With its rugged mountain scenery and dramatic lochs and glens the Highlands and Islands attract millions of tourists every year.

Visitors are lured with the promise of a peaceful retreat from the pressures of fast-paced urban living.

However, while Scotland's northern reaches reap the benefits of tourism - there was an estimated £1.1billion spend in the Highlands alone in 2022 - an academic has warned that marketing of the region may inadvertently be playing a role in population decline.

(Image: Newsquest)

Dr Rosie Alexander, an expert in rural youth employment, says the promotion of a slower pace of life fuels the narrative that "exciting things only happen in cities" and said perceptions of rural areas as "backwaters" persist.

This is despite an explosion of innovation in the Highlands and Island with energy, life sciences, food and drink and the creative industries cited as major growth industries with the potential to bring significant economic and social benefits to the region.

The latest Census figures show that almost half of the council wards in the Scottish Highlands have experienced a decline in their populations over the past ten years.

Highland Council area saw a 1.4% increase in its population between 2011 and 2022.

However, change varied substantially between electoral ward with ten of the twenty-one wards experiencing a drop in their populations.

The problem was highlighted in The Herald series The New Highland Clearances.

(Image: Newsquest)

"The idea of rural areas being talked about as backwaters is a real problem", said Dr Alexander,  a lecturer on the career development and guidance postgraduate programmes at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS).

“Some people would talk about that as a metro-centricity that is at the heart of a lot of the ways we think about things in the modern world," she said.

“There’s a dominant narrative of cities being fast-paced and the centre of industry.

'We have to tell a different story' 'We have to tell a different story' (Image: Dr Rosie Alexander)

"Rural is very difficult to define but it’s defined in opposition to urban," she added.

“If urban is fast paced, centre of industry, the future, rural becomes the opposite and sometimes we can capitalise on this narrative.

"A lot of ideas about our tourist industry are based on people from cities coming to a slower pace of life, relaxing and engaging with nature. So in some ways a lot of the ways we promote ourselves in tourist literature promote these ideas.

"There are cutting edge industries here and there is scope to do interesting things."

Dr Alexander was born in Shetland but grew up in Cornwall before relocating to Orkney, where she settled after meeting her partner.

(Image: Martini)

She completed a PHD that looked at the career and migration routes of young people from Orkney and Shetland particularly people who went to higher education.

"A headline figure is that six months after graduation about 40% of students from Orkney and Shetland (where we know their location) are living in back on the islands," said Dr Alexander.

"The figures would say Orkney has a growing population and has had reasonably high levels of young people returning for many years. The growth is predominantly in mainland Orkney so the outer isles don’t necessarily share in that.

"On mainland Orkney we have strong services I would say. Degree programmes like archaeology and the masters programmes in renewable energy bring young people in and the BBC ran a trainee scheme and that was wonderful.

"Orkney has lots of different things going on and [this] allows us to tell a different story and it allows young people to tell a different story."

Orkney has seen its population grow in contrast with many areas of the Highlands and Islands Orkney has seen its population grow in contrast with many areas of the Highlands and Islands (Image: Getty)

She said the idea that young people leaving rural areas are to blame for depopulation is too simplistic.

"When I started my PHD I was thinking about the problem of out-migration but increasingly I’m interested in how not all young people feel able to move, and whether it might also be important to think about how we can facilitate more young people to have that experience," she said.

"I think we need to get away from the idea that youth outward migration is necessarily the problem because we know there are strong trends of return.

“We frame it as the leavers being the problem and we focus on strategies to retain people, whereas a lot of young people want to go away for a period of time and actually some young people want to go away but don’t feel able because they aren’t higher education students.

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"We should provide opportunities for young people to stay in their area if that is what they want to do but we should recognise that some young people want to go away and some have to go away for example to do a medicine degree."

She said there was growing interest in the idea of brain circulation or brain rotation rather than brain drain as a counter to the idea that locations unable to muster a "knowledge critical mass" will find themselves exporting people, brains, investment and other forms of capital to attractive metropolitan zones.

Researchers say developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) mean the notions of distance, space, place and time need to be radically reviewed and reconfigured.

“It’s recognising that people who leave can leave can still contribute to their community," says Dr Alexander mentioning that I could serve as an example of this having left Lochaber to go to university and now writing about issues affecting the Highlands and Islands.

She said: "We have much higher in-migration in the islands so as long as you are bringing them back at working age you are counterbalancing these issues.

“We could shift the narrative, we need to very careful about saying out-migration is the problem.

She said that good transport infrastructure can encourage young people to stay or return to rural areas.

"If it’s easier to get off your island you can feel more settled in your community," she said.

(Image: Newsquest)

“If you are able to get home more frequently you maintain your connection with your community.

"It is not necessarily about trying to retain all our young people, but thinking about how we can support them to return to their communities or to maintain connections and be a resource

"Equally how can we support young people to come in," she added.

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She said the idea that Covid pandemic had opened up remote working was generally not applicable to university leavers.

"Although we have this narrative that remote working has opened job opportunities up, for young people that’s often not the case," she said.

"There was a report done that looked at the number of graduate jobs that were advertised as entirely remote and it’s very small.

"For young people, entry straight into remote working rarely seems possible unless they have built up experience in more conventional in-person environments."

She said there were simple ways that young people could be encouraged to return mentioning that the Faroe Islands hosts a careers fair during the Christmas holidays when most young people return."

She said: "For policy makers I would suggest there is a value in shifting that narrative away from outward migration to thinking about how can we support rotation, draw people in, and in some cases help young people leave."

Dr Alexander was among the speakers at The ‘Islands – future’ conference, organised by the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), and Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE).

The two-day conference will continue today at The Pickaquoy Centre in Kirkwall.