Variationist research has much to gain from deepening engagement with theories about place, defined as space imbued with social meaning. One challenge that variationists face is how to adapt the complex and multifaceted aspects of place orientation into a single measure that can be included in models of sociolinguistic variation. In this paper, I advocate for an ethnographic approach to place, providing an example from Greater New Orleans, where post-Katrina displacement has highlighted individual connections to place. Using an ethnographically informed multidimensional place orientation metric (MPOM), I examine two local linguistic features among speakers from the suburban town of Chalmette, Louisiana according to place orientation. Via statistical modeling and case study of individual speakers, I demonstrate the value of MPOMs in quantitative analysis of sociolinguistic variation, arguing for further theorization of place orientation in our research and providing a model for variationist sociolinguists interested in engaging more with place theory.

With China's rapid urbanisation, many residents, especially older adults, are suffering from psychological problems induced by rural-to-urban relocation. This study examines the association between older adults’ rural place attachment and their depression after relocation, as well as the protective roles of neighbourhood social cohesion and sense of community in the relocation place. Chinese older adults (N = 224) who relocated from rural villages to urban communities completed a survey for this study. The results showed that older adults with stronger rural place attachment experienced more depressive symptoms and a lesser sense of community in the relocation place. In addition, the association between rural place attachment and depression was weakened by neighbourhood social cohesion. That is, compared with older adults perceiving low neighbourhood social cohesion, the positive association between rural place attachment and depression was weaker for older adults perceiving high neighbourhood social cohesion. Furthermore, neighbourhood social cohesion's protective role depended on sense of community. In particular, neighbourhood social cohesion buffered the association between rural place attachment and depression for older adults with a strong sense of community but not for older adults with a weak sense of community. These results have implications for developing resources within neighbourhoods and communities to promote relocation adjustment for older adults.

What constitutes a ‘good place to grow old’? This study aimed to characterise salient features of built and social environments that are essential to support low-income ageing residents. Seated and mobile interviews were conducted with community-dwelling older participants (aged 55–92, mean = 71 years) in three distinct socio-economic and geographic samples of the Minneapolis (Minnesota, United States of America) metropolitan area. The interviews prompted participants to evaluate their homes and neighbourhoods, and probed for particular socio-spatial characteristics that impact residential wellbeing. Qualitative thematic analyses focused on 38 individuals living in subsidised housing and homeless shelters. Four interrelated themes encompassed essential residential qualities: (a) safety and comfort, (b) service access, (c) social connection, and (d) stimulation. These broad ideals, when achieved, enabled participants to cultivate residential wellbeing and fulfilling place attachment. Analyses of the empirical data complicate theoretical assumptions by recognising unequal access to, irregular opportunities for and potential dangers of place attachment. Rich descriptions of participant homelessness, health hazards, crime, lack of supportive infrastructure and social isolation illustrate how place attachment is not inherently positive or necessarily attainable; rather, it is problematic and can involve risk. This article extends geographical gerontology's address of socio-spatial inequalities by focusing on disadvantaged ageing individuals.

In Western welfare states, notions of age-friendly communities and ageing-in-place are increasingly important in new health policies. In the Netherlands, care reforms are modifying the former welfare state to be more participatory; local governments are seeking collaborative solutions. Municipalities and housing, care and welfare organisations in the southern part of the country developed the concept of ‘lifecycle robust neighbourhoods’, envisioned as places where older people can age-in-place. Although many scholars have used the concept ageing-in-place in their studies of neighbourhoods, we aim to unravel this concept further by exploring how this particular ageing policy plays out in practice. This paper explores what the development of ‘lifecycle robust neighbourhoods’ means in relation to notions of ageing-in-place and age-friendly communities. We used ethnography (interviews, observations and focus groups) to reveal how, on the one hand, the policy makers, housing, care and welfare directors and representatives of older people, as developers of ‘lifecycle robust neighbourhoods’ and, on the other hand, older people, give meaning to places to age-in-place. It becomes clear that ageing-in-place has a different meaning in policy discourses than in practice. While developers mainly considered place as something construable, older people emotionally attached to place through lived experiences.

