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Research regarding life in rural coastal communities in England has been limited, while the experience of families further marginalised by disability has been unresearched. To address this topic, a qualitative study was undertaken to explore the lives of families living with autism in rural coastal England. Twenty-two families from Cornwall and West Norfolk were interviewed in early 2019, including young people on the autism spectrum, their siblings, parents (some of whom were themselves also on the spectrum) and grandparents.

Perceived benefits of living in a rural coastal space were identified. These included the location, the sense of community and the sense of ‘going back in time’ as a positive experience. However, families also spoke of barriers and challenges associated with negative aspects of the location, the experience of stigma and intersectionality in relation to autism and rural coastal spaces. Difficulties concerning education, health and social care support were worsened by poor local infrastructure and the impact of a decade of austerity.

The qualitative methodology involving collaboration with families with autism in developing the research tools, participant recruitment and stakeholder validation is considered.

This research explored the intersecting impacts of rurality, coastality and disability to provide a novel and more nuanced understanding of such families' experiences. As such, it contributes to our understanding of those living ‘on the edge’ – regarding physical location, societal and educational marginalisation.

Young people in rural areas often face barriers when accessing participation opportunities in their municipalities. This affects their voices being heard and their ability to create change. Even though almost half the world’s population lives in rural areas, rural young people’s activism is often overlooked in the literature. In addition, when young people’s activism is explored in empirical research, conceptualisations of activism and methods are often not tailored to rural areas. This chapter, thus, adds to our understanding of young people’s activism in rural municipalities by drawing on a mixed methods case study including thirteen focus groups (FGs; n = 35) and a questionnaire (n = 106) with young people aged 13–17, and semi-structured interviews (n = 11) with teachers from one secondary school in a rural municipality in Germany. Five of the FGs were conducted and analysed by Year 10 students, adding unique insights into participants’ experience of activism. In this chapter, activism is conceptualised as one of the multiple dimensions of citizenship. Activism includes demanding systemic change, individually or collectively, which may include refusing to do things, aiming to prevent laws, raising awareness, and making consumer choices. Rather than being full-time activists, the young people in this study were engaged in only a few forms of activism, often carried out ad-hoc, part-time and in connection with other citizenship activities such as volunteering. Spaces for activism included online, the local municipality, everyday spaces such as the supermarket, and school. Participants experienced multiple barriers when engaging in activism including narratives of non-activist young people, age restrictions, power imbalances and few opportunities for creating change, particularly at participants’ school and in their municipalities.

Various philosophers and thinkers have discussed the importance of thinking and philosophising about the concept of ‘place’. A necessary structure of human experience, place is vital to the very foundation of human experience. More than the geography or arrangement of places, place is a concept that moulds human experience and contributes to understanding oneself and the world. Place has also been used to explain political motivations and issues such as citizenship, diaspora and migration. Despite its importance, place has not been problematised enough and has been neglected in studies of intersectionality. For instance, the role and influence of place in a person's diversity wheel and the interlocking web of oppressive structures have been reduced to either racial, class or gender categories. As a result, current critical theories fall short in drawing up the effects of place on intersectionality. This chapter, therefore, proposes the need to develop a critical place theory. It highlights the role that place-aspects play in the oppression and marginalisation of individuals. Moreover, it also examines the relatively new concept of placism as an analytical framework that can be used to explain varying oppressive placial structures.

Across the United States (US), COVID-19 vaccination coverage was lower in rural counties compared to urban counties, exacerbating rural health inequities. While rural communities fall short of the public health goal to vaccinate all who are eligible, most rural residents have chosen to vaccinate for COVID-19. The aim of this study was to better understand rural New Mexicans' attitudes and beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines.

We conducted and analyzed 51 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with adults living in rural New Mexican counties, covering a range of topics related to the pandemic, including vaccines. These interviews were conducted in the Summer of 2021 after the vaccines were widely available to all adults over the age of 18 and youth between the ages of 12–17, but not yet available for children under 12 years.

