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Rethinking lifestyle and middle-class migration in “ left behind ” regions

So-called “ left behind ” regions have gained infamy for working-class discontent. Yet a concurrent phenomenon has gone unremarked: middle-class lifestyles in peripheral places. This article examines how middle-class migrants (defined by economic, social, and cultural capital) to peripheral regions envisage and enact their aspirations. Against presumed migration trajectories to growing urban centres or for better-paid employment, we argue that seeming moves down the “ escalator ” reveal how inequalities between regions offer some migrants opportunities to enact middle-class lifestyles affordably. We present a qualitative case study of West Wales and the Valleys, predominantly rural and post-industrial and statistically among Europe's most deprived regions. Drawing from interviews with EU and UK in-migrants alongside long-term residents, we illustrate how three dimensions of quality of life — material, relational, subjective — are mobilised in middle-class placemaking amidst peripherality. We demonstrate how spatial inequalities and career trade-offs offer affordable material access to lifestyle and how middle-class aspirations enable migrants to subjectively transform peripherality into enchantment.

. These studies, however, have tended to focus on desirable destinations, leaving the spatial inequalities behind (and facilitating) these movements largely unaddressed beyond the acknowledgement that migrant lifestyles are funded by incomes earned elsewhere. By contrast, emerging research on "new" immigration destinations 1 has considered "often unlikely places … [and] unfamiliar geographies of movement" (McAreavey, 2017, p. 28; see also Bijker et al., , 2013, emphasising "less-popular" destinations, but not yet contended with the lifestyles enabled by migration there. What happens when lifestyle migration meets the places left behind? In this article, we examine how middle-class migrants-defined in terms of economic, cultural, and social capital-to economically peripheral regions envisage and enact their lifestyle aspirations. Our analysis proceeds through a qualitative case study of West Wales and the Valleys: a NUTS2 region classed as "less developed" (GDP per capita below 75% of EU average) and primarily composed of rural and post-industrial geographies historically associated with out-migration.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with in-migrants from elsewhere in the United Kingdom and from the EU, we illustrate how three dimensions of quality of life-material, relational, and subjective-are mobilised in middle-class migrants' aspirations and equally pursued against and enabled by spatial inequalities. We demonstrate: first, how spatial inequalities can offer those whose class position is less secure the ability to afford aspirational lifestyles; second, how middle-class migrants intentionally pass over career opportunities in favour of material affordability; and, third, how a "middle-class gaze" enables migrants to identify aspects of the region that they can transform into cultural capital, despite-and sometimes due to-its economic peripherality. We further note that many longterm residents (who may also have earlier migrated to the region) also perceive quality of life positively, providing an impetus to stay  in contrast to accounts that emphasise structural factors (Stockdale & Ferguson, 2020) and attachments .
The article begins with a literature review on migration and quality of life, in which we locate our contribution, while offering a more complex picture of middle-class mobility. The following section outlines the methodological underpinnings of our research, detailing our case study region and our participants. Empirical discussion occupies the substantive sections of the article, beginning with an examination of middle-class migrants' material quality of life and how migrants (at least retrospectively) construct their choice to move.
Subjective factors, including perceptions of non-metropolitan space, are the focus of our next empirical section. We then illustrate the complex connection between lifestyle and migration, arguing instead for "lifestyle staying," wherein the region becomes subjectively reconfigured following the move. Finally, and conversely, we reflect on in-migrants, whose quality of life had not developed as they wished. We conclude with some reflections on the implications for policy and academic debates on lifestyle and migration. As we reflect, spatial inequalities may open up lifestyle opportunities-but the complexities of real lives intervene.
Research has echoed the new mobilities paradigm (Sheller & Urry, 2006), emphasising mobility as both the privileged capacity to move, and the experiences therein. Attention is also placed on experiences after migration, such as whether expectation meets reality (Salazar, 2014;Vannini & Taggart, 2014), and further moves, including return migration (Farrell et al., 2012).
