regular source of labour, while
symbolically the public and social performance of farming leads to
eventual recognition as a farmer by others. George noted the two
sides to this worker role:
The local community would've seen me out helping my dad, and
then as I got older they would've seen my dad leaving work for
me and me going out doing the work on the farm myself, if it
was even driving the jeep that we had down to, the other farm
and putting out nuts [food for cattle]. Like I'm sure people did
see me and they did you know. Yeah, I had that identity in the
community.
He acknowledged that, in certain ways, this granted him preferential treatment and status within his family. Participants in the
worker position were also initiated into the local community
network through, for example, driving tractors on local roads or
being asked to borrow farm machinery from neighbours. Whether
they liked it or not, male workers were identied as part of the
farming fraternity, which increased their social embeddedness as
well as the level and kind of contact they have with members of the
local community beyond what most female participants could
expect. For example, James argued that when he returns home he
ts straight back into the community, which he attributed in large
measure to how well known and integrated he is through the
worker role he has occupied since childhood. However, this public
performativity is also not without complications and can at times
generate certain social pressure and conict for those who struggle
to discharge their responsibilities to the farm. In one case, Seamus,
revealed a bitter story of his efforts to drive a tractor, which reveals
more generally the practical and symbolic expression of farming
masculinity:
If you're just driving the tractor slowly into the yard cos you're
shit, a lad might slow down [on the road] to gawk [stare] at you
and I remember Luke Murphy [a neighbour] doing it [] he was
slowing down and I felt embarrassed, but why should I feel
embarrassed? First time learning to drive a tractor. He thought it
was weird cos I was seventeen. The social view in society is you

learn at twelve, thirteen or fourteen years old to drive the

tractor.
Aside from public participation in farming rituals and practices
most participants portrayed their local communities as having
relatively homogenous cultural channels revolving around particular sports and music with few alternatives for those who are
interested in other hobbies, social outlets, etc. Of these vehicles, it is
the GAA2 with its dynamic role as a major rural social outlet that
featured most prominently in the interviews as a cultural inuence.
As part of this it can be interpreted as having the power to act as an
inclusionary/exclusionary mechanism. The GAA can signal a community marker of belonging so that a decision to abstain from any
involvement in it or to actively withdraw can have practical and
symbolic implications for the social connections an individual has
to where they are from. Although no one indicated that individuals
would be ostracised for not playing sport, it does potentially
weaken the ties an individual has with the community. Some
participants participated in the GAA when they were younger but
gave up principally for non-sporting reasons such as frustration
with its cliquish nature. However, for others it was a way of
retaining a foothold in local community life as it allowed them to
continue to participate in the public ritual and act of belonging to
the area even as they built their adult life away from it. For example,
Oisin is still heavily involved with his club and returns home every
weekend to play with his team.
3.4. Helpers e privacy and the household sphere
For those, mostly young women, who occupied the helper role,
there was a notable degree of discomfort in being publicly recognised as engaged in farming. Bridget, for instance, was acutely
embarrassed about working with cattle in public, which appears
linked to her fear of being perceived as occupying a manly role and
contravening gendered norms of behaviour. She hated when
neighbours noticed and commented on her herding cattle on the
roads near her homeplace. She also added that neighbours would
normally not discuss the subject of farming with girls. While she
shrank away from being associated with the physical aspects of
farming, she is proud of her background and has developed a sense
of belonging in ways she sees as more socially and personally
betting for women. She does this through helping with the
administration of the farm and reading the liturgy at Sunday mass
rather than through manual labour on the farm:
I t in just ne [in the community]. Because I'm a girl I have a
clear girl's role. Culturally I suppose girls don't take on a farming
role, so you go home and you slot into your role as you do
around the house and you slot into your role in the parish and
things like that. So it's [farming] not something I feel like I'm
being left out of or anything like that. I feel like if I wanted to get
involved I could, but I choose not to because I'm happy enough
with the role I am in.
Similarly, Aisling spoke about her father asking her to do tractor
work in a eld when she was a teenager. Although she carried out
the task and enjoyed doing so she was also uneasy because the eld
was so close to the road and made her visible to passersby. While

2
The GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) is one of the foremost sporting organisations in Ireland and represents a major social and cultural outlet in both urban
and rural settings through local clubs. Given its centrality to rural life, involvement
or non-involvement in this would at least partially determine the depth of personal
engagement with local society.

