Searching for continuity and connections: Narratives of belonging from a post-industrial city

•Case study of place attachment aspirations and decisions of young adults in New England city.•Examines debates about mobility vs. “rootedness” in different economic contexts and historical eras.•Explores changing definitions of belonging over the course of life trajectories.

This case study explores how a group of college graduates in their late 20s who all grew up in a small, economically depressed New England city conceptualized and organized their transitions into adulthood. The central question is how these young adults navigated between expectations of individualistic trajectories of social mobility, self-realization, and geographic mobility on the one hand and commitment to family, cultural and social continuity, and geographic rootedness on the other. The key finding is that the majority of the study population wanted to find a way to make their personal as well as professional lives in or at least closely connected to their community of origin, and created narratives that reconciled the divergent expectations of staying and leaving.