Much lifestyle migration research has examined aspirations and motivations for migration, largely concerning the subjective pursuit of "the good life." Many studies illustrate desires to "follow dreams" through "'stepping out' rather than … 'dropping out' from the 'rat race'" (Smith & Phillips, 2001, p. 465). This may involve considerable changes in lifestyle, like opening a guesthouse or renovating a farmhouse (Benson, 2013a(Benson, , 2013bHoggart & Buller, 1995a, 1995c, echoing similar studies on rural counter-cultural lifestyles (Griffiths & Maile, 2014;Jones, 1993Jones, , 1997Korpela, 2014;Vannini & Taggart, 2014). However, the focus on aspiration risks privileging lifestyle change as a cause of migration, rather than potentially arising from it. Salazar (2014, p. 133), for example, illustrates how lifestyle may be more contingent, recounting experiences of émigrés who "stumbled upon their (imagined) 'paradise', rather than carefully choosing it." Furthermore, pursuing particular lifestyles may not necessarily motivate migration. As Halfacree (2014) andO'Reilly (2014) note, "watershed" or lifecourse events can trigger migration and thence self-reinterpretation. For example, retirees may relocate to free capital (O'Reilly, 2000), return to areas associated with childhood (Farrell et al., 2012), or be near friends and family. Similarly, moving to study or take up a new job can lead to lifestyle changes. Rather than reducing lifestyle to a cause for migration, we need to examine the complexities of lifestyle changes that arise from migrating.
We explore the complexities of lifestyle and migration through three dimensions of quality of life that migrants individually and comparatively perceive: the material, the relational, and the subjective (McGregor, 2007;White, 2008). The material dimension includes factors such as income, employment, and housing. The relational dimension concerns the personal and social relationships that people share.
The subjective, finally, is a domain of values, perceptions, and experiences. Together, these inter-related dimensions reflect what a person materially has, how they are relationally connected, and how they subjectively evaluate their experience. While these dimensions attend to economic factors, they equally move beyond a "work" or "lifestyle" dichotomy, integrating individuals' own perceptions of what they consider to be the relevant impacts of migration on their own lives (White, 2008;Wright, 2012). Using this framework hence helps us nuance the relationship between migration and spatial inequalities, to which we now turn.

| MIGRATION AND " LESS-POPULAR" REGIONS
The material, relational, and subjective dimensions of quality of life necessarily occur in interaction with the places where lives are lived (e.g., Atkinson et al., 2012). Lifestyle migration literature heavily features rural regions (Benson & Osbaldiston, 2014b), where motivations for migrating include closeness to nature (Smith & Phillips, 2001), self-sufficiency (Vannini & Taggart, 2014), and, less benignly, "white flight" (Neal & Agyeman, 2006). Partly due to the consumption of lifestyle magazines and property programmes (Benson, 2012;O'Reilly, 2014), certain rural areas are perceived as offering more "authentic" lifestyle experiences, like southern France (Benson, 2013a(Benson, , 2013b, or Australia's eastern coast (Osbaldiston, 2014). Some such areas are-or historically have beenrelatively deprived (e.g., Botterill, 2017). Indeed, productivist agriculture, urbanisation, and de-industrialisation have often created a vacant housing supply. Yet these structural forces equally exist where lifestyle migration has not been so vogue.
Despite the rural focus, lifestyle migration also exists in citiesgentrification, studentification, and suburbanisation involve framing destinations around lifestyle aspirations (Chatterton, 1999). There are fewer accounts of moving to a city itself-as opposed to certain parts of it-for lifestyle reasons. Notable exceptions are Boyle's (2006) account of Dublin, perceived as more vibrant (yet laid back) and dynamic (yet friendly), and Griffiths and Maile (2014) on Berlin, perceived as allowing freedom and creativity in contrast to more conservative cities. However, Dublin and Berlin are world cities and popular tourist destinations. Not all cities are so recognised; reputation, deindustrialisation, and de-population render other cities less attractive. Yet these are still home for many people, and people continue to move to them, even if in smaller numbers.
Emerging research on migration to "less-popular" regions has highlighted three alternative motivations to "classical" accounts of lifestyle-led counterurbanisation (Bijker et al., , 2013. First, migrants to less-popular regions are more likely to be motivated by relational factors tied in with lifecourse events, such as moving closer to family and friends or relocating for a partner. Second, previous residence or visits, sometimes overlapping with return migration, extend these relational connections. Third, migrants to less-popular regions are often materially motivated by comparatively lower house prices, including as an affordable alternative to more desirable destinations (Stockdale, 2014). This may also be connected to subjective dimensions, such as perceptions of space, privacy, or comfortable housing styles (Bijker et al., 2013, p. 450).
"Unfashionable" areas may be more affordable but are not (yet) deemed a marker of lifestyle "success"-although cultural capital can be accrued through being a "pioneer" (Smith, 1996). However, little attention has yet been given to the experiences of migrants to less-popular regions after migration-the material, relational, and subjective dimensions of quality of life have the potential to be revealing here.

