Learning to stay or learning to go? Lived citizenship learning and young adults’ mobility decisions in a peripheral region

This article examines how young adults’ geographic mobility decisions function as processes of lived citizenship learning in Atlantic Canada, a peripherally economic region with long histories of youth outmigration and demographic change. Drawing on survey data and qualitative interviews with domestic and international students in Nova Scotia, Canada, the analysis explores how caregiving obligations, peer networks, immigration uncertainty, and experiences of racism shape uneven opportunities for belonging beyond formal educational settings. To conceptualise these dynamics, the article develops the notion of lived citizenship learning: the informal, everyday processes through which young adults learn what it means to belong, to be excluded, and to navigate disjunctural moments of decision-making. Findings suggest that mobility decisions are inseparable from broader solidarities and exclusions, generating uneven informal curricula that produce both inclusion and marginalisation. By reframing mobility as a form of informal learning, the article contributes to adult education scholarship on citizenship and lifelong learning and underscores the importance of youth voices in peripheral regions. The article concludes by considering what these findings reveal about the pedagogical dimensions of mobility and belonging, and how they may inform ongoing debates in adult education.