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28

she attributed these feelings to teenage insecurities, young men did

not mention a comparable embarrassment about being seen to
carry out farm-based tasks. This suggests that relative invisibility
within the farming community was a source of relief for some females in conforming as it does to prevailing social norms.
Some women, on the other hand, reected on the performance
of agriculture among young men with a certain degree of nostalgia.
Shauna, for example, enviously referred to the bonds of community
she saw in collective events of farm work (such as silage harvesting). A number of young women felt that their brothers had deeper
relationships with the community because of their publicly
performative role. Furthermore, some women noted the broader
range of opportunities available to their male siblings to forge relationships with the community outside of farm work, through
socialising, involvement with the GAA and a stable network of
friends. By contrast she did not have access to these possibilities for
reasons such as the absence of a local peer group and lack of
involvement in collective farming activities. This shows that there
can be differentiated social belonging within families where those
who have publicly identiable roles are more deeply embedded in
the local community because of the working relationships and
social networks they develop. In turn, for some young women, this
gives rise to shallower social ties and distances them from the idea
of constructing a strongly embedded relationship with the community in the long-term.
Their relative invisibility within the farming community did not
appear to cause conict for young women and in fact was
welcomed by some. It did, however, have implications for the kind
of future they imagined for themselves as it often detached them
from the possibility of socially belonging to the agricultural world
in the same way as their brothers or other male members of this
community. As they were largely viewed as non-vital to the
running of the farm, parents were happy to let these offspring
gradually withdraw from a working role outside in the farmyard or
on the land. Instead, pursuing a successful education became their
priority, which was recognised as important by both the individual
and their parents. Several spoke of reaching secondary school and
disengaging from the farm and turning attention to education. On
the other hand, most young men were likely to be racked with
obligation even as their education progressed and less likely
allowed to pull away by their parents. For example, one participant
Jane spoke of how, from a young age, her brother was marked out as
different from his sisters by being expected to assist on the farm
while they did homework. While her mother was strident in her
demands that her daughters studied hard her brother was not
encouraged to the same degree.
Similar to the case mentioned earlier, those who did not engage
with the sporting and cultural institution of the GAA felt that there
were practical implications for developing relationships with the
community during their childhood. As adults this typically affects
their embeddedness in local social networks since their nonparticipation in the GAA militated against forming meaningful
connections with other young people from the local area. Several
lamented the enduring pub and club culture, a feature identied
by Campbell (2000) as the scenario also facing many rural dwellers
in New Zealand. A male helper, Thomas, alluded to the role of the
GAA as a mechanism for inclusion and exclusion in his discussion of
his reasons to stop playing hurling. As he was not going to succeed
to the farm and wanted to build a life elsewhere, his decision to
focus on alternative social networks was a symbolic statement of
intentional detachment:
I think when I stopped playing hurling I very much-not cut my
ties but reduced my ties anyway with the home community and,
then, I started placing more emphasis on my community of

25

friends in school or whatever. So I think since then I don't think

I've felt I've tted in at home, like not at home sorry, but in my
parish3 or in my local village, or in my community at home. I
don't know why that [is]? I think because hurling is such a huge
part of life there.