| CLASS AND MIGRATION
Literature on lifestyle migration has noted economic inequalities: British migration to southern France, for example, is enabled by migrants' relative affluence compared to low local incomes (Benson, 2014, pp. 47, 49), but also by the unaffordability of the British countryside (Buller & Hoggart, 1994). Inequalities between neighbourhoods or localities similarly underpin gentrification through the "rent gap" (Smith, 1996). Counterurbanisation particularly depends on material inequalities between urban and rural spaces. The "new squirearchy" (Heley, 2010), for example, involves upper-middle class people buying the large country mansions formerly owned by landed gentry and performing rural elite status. Yet, while lifestyle mobility requires financial capital to cover moving costs and property, affluence here is "relative rather than absolute" (Benson, 2014, p. 48, her emphasis). Price differentials, not prices per se, facilitate lifestyle migration (Bijker et al., , 2013. The service class commonly features in counterurbanisation studies (Spencer, 1995). "Professional" roles (e.g., teachers, medics, and solicitors) can be undertaken anywhere and offer relatively high incomes compared with the average pay in some localities.
Of course, there is more to class than income and financial capital.
Recent studies have examined cultural and social capital in lifestyle migration through privilege (Benson, 2014). Mobility itself can be a privilege (Adey, 2006;Osbaldiston, 2014, p. 182). Social ties, linguistic skills, qualifications, and professional work similarly represent cultural capital accumulations. Relocation can itself create cultural capital, linking spatial and social mobility (Scott, 2019). For example, "greentrifiers" (Smith & Phillips, 2001) seeking more sustainable lifestyles demonstrate success through relocating to a desirable rural area and by exhibiting "green" attitudes. This further reflects socio-spatial experiences of inequality that involve relational and subjective comparisons to others.
While bundles of capital are important in lifestyle migration, the middle class should not be reified as a homogenous category and middle-class migration is diverse (Scott, 2019). Financial, cultural, and social capital intertwine; one alone may be neither necessary nor sufficient to be middle class. Financial capital, for example, mingles with the lifecourse in different ways and stages, from financial independence in early adulthood to unencumbered retirement (Hoggart & Buller, 1995c;Huber & O'Reilly, 2004). Those who have a wealthy upbringing have different experiences to those who become middle class during their own lifetimes, while generational differences influence housing and employment patterns. Hence, "both economic and sociocultural factors … come into play in the locational decisionmaking of the middle classes and … come into play differently for different individuals" (Scott, 2019(Scott, , p. 1741. How do bundles of capital combine with spatial inequalities to enable middle-class lifestyles in "less-popular" regions? How do the material, relational, and subjective dimensions of quality of life intervene in decision-making and emerge after migration?

| INTRODUCING WEST WALES AND THE VALLEYS
Wales is a constituent country of the United Kingdom, with a population of approximately 3 million (StatsWales, 2019), and a distinctive linguistic and cultural heritage. Predominantly rural, with a historically agricultural and industrial economy, Wales has struggled through rural decline and de-industrialisation and has an economic geography offering "the least opportunity to benefit from 'economic' mass of any UK country or region" (Price, 2016, p. 42). Executive devolution 2 in 1999 promised Welsh governance for "Welsh problems" (House of Commons, 1997). Wales has since received high levels of EU regional development funding-in the 2014-2020 EU programming period, Wales received 20% of the United Kingdom's total structural funds allocation (Woolford & Hunt, 2016) for scarcely 5% of the population.
At NUTS2 level, Wales splits between "more developed" (GDP per capita > 90% EU average) East Wales, encompassing capital city Cardiff and the English border, and "less developed" (GDP per capita < 75% EU average) West Wales and the Valleys (Figure 1), one of just two UK regions to be net beneficiaries from EU funding (Ifan et al., 2016) before Brexit. West Wales and the Valleys is our case study focus. As a peripheral region in European terms, within a relatively poor country (albeit with considerable resources), within a rich state (albeit with significant inequalities), West Wales and the Valleys exemplifies the spatial inequalities that contribute to some regions becoming "left behind" or "less-popular." Of course, the region itself is socio-economically diverse, and we use "less-popular" language as a heuristic to investigate underexamined middle class migration patterns. To reflect internal differences, we selected two comparative areas within the region ( Figure 2): Ceredigion, a rural county on the western coast, and Swansea, a post-industrial city on the southern coast.
Ceredigion has an embedded agricultural economy, primarily livestock, with small-scale fisheries along the coast. The largest town has fewer than 20,000 residents, and there is no city within commuting distance. A regional hospital and educational, cultural, and government institutions offer professional employment, but local retail has shrunk 15% over the past decade (AECOM, 2018). Demographically, Ceredigion is "greying," with the 16-24 cohort buoyed by two small universities.
