Increases in tourism and leisure mobility driven by individual desires for a change in lifestyle, freedom of choice and self-fulfilment has become the sub-ject of growing academic attention during the last couple of decades (Åkerlund, 2013, 2015; Hall & Page, 2006; Müller, 2011a; O’Reilly & Benson, 2009). Tourism and leisure represent “discretionary” mobilities meaning “travel undertaken
3 According to the National Land Survey of Finland, Russians have purchased the following types of properties from the region of South Savo from 2003-2012: properties for recreational use (72%), proper-ties for permanent use (24.4%), for agricultural and forestry use (2%), other building sites (0.6%) and for other use (1%) (see also Paper 4).
voluntarily with the disposable income left after basic necessities of life have been covered” (Cohen & Cohen, 2015b: 157-158). Along with increasing interest in research on mobilities, the study of borders that regulate and construct inter-national movements has also become inextricably entwined with research on mobilities (Richardson, 2013; Schiller & Salazar, 2013).
Second home tourism, in both its domestic and international forms, is one of the types of leisure mobilities that has witnessed an increase in publications since the late 1980s (Hall & Müller, 2004; Hall & Page, 2006; Müller, 2011a). Research on international second homes is rather modest in comparison to studies on other types of discretionary mobilities. It originates from studies of ‘snowbirds’
– people who migrate seasonally to sunnier and warmer locations (O’Sullivan
& Stevens, 1982). While being an impulse for studies on second homes on the international scale, seasonal migration currently represents a separate branch of lifestyle mobilities.
Lifestyle mobility researchers place second home tourism under the umbrella concept of lifestyle mobility.4 Thus, they unite and try to explain all types of lifestyle movements and migration through the prism of the pursuit of the ‘good life’ (O’Reilly & Benson, 2009). Such an approach, nevertheless, requires further conceptualisation as in the case of second homes there are on-going debates about whether second homes are a ‘curse’ or a ‘blessing’ (Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2015;
Lundmark & Marjavaara, 2013; Wolfe, 1977). Moreover, there are a number of fac-tors that differentiate second home mobility from other lifestyle choices, such as age, level of affluence and relationships between homes. Second home ownership is also often interchangeably categorised as amenity migration. These two catego-ries are difficult to differentiate as they are both connected to recreation opportu-nities and aesthetic experiences. Some authors categorise second home ownership as a subcategory of amenity migration, while others prefer to talk about second home ownership (McCarthy, 2008; Müller, 2011a; Woods, 2011). Second home ownership emphasises temporary types of visits, while amenity migration can be a temporal or permanent one. I deliberately distinguish trans-border second home ownership from other concepts to avoid terminological confusion.
The terminological choice of trans-border second home ownership over the more frequently used ‘cross-border’ term is explained by the nature of the phenomenon studied. According to the Oxford dictionary, trans-border refers to
“crossing or extending across a border between two countries”, while cross-border involves movement or activity across a border between two countries (Oxford dictionaries, 2015). Naturally both terms relate to certain developments between neighbouring states. Trans-border, however, relates to the extension of certain phenomena across a state border. This feature is a central one in Russian second home ownership in Finland as it concerns the expansion of Russian leisure places and practices over the border.
4 Lifestyle mobilities are defined as “those mobility practices undertaken by individuals based on their freedom of choice, of a temporal or more permanent duration, with or without any significant ‘home base(s)’, that are primary driven by aspirations to increase quality of life, and that are primarily related to the individuals’ lifestyle values” (Åkerlund, 2013: 24).