3.5. The practice of othering

The differentiated and nuanced patterns across this cohort in
terms of on-farm role allocations and levels of social embeddedness
reveal a degree of internal heterogeneity in their belonging to the
local or farming community. Regarding their identity representation in relation to the external world there is, however, a signicant shift towards homogeneity. For the vast majority of
participants, regardless of the nature of their social attachments
and embeddedness in their homeplace or their role as workers/
helpers, there is a continued afliation with the idea of the rural.
Most repeatedly self-labelled and self-othered themselves as
different from the urban, which is constructed as a type of
external other. While distinctions of varying subtleties were
drawn between themselves and others within the local rural
domain, these were usually replaced by a stance of unity and uniformity when speaking of interactions with the urban. Despite a
transition to adulthood often based on a spatial shift away from
their rural background, they neither want to consider themselves
nor be recognised by those from their home communities as outsiders or as having fully embraced an urban lifestyle. They continue
to strongly identify with the rural, with participants feeling this
way irrespective of whether they have disengaged from the practical manifestation of their identity as workers/helpers or in situations where they yearned to discard their farming background.
Since many will not be formally acknowledged as belonging to the
farming community e through ownership of the farm or recognised as farmers in an occupational or cultural sense e connections with this particular background are maintained through
mechanisms such as self-labelling; for example, young women are
happy to position themselves as a farmer's daughter. This is often
bolstered by an aspiration to return to live in the countryside, either
to their homeplace or another similar rural locality.
The process of moving away to an urban location prompted
disquiet among a number of participants that they might be viewed
as no longer belonging to the rural. The self-othering and labelling
that participants were eager to embrace in the interviews revolved
around not being a townie or, where this term was not explicitly
used, sentiments to that effect. Townie is a particularly dismissive
term denoting ignorance of appropriate ways to behave and often a
lack of knowledge about farming. The use of the label almost
invariably has negative connotations and is used, for example,
when actors feel under threat from outsiders' encroachments on
their rights and when they are angry about the power and resource
distribution balance between urban and rural areas. To be accused
of being a townie would symbolise having lost awareness of the
intricate knots that bind communities together and the intangible
understandings contained within this. There seemed to be an
apprehension amongst females that by moving away to university
they could be recast within this imagined identity. This worry does
not appear to have been shared by the young men, since the expected embedded relationship with their home community is such
that they do not usually have to fear a similar fate. In fact for some
the opposite could be the case-where they might have wished to

3
This is a small administrative district, which usually includes a church. Its
boundary lines are often used by individuals to delimit their home community.

26

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28

pull away, they were prohibited by a normative male role that tied
them to a dominant narrative of the dutiful son preserving the
family's relationship with the land. For some young women in
particular they went farther than the self-othering of not being a
townie and explicitly positioned themselves as culchies. Culchie
is usually used as a pejorative label and stereotype by Irish urban
dwellers to describe rural individuals and has derogatory connotations of being backward, old fashioned and dim-witted. While the
term culchie is often used by outsiders in a sneering manner, in
employing the word culchie to describe themselves the word was
positively appropriated by participants, signalling deant pride in
belonging to and membership of this community. These were
Susan's views:
I'm proud to be a culchie [] when I was in Dublin I worked-I
was the only girl on the team with six other lads and they
were all from the city and they used [to] always slag off [make
fun of] the country people and they'd always slag off farming
and they'd slag off everything. They basically thought nothing
existed outside of Dublin. [] I'd stand my ground and,I was like
there's so much more on offer outside of Dublin than in Dublin
in terms of what you can do and what you can see and all that so
[] I'm always very proud to say I'm a farmer's daughter []. If
somebody asked me [] where you're from? I'm always like oh
I'm a farmer's daughter, I'm just very proud to say it, I just think
it's fantastic. I love the fact that I grew up on a farm [] I feel like
maybe I've experienced a lot more than let's say a city child like
that I'd understand a lot more than a city person would I
suppose.
Both the label of townie and culchie are used therefore as a
means of othering the opposite, urban, community despite the
strong connections and exchanges between both sides in terms of
employment, leisure, social and kin networks. Furthermore, by
ascribing specic attributes, often unattering ones, to this group
they are marked out as separate and what they themselves are not.
It demonstrates where loyalties lie and equally importantly the
values embraced and connected with. Numerous participants
measured themselves favourably against specic urban-based
cousins, friends or vague others in their willingness and desire to
work. Thus, farming life and by extension social embeddedness are
linked to a particular moral and value framework. This is portrayed
as an underpinning component of their community and way of life
that is absent from the other. Some, such as Conor and Harry, who
begrudged the time they spent working on the farm when they
were younger, nevertheless, sought to distance themselves from
their off-farm counterparts. For instance, both emphasised their
amazement at how unappreciative these individuals were of their
circumstances. They both imputed that they were grateful because
they had to work hard and/or because they had tougher, less
comfortable childhoods than their off-farm counterparts. Participants felt there were substantive lifestyle differences since as a
group they have had to make a greater contribution to the family,
either as helpers or workers, than other individuals they knew
from different backgrounds. George described his childhood
astonishment at seeing his urban cousins spend all day watching
television while he was needed to work outside with his father.
These were Jane's views on the subject:
when I went into secondary school and I saw some of my friends
in town-their parents did everything for them. When they were
seventeen [] if they said oh I'm hungry their mam would get
up and cook them something. [] At home we were asking
mam and dad did they want a cup of tea if we went out to the
kitchen. [] I remember going into my friend's house after