Swansea is Wales' second largest city. Once dubbed "Copperopolis," the now post-industrial port city is flanked by struggling former mining communities and protected natural landscapes-Welsh poet Dylan Thomas called Swansea an "ugly, lovely town." Despite lying 90 km from Cardiff, Swansea has not shared the capital's recent economic growth. Regeneration hopes rest on a new "city deal" investment programme, while Swansea University attracts some 20,000 students. We engaged with internal migrants and long-term residents in both Ceredigion and Swansea. For simplicity, we classed long-term residence as 10 years or more and internal migration as within 10 years. 3 Consequently, the internal migrant and long-term cohorts included three EU27 citizens. For the purposes of this article, however, we do not closely differentiate between the internal and international migrant groups.
We conducted semi-structured interviews with participants from across the four groups: Germans (n = 13), Romanians (n = 8), internal migrants (n = 19), and "stayers" (n = 19). We recruited through mobilising regional networks, advertising, and snowballing, following a quota system to control for gender, age, occupation, and (for migrants) residence length. Interviews were held face-to-face, in English or Welsh, recorded with the participant's consent, and later professionally transcribed. Transcripts were analysed using NVivo, following an iteratively determined coding scheme. Having outlined the research design and method, we now turn to these respondents' accounts of moving to and staying in West Wales and the Valleys. F I G U R E 2 Ceredigion and Swansea study areas Others spoke similarly of affording to buy a home in the regiontypically larger than the small terrace or flat they could purchase in a metropolitan centre. Such responses echo the migration motivations to less-popular regions in the Netherlands (Bijker et al., , 2013 and exemplify how the comparative "cheapness" produced by peripherality could enable and signify middle-class aspirations. This appears to be particularly true of migration to Wales, often appearing as a destination when more expensive areas are unobtainable (Stockdale, 2014 Here, the rural environment (to which we return below) extends the material, offsetting lower income (Vannini & Taggart, 2014).
Instead of preventing a desirable lifestyle, the lower average income in West Wales and the Valleys becomes balanced beside reduced living costs, and reframed through material affordability.
Hence, moving to West Wales and the Valleys was often posited as a reasoned choice, rather than a short-term step on the "escalator" (Fielding, 1992): [I]t's a selective process of people who want to work here. There are of course job opportunities, but also looking at other colleagues, often people make a positive choice of coming here and that then affects the climate of work as well. (008, German, Ceredigion) This sense of migration as a "selective process" and a "positive choice" also suggests consequent emotional and financial investment into the region.
Of course, while respondents praised the lifestyle achieved through lower living costs, middle-class capital still enables this, as a Swansea professional alluded when asked if she would recommend the city to other in-migrants: [I]f this person is professional then, yes, go for it. You will enjoy lots of opportunities, lots of nice people, better lifestyle, better level of living. If it's someone who is low skilled or looking for [a] low skilled job, … I would probably not suggest Swansea just because it's a bit more difficult to find a good paid job and a role in a company.
(034, internal migrant, Swansea) Here, the economic and cultural capital accompanying a profes- Here, mobility is linked both to family relationships and lifecourses. While such factors can be considered "chain migration" rather than specifically lifestyle-related, being near family can enable quality of life by, for example, mitigating long journeys to visit, or providing care. Like the material affordability discussed above, relational proximity at once enables lifestyle and is an aspect of lifestyle, providing a distinct motivation for moving to less-popular areas .
For some respondents, a relationship with the Welsh language, and a desire to move to where Welsh is more widely spoken, was important, particularly at points in the lifecourse such as children starting school. Remote, agricultural, Welsh-speaking western Wales has been particularly seen to embody authentic Welshness (Gruffudd, 1994(Gruffudd, , 1995Jones, 1993Jones, , 1997  The emphasis here is on adjusting to a different, more enjoyable pace of life compared with London. This experience was shared by a Romanian, who had first lived in London after migrating: We moved from London because we wanted to get rid of the dirt that London had. The noise. The busyness of London. We wanted to hear the birds in the morning. To be able to enjoy life and at the end of the working day to actually do other things, rather than commute … While I miss listening to an audio book on the tube … I'd rather go home and read the book myself. (037, Romanian, Swansea) Again, subjective dimensions that make life more enjoyablecleaner, quieter surroundings; signs of nature; freeing leisure time through a shorter commuteare emphasised (see also Griffiths & Maile, 2014). Through comparison to London, "pretty shitty" Swansea becomes re-constructed as greener, less hurried, and more authentic.