The conflict between economic development and environmental protection has been made salient by increasingly severe air pollution in China, a visible consequence of the costs of rapid economic progress. How does air pollution affect people's psychological experiences? How are newly rich Chinese beginning to think about this social dilemma and are they willing to take any action to deal with the problem? Are there individual differences that contribute to the effect of air pollution on mental experience and concern for environmental protection? The present work explores answers to these questions through two studies among convenience samples of participants residing in Beijing, which is the capital of China and plagued by toxic haze. Study 1 recruited 50 undergraduates and applied a 10-day experience sampling method. Results revealed that the real-time objective air pollution index was negatively associated with immediate subjective wellbeing (SWB) but positively associated with eudaimonic wellbeing (EWB). Study 2 investigated a sample of 288 working adults living in Beijing for their perceptions of air quality, wellbeing, pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) intentions, future orientation, and place attachment. Results revealed that perceived air pollution could not predict general SWB but improved the sense of purpose and meaning in life (i.e., EWB). Furthermore, this association was heightened in individuals who were future-orientated. In addition, perceived air pollution increased PEB intentions, partially through the promotion of EWB, and this effect was stronger in those who were more emotionally attached to Beijing.

The significance of place attachment for later life has been convincingly demonstrated. Scholars have offered useful models that help account for the depth of feeling bound up in place attachment in later life, how this attachment is achieved, and its relevance for belonging and identity. To date, however, this focus has largely been on the individual level of experience. This article draws on sociological and anthropological perspectives to consider how place attachment is forged and experienced in dynamic interaction with other entities and other processes: how place attachment is also a collective, relational and embodied process, caught up and experienced via social memory practices and sensorial, bodily knowledge. This resonates with and contributes to the ‘relational turn’ which has attracted burgeoning interest in the larger home disciplines of sociology, human geography and anthropology, and reciprocally helps them extend and build their interaction with critical ageing studies. In making this argument, I draw on two periods of anthropological, ethnographic participant-observation that I conducted in a semi-rural village in the former coalfields in South Yorkshire, England.

This research aims to gain a better understanding of the attachment of teachers to their workplace by identifying the areas to which they become attached and which give meaning to their work. Based on the belief that place attachment is an affective bond between a person and his or her environment (Bonnes & Secchiaroli, 1995), its aim is to identify the attachment of secondary school teachers to their workplace, which is viewed as a whole but also as a combination of specific places, and to show that the places that predict overall workplace attachment are also those that give meaning to work. A Workplace Attachment Scale was completed by 158 teachers in a secondary school in the Paris region (France). This questionnaire contained items evaluating attachment to each specific place of work and others adapted from the meaning-of-work scale evaluating the meaning given to each of these places. The results show that all the teachers were more closely attached to places that provide opportunities for informal communication than to those directly related to teaching. The main workplace attachment predictors also concern places constituting the essence of the profession and/or places where teachers can manage their organizational stress.

Research on international retirement migration has so far focused on quantitative measures of migration, migrants' wellbeing, reasons for migration and consequences of migration in the receiving areas, while paying scant attention to the transnational experiences of the migrants. Research on transnational forms of living, on the other hand, has largely ignored the life projects of retirees. This paper tries to bridge that gap, by investigating experiences of transnational mobility, multiple place attachment and cultural differences among Swedish retirees pursuing seasonal migration between Sweden and Spain. Qualitative interviews were made with 46 respondents who spent at least three months per year in each country. The analysis of the interviews produced three ideal-typical transnational lifestyles: translocal normality, multilocal adaptation and routinised sojourning. These lifestyles reflect different strategies for managing cultural difference, but also different forms and aspects of place attachment and different ideals of mobility.