Self-initiated residential mobility in pandemic times: A Schumpeterian perspective

Source abstract

This paper reads voluntary residential relocation during the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania through the lens of creative destruction, counter-balancing its more common framing of disruption. Revisiting Schumpeter’s classic thesis, we adapt its economic concepts into a social vocabulary of new “lifeforms,” “mutations” and “wants,” enacted by agentic pandemic movers in pursuit of a better way of life. Drawing on 77 qualitative questionnaires, we examine how urban-to-rural and urban-to-urban movers negotiated push-and-pull factors, and to what extent their relocations reflect creative lifestyle transformations. We introduce the metaphor of “privileged mutations” to describe urban-to-rural moves as deep forms of creative destruction: old housing wants were discarded and “revolutionary” new ones emerged, potentially setting in motion a second creative destruction, that of place. Yet, not all moves were radical: most urban-to-urban relocations reflect quieter transformations driven by a quest for home-comfort that those relatively privileged have always pursued along life-course while remaining attached to the buzz of urban life. By extending the Schumpeterian framework to the wants of voluntary residential mobility, we highlight its largely untapped potential in the social sciences, inviting scholars to consider how crises can catalyze, not just disrupt, the ways in which people imagine and inhabit homes and places.