We noted above how Ceredigion's rural landscapes offered a more-than-material compensation for "living very close to the breadline" (011, long-term, Ceredigion). Similar narratives were offered in Swansea, where the coastal landscape presaged leisure: Being able to be outside for the quality of life wise is really impor- opportunities, later migration for relational reasons, such as having children and moving to be closer to her husband's parents, who were becoming older. Lifestyle is here less a migration goal than subjectively perceived while moving for other reasons (Salazar, 2014).
Lifestyle as discovery rather than intention was common among those who initially migrated for education. Study and exchange created positive impressions of West Wales and the Valleys, with Swansea University a particular draw: I was just looking through the clearing list and Swansea came up … I wanted to be able to live on campus and have everything together, because obviously I was eighteen and I was a bit scared. … When I came down for an Open Day I think I just remembered being, like, "I love it." … "I'm going to Swansea." (058, internal migrant, Swansea) This respondent refers to "clearing," a process allowing students who have not met the grades required for first-choice study places to re-apply for unfilled places at other universities-Swansea was not her first choice. But, having moved to study, she chose to stay. Other respondents who attended university in the region similarly stayed after graduation; some left and later returned, sometimes to a differ- This respondent returned to Germany after the exchange, before relocating to Wales to work, highlighting how "anchoring" (Grzymala-Kazlowska, 2018) can lead to staying in an area. This also highlights differing aspirations and expectations. Echoing Benson and Osbaldiston's (2014b) call to consider what happens after migration, we might speak of lifestyle staying, rather than lifestyle migration .
While attachments to the material and relational environment influence newcomers to the countryside in choosing to remain , there has been less research focus on the quality of life dimensions that depart from these factors. As we have discussed, lifestyle is not always an explicit driver for migration.
Particularly to less-popular areas, migration may (initially) be to study, work, join a partner or family, or release capital. Lifestyle considerations may inform these decisions, entwined with other factors, or be identified after migration (Salazar, 2014). Hence "lifestyle staying," as decisions to stay put (for now) embraces the material trade-offs for a subjectively pleasing lifestyle. However, it would be wrong to reduce staying to lifestyle. In our final section we consider material limits to onward mobility and more subjectively negative attitudes towards the region.

| THE OTHER SIDE OF QUALITY OF LIFE: MATERIALLY TRAPPED, SUBJECTIVELY DISAPPOINTED
Although lifestyle staying keeps people in the area, several respondentsparticularly young professionals and those living around their former universityanticipated eventually moving on. However, just as the relative affordability of living in the region enabled middle-class lifestyles, "cheapness" could limit respondents' ability to return or relocate to a more affluent area: [I]f we looked to go back now, we'd be selling our four-bedroom The temporality of migration decisions entwine with the lifecourse (Stockdale, 2014(Stockdale, , 2016Stockdale & Ferguson, 2020).
Deciding to migrate may have been "the right choice" at the time, but subsequent experiences can cast subjective doubt. The respondent's reflections are significant for three reasons. First, children may be disappointed with parents' decisions to migrate to more "remote," "quieter" localities (Vannini & Taggart, 2014 Meanwhile, UK government plans to quantify degree value through graduate earnings have worrying implications for universities in more economically-marginal regions whose graduates stay on to live and work. The material, relational, and subjective dimensions of quality of life combine to shape shifting lifestyle considerations, before and after migration and across the lifecourse. Echoing points made elsewhere (Salazar, 2014;Vannini & Taggart, 2014), we emphasise the need for more nuanced accounts of lifestyle (in) migration (Benson & O'Reilly, 2016) that reflect the variety in "full human lives." These complexities also challenge the dichotomy between escalator accounts of (economic) migration, and the pull of lifestyle. As we have argued, attending to affordability highlights how spatial inequalities can enable lifestyle migration through allowing the performance of middle-class lifestyles where they would not otherwise be possible. Most importantly, we are grateful to the participants in our study for their time and sharing their experiences. The usual disclaimers apply.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ENDNOTES 1 A problematic term, often actually describing racialised migration (El-Enany, 2020), which risks erasing longer histories of mobility, including conquest and colonisation.
2 Notably, legislation on topics including international relations (including with the EU), immigration and asylum, social security, and employment and industrial relations remans reserved to the UK Government.
3 From the research design stage, we had noted the permeability of these categories and sought to capture these nuances through incorporating the questions relevant for both incomers and long-term residents (see , for similar discussion on categorical fluidity). Some Romanian and German respondents had been in their localities for some 20 years or more. Similarly, a few respondents returning to the areas where they were raised after 3 or 4 years studying at a university elsewhere were not considered in-migrants. 4 A city in South-East England.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.