Heterolocal Identities? Counter‐Urbanisation, Second Homes, and Rural Consumption in the Era of Mobilities Keith Halfacree* Department of Geography, Swansea University, Swansea, UK ABSTRACT This paper forms part of a critical engagement with the aspects of the core population geography concept of ‘counterurbanisation’. It argues that contextualising counterurbanisation within the ‘era of mobilities’ has profound consequences for the concept. After introducing the era of mobilities and its implications for social science, migration’ s central and multiple places within this discourse are outlined. The paper then examines one set of ideas, ‘dynamic heterolocalism’, that facilitates the understanding of the existential significance today of the circulatory expressions of migration. Returning to counterurbanisation, the paper draws into its orbit the consumers of rural second homes, understanding of which has also increasingly adopted a quasi‐ heterolocal tone. An inclusive model of what is then recast terminologically as ‘counter‐ urbanisation’ posits it as an extremely heterodox concept, potentially embracing not only second‐home owners but also diverse other consumers of rural space or rural sojourners. The paper concludes by reiterating the sustained centrality of ‘rurality’ to counterurbanisation, second‐home consumption, and other expressions of identity within the era of mobilities. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 26 October 2010 Keywords: migration; counterurbanisation; second homes; heterolocalism; mobilities INTRODUCTION: RETHINKING AND REVITALISING COUNTERURBANISATION ‘Researchers of rural population geography need to think more critically about the broad range of movements and mobilities that are being played out in rural spaces’ (Milbourne, 2007: 385). T his paper is the third intervention in a loosely defined series that seeks to recon- sider critically the established and widely used population geography concept of ‘counter- urbanisation’, aiming to revitalise it (Halfacree, 2001, 2008). This project also fits broadly with the reflections on the state of population geography made by commentators such as Findlay and Graham (1991), Halfacree and Boyle (1993), White and Jackson (1995), and Graham (2000) and with the Remaking Migration Theory confer- ence at which this paper was originally pre- sented. In brief, these interventions call on population geography to be less inward looking in respect of its conceptual development and instead to draw critically on the insights pro- vided by both the broader currents of social theory and the more general societal contexts in which population geographies are always being (re)written (Bailey, 2005). As a social‐scientific taxonomic concept, counter- urbanisation can be regarded as strongly ‘constructed’ (Halfacree, 2001). This construction presents it as predominantly encompassing migration into more rural areas – usually but not necessarily from urban areas – underpinned by a desire to live in such an area and access various aspects of its perceived physical and social environment. Of course, ever since its initial identification and naming by Brian Berry (1976) in the 1970s, counterurbanisation (or counterurbanization) has * Correspondence to: Keith Halfacree, Department of Geography, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, UK. E‐mail: k.h.halfacree@swansea.ac.uk Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE Popul. Space Place 18, 209–224 (2012) Published online 14 March 2011 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/psp.665