Cornelia Reiher starts a new DFG project grant entitled "Urban-Rural Migration and Rural Revitalization in Japan", in which she and two doctoral students* will investigate whether the immigration of educated and creative people has a positive impact on the revitalization of rural communities. At the interface of social anthropology and political science, the project team will empirically investigate the connection between urban-rural migration and rural revitalization at Kyūshū, Japan's southernmost main island. It will explore the links between urban-rural migration, local revitalization practices, and larger social, political, and economic structures in order to gain insights into how mobility changes social structures at the local level, how to measure power inequalities between centers and their peripheries, and relations between the Japanese central state, municipalities, and prefectures. Thus, this project will generate knowledge on how mobility contributes to the reconfiguration of rural areas in Japan.