New mobilities - new economies? Temporary populations and local innovation capacity in sparsely populated areas

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how different types of temporary mobile populations in sparsely populated areas may be able to contribute to local innovation capacity and new socio-economic development for settlements. The chapter reviews case studies of short-term mobilities common to northern Scandinavia and Outback Australia, ranging from voluntary international lifestyle migrants to displaced refugee migrants, from seasonal second-home owners to short-term transit tourists, and from service to leisure-oriented Indigenous travelers. The cases are diverse in nature in order to illustrate how different motivational, termporal, spatial and interactional mobility characteristics may impact on the capacities of local communities to stimulate innovation and new socio-economic development.