How do rural landscapes support place attachment in refugees? Results from a photo elicitation

During the initial stages of migration, refugees spend much time in urban environments. With longer stays, rural landscapes become increasingly important. However, little is known how rural landscape supports place attachment and bridges the gap between individuals’ former home and the host location. To reduce this research gap, we asked refugees to travel through rural Switzerland, creating a photo reportage that was later analysed using photo-elicitation. To check the representativeness of individual assessments the photographs were shown to refugees’ peers and control groups in a quantitative survey. We found that refugees’ landscape experience and the contribution of this to place attachment can be highly individualistic, or it can be driven by culture-specific meanings. Accessibility to natural elements, e.g. water, forests is crucial to fostering place attachment. However, large patches of wild environments are perceived as unsafe, reducing individuals’ ability to form an attachment.