school one day and I remember just being in there and she was
just [] laying down on the couch after school and I was like
have you no jobs to do? [] she was like no, no I'll do my
homework later.
In addition to using labels to contemporaneously distance
themselves from the urban other both males and females (re)
constructed their childhoods in opposition to an urban imaginary,
which it should be noted does not necessarily tally with their
mainly positive experiences of urban living at the present time. This
is used as a way of further positioning themselves as different to
other groups and as a means of shaping and understanding their
primary sense of social belonging. However, as already mentioned
this was not always welcomed since some resented their
embeddedness and at times longed to have had a different upbringing. For others who were positive about their experiences,
their childhoods were (re)constructed in the interviews in opposition to urban ones, especially estate4 upbringings, which inspire a
shuddering horror among some. This attitude is shown in Oisin's
comments about the wasted life one of his ex-schoolmates has
fashioned:
[] he's a bum, does nothing -ah he lives in an estate.....he'd do
nothing with himself.
The image they have of their childhoods, which strongly reects
the rural idyll framework is sketched as a place and time of purity
and innocence. By contrast those who grew up in towns and estates
were pitied for their perceived early exposure to the perils of
modern life, such as drugs or idleness. For example, Katie described
her upbringing on the farm as sheltered and prolonged in comparison to the experiences of friends who lived in towns. At the age
of thirteen or fourteen when she was still paddling in streams, she
claimed they were secretly drinking alcohol behind buildings in the
local town.
It is interesting to note that while there is an overarching
idealistic narrative connected to a desire to be recognised as an
insider in a community looking out at the other, the minutiae of
the participants' own stories often appears to contradict this presentation. Individuals can carry forward versions of childhood that
present or serve to maintain positive orientations and identications with their backgrounds. This can be seen in several cases, such
as Rita, who, insistently described her childhood as carefree and
happy yet in her narrative described a life burdened by an overbearing, controlling mother and a harassed father. Likewise, while
Jane spoke of her early years and her relationship with home in
glowing terms, she also hinted at difculties caused by her parents'
poverty and the taunting she endured because of her father's religious afliations. Another participant Katie rhapsodised about her
worry-free childhood and, yet, told stories of losing a multitude of
beloved pets not to mention vividly recalling her sister's near death
in a farmyard accident. While it was sheltered from the peculiarities
and dangers of the outside world Katie was not protected from
those located within the domain of her home. These stories are
perhaps more indicative of conceptualisations of what a rural
childhood should be e especially in comparison to the construction
of an imagined urban counterpart e than any objective reality.
However, it is not simply the case that this group constructs their
belonging in opposition to an urban ideal; instead, it is also about

4
These were not really dened by any of the participants but seem to involve
housing estates most likely located in working class areas rather than suburbs that
the participants see as less than salubrious environments to be brought up in.

