Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2006
Abstract
This article examines relocation stories of people who leave behind corporate work culture, relocate from metropolitan areas to small towns and rural places, and attempt to reorient themselves to work and family obligations. Decisions to start over take place within the context of moral questions about what makes a life worth living and what does not through a process in which geography has a bearing. For these migrants, a choice about where to live is also one about how to live. Choices of how to live one's life are made of more than simple economics, they are also moral. The restructuring and corporate downsizing that defines the contemporary workplace has led some workers and their families to challenge assumptions of the American Dream that promise future reward for loyalty to an employer, hard work, and self-sacrifice. These lifestyle migrants relocate in their attempt to find potential selves and idealized families in new places.
Recommended Citation
Hoey, Brian A. Grey Suit or Brown Carhartt: Narrative Transition, Relocation, and Reorientation in the Lives of Corporate Refugees. Journal of Anthropological Research 2006 62:3, 347-371.
Comments
The copy of record is available from the publisher at https://doi.org/10.3998/jar.0521004.0062.303. Copyright 2006 by The University of New Mexico. All rights reserved.