Two major perspectives were identified: (1) the idea that COVID-19 vaccinations are a tool that individuals can use to achieve freedom and protection and (2) the view which regarded vaccines as an infringement of personal rights and one's autonomy of health. For people who viewed the vaccine as a tool for freedom, several themes emerged, including (1) a preference for vaccine manufacturers, specifically a preference for Pfizer, and (2) frustrations related to vaccine access, specifically, older adults expressed frustrations with the difficulty of scheduling vaccination appointments. However, most participants felt as though they had enough vaccination resources. For people who viewed vaccines (and vaccine mandates) as limiting their freedom, additional themes emerged: (1) overarching distrust of government and the perception that vaccines were an extension of government and (2) distrust in the vaccines themselves, including a perceived lack of research on the vaccines and a perception that the vaccine was developed in too short of a period. Some of the people who hold these beliefs are also vaccinated. We draw from social psychology theories to better understand how people who hold a rural identity come to establish different beliefs and practices compared to larger metropolitan regions. While political identity is a contributor, of our participants, the group who were most likely to report not being vaccinated were the “independent” or “unaffiliated voters.” Our findings can help craft culturally responsive vaccine initiatives for rural communities.

The evolution of tourism must be framed into policies that aim a development model perspective for the destinations, based on the analysis of economic, political, and social indicators. Therefore, emerging destinations, located in territories with low population density, should be a target of a careful strategy policy, considering the characteristics of the region. In particular, the disaster caused by the pandemic context (i.e., COVID-19) implied profound changes in tourism thinking, planning, and development of regions in Portugal and throughout the world. The present chapter proposes the creation of a tourism monitoring system for Arouca (Portugal), a territory classified as Low-Density Territory, with specific characteristics. The monitoring will involve the planning and management of database, at the disposal of all stakeholders, ensuring that the tourism flows in analysis do not get overwhelmed, allowing the discussion of opportunities and threats for the territory, based on the partnership between the population, public and private sector, adjusted to the social, cultural, economic, and environment perception. Will also be considered the perspective of the local community from Arouca's region, the main actors from the territory such as Geopark Association of Arouca and the City Council, according to the surveys used as data basis of this study, along with statistics analysis.

From the perspective of any nation, rural areas generally present a comparable set of problems, such as a lack of proper healthcare, education, living conditions, wages and market opportunities. Some nations have created and developed the concept of smart villages during the previous few decades, which effectively addresses these issues. The landscape of traditional agriculture has been radically altered by digital agriculture, which has also had a positive economic impact on farmers and those who live in rural regions by ensuring an increase in agricultural production. We explored current issues in rural areas, and the consequences of smart village applications, and then illustrate our concept of smart village from recent examples of how emerging digital agriculture trends contribute to improving agricultural production in this chapter.

This opening chapter of the edited volume, Childhood, Youth and Activism: Demands for Rights and Justice from Young People and Their Advocates, explores activism and advocacy – by and for children and young people. It begins by considering how activism has been understood in the scholarly literature, before making a case for a broad and inclusive conceptualisation of what counts as this particular form of social action. Relatedly, it examines the contours of the relationship between activism and advocacy, drawing attention to the ways in which these concepts converge, an issue that is particularly salient when applied to the categories of child and youth. Themes that emerge in research on child and youth activism are then drawn out and we identify some of the key issues that animate this work across various disciplines. These include observations that young people have long been central to social movements, the role of social media in youth activism, the nature of child and adult relationships in social movement organisations, and some of the issues that arise for young activists in relation to intersectional identities. To this we add debates regarding the politics of recognition, questions of voice and agency, and responsibility and their temporal registers. This discussion also foreshadows themes that emerge in the chapters across this volume. Finally, we offer a reflection on some of the conceptual issues raised when considering the book in its entirety, including those of voice, responsibility for the future, the politics of possibility and hope, and the many different forms and practices that activism and advocacy for and by young people take.