A. Cassidy, B. McGrath / Journal of Rural Studies 37 (2015) 20e28

identifying with their own background and continuing to hold onto

a culture they are deeply familiar with. This membership provides
security and satises a desire to belong and still be considered an
insider.
4. Conclusion
Within rural communities, farming occupies a distinct set of
privately and publicly identiable roles that mark out degrees of
recognition and status among different family members and more
widely in the local community. Recognition concerns the nature of
acknowledgement about the role young people play in keeping the
farm going, particularly in terms of the labour contribution they
make. The analysis makes a distinction between workers and
helpers in how young people generally experienced their socialisation, identication and recognition from an early age. While
these are not wholly discrete boundaries, they constitute a clear
pattern, which impacts how the instrumental relationship to
farming is framed by and for the individual. This substantive
distinction was present across the entire cohort, regardless of the
internal variability of characteristics, such as birth order, farm type,
size, and so forth. Whatever the practical and emotional orientation
to farming activity, the analysis argues that beyond the farm gate,
public recognition and (in)visibility, concerning these performative
aspects of farming can inuence how young people feel part of a
wider community and rural culture, while also shaping their perspectives in new urban contexts. For those with clearly identiable
farming roles, this gave rise to particular sets of working relationships, social networks and engagements, which reinforce community and cultural connections. While many embrace this as a
positive sense of belonging, others clearly resent these community
and cultural features or try hard to accommodate this background
with other aspects of their identities. Such conicting experiences
with community and culture created the potential for being
regarded as an outsider in the place where one was born and bred;
a feature which is invariably associated with incomer status (see
e.g. Elias and Scotson [1965], 1994; Crow et al., 2001; Peace, 2001;
Karn, 2007). Indeed, as this latter position illustrates, it is not the
case that those within a worker role experience a greater sense of
belonging or inclusion than those more rmly identied in the
helper role. Some of those who were not connected with the
public performance of farming appeared to develop positive versions of rurality, based on the experiences they saw among siblings
and friends and their own role on the farm These idyllic narratives
of the experience of community may indeed serve to reinforce a
sense of rural belonging as something stable and enduring
(Leyshon, 2008). Since the opportunities for recognition and
engagement differ for those less visibly recognised with farming at
home, it can have implications for the kind of future they imagine
for themselves since it is often detached from the possibility of
socially belonging to the agricultural world in the same way as
other family members.
From the perspective of inside their communities, the participants reveal a considerable heterogeneity in their roles and orientations. On the other hand a stronger homogeneity can be
observed when these young people encounter values or ways of life
they wish to position as distinctly different from. While these
young adults nd themselves situated in urban settings, they
articulate a sense of belonging and identity in opposition to an
urban other. An important component of belonging is the way in
which it is used as a signier of inclusion and exclusion. By marking
oneself out as attached to and from a particular place, actors
essentially make a statement about themselves and the kind of
attributes they can be presumed by others and themselves to have.
Through identifying oneself as belonging to a particular culture,

27

community or family an individual is distinguished as being

somehow different to others. Intrinsic to this boundary making is
categorisation and the mix of categoric and personal knowledge
(Van Ejik, 2011) they have of those from urban backgrounds. It is a
form of othering of groups seen as representing an alien idea to
what they are part of. In doing so stereotypes are produced that
permit categorisations to be made of another community against
which the differences and similarities with one's own group are
accordingly exaggerated or minimised (Jenkins, 2008). This resonates strongly with the work of Leyshon (2008) who, similarly,
shows how rural youth deploy a moral language and geography of
the countryside to distinguish themselves as different and superior
to urban youth. In afrming a coherent, spatially xed and intensive
sense of self, the rural youth in his study seek to create a distance
from urban youth, who are castigated as disrespectful, deviant and
risky. Such distances are intrinsic to how people actively identify
themselves in order to construct identity.
This paper, based on an in-depth study of thirty young adults,
shows that the nature of their farm engagement while growing up
is central to farm and rural identities. Roles can create a certain (in)
visibility and status recognition beyond the farm gate, which in
turn shapes their perspectives about the community and culture in
which they were born and bred. While migration to urban centres
creates a physical distance from the farm for these young people,
this can serve to intensify their farm and rural identities creating
within them a willingness, albeit reluctantly at times, to continue to
carry these aspects of themselves forward while constructing their
lives away from their cultural background.

Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the reviewers and editors comments.
The funding for this research was supported by a Fellowship from
the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at the National
University of Ireland, Galway.

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