Examples of trans-border second home ownership come from different parts of the globe. Geographically they are dominated by cases from the West (Europe and the North America). They include, but are not limited to British, Germans, Belgians, Luxembourgers, Spanish, Swiss and Italians in France (Buller & Hoggart, 1994; Hoggart & Buller, 1995; Calzada & Le Blanc, 2006; Goujard, 2002; Chaplin, 1999a, 1999b; Paris 2011; Fareniaux & Verlhac, 2008), dutch in Belgium (Priemus, 2005), Germans in Sweden (Müller 1999, 2002a, 2002b), Hungary (Csordás, 1999), and the Netherlands (Priemus 2005); Norwegians in Sweden (Müller, 2011b) and Finland (Paper 2), Austrians and Italians in Slovenia (Lampič & Mrak, 2012), Austrians and Swiss in Italy (Volo, 2011), Americans in Mexico and Canada (Timothy, 2004; Woods, 2011), Hong Kong Chinese second homes on the Chinese mainland (Hui and Yu, 2009) and Singaporeans in Malaysia (Paris, 2011). These studies on second home purchases from a neighbouring state have focused on the motives of foreign buyers, mutual attitudes towards locals and each other, and community involvement (Buller & Hoggart, 1994; Chaplin, 1999a, 1999b; Müller, 2002a, 2002b, 2011b; Volo, 2011), as well as the distribution of foreign second homes (Calzada & Le Blanc, 2006; Hoggart & Buller, 1995; Müller, 1999). Foreign property purchases have also been studied in the wider perspectives of fluctuations on the property market and housing affordability (Calzada & Le Blanc, 2006; Hui and Yu, 2009), spatial planning and land use (Priemus 2005), as well as some general estimates on economic contributions to local communities (Goujard, 2002; Volo, 2011). Some studies point out the negative outcomes of foreign second home de-velopment, such as rising property prices, increasing social differentiation, social distance and language barriers, conflict over the development of an area, and even displacement (Buller & Hoggart, 1994; Müller, 1999, 2002a; Volo, 2011).
Similarly to domestic second home ownership, trans-border second home tourism brings changes to rural areas. Second homes transform the countryside from productive to leisure space (Haldrup, 2009; Müller, 1999, 2002a). Halfacree (2012: 218) states that counterurbanisation, as a movement from a city to smaller rural settlements, can “no longer maintain its position as encompassing exclusive-ly ‘permanent rural home location,’” and second-home consumers contribute to the process of counterurbanisation as much as permanent migrants. Second home mobility is a leisure driven activity in contrast to other types of in-migration to rural areas (Müller, 1999; 2002b; Paper 3). Trans-border second home tourism represents yet another form of the rural-urban relationship on the international scale. The inflow of foreign second home owners into rural areas does not (neces-sarily) coincide with the process of counterurbanisation at the domestic scale, as international owners are driven by different motivations than domestic migrators to rural areas.
Trans-border or international migration to rural areas has been conceptual-ised as a “global countryside” (Woods, 2011) and “(international) counterurbani-zation” (Eimermann, Lundmark & Müller 2012; O’Reilly and Benson 2009). The latter term, however, deals with permanent in-migration to rural areas, which is not entirely applicable to second home ownership because they are not permanent
residents, but permanent visitors to the area (see also Müller, 1999; 2002b; Schier et al., 2015). The internationalisation of the countryside is presented, for example, in studies on foreign in-migration to rural areas (Aasland & Søholt, 2012; Aure, Førde & Magnussen, 2012; Broadway, 2012; Lundmark, Ednarsson & Karsson, 2014; Simon & Nørgaard, 2012; Stenbacka, 2012; Vatanen & Halonen, 2013) and seasonal labour migrants (Rantanen & Valkonen, 2013). While second homes are acknowledged as one of the contemporary developments of rural areas, they still lack recognition within rural studies (Müller, 2011a; Hoogendoorn & Visser, 2015).
Few authors discuss the reconstruction of rural localities through growing inter-national property purchases in rural areas (McCarthy, 2008; Müller, 2011a; Woods, 2011). Hoogendoorn and Visser (2015: 182) state that understanding second home geographies provides “valuable additional perspective in explaining the changing spatialities of many rural areas.” The present work brings new aspects to studies on the internationalisation of rural space by examining the socio-spatial changes that Russian second home owners bring to the Finnish countryside (community participation, mutual attitudes and the challenges of integration of foreign owners at the community level are presented in Paper 3; the spatial distribution of Russian properties and factors affecting it are presented in Paper 4).
2.3 developmenT oF RuSSian SeCond home owneR-