Second home governance in the EU: in and out of Finland and Malta

Abstract

Second home mobility is a complex phenomenon linked to tourism, migration, housing and wider human mobilities. This complexity is reflected in governance structures; second homes are governed on multiple levels from the local to the supranational, and within different policy frameworks that are not necessarily in line with each other. Furthermore, the governance structures of second homes is to a large extent influenced by actors both within the tourism and real property sectors, as well as a wide range of other actors who in one way or another contribute to the commoditization of mobility and ‘lifestyle’. This paper examines the governance structures of two EU member countries – Finland and Malta – as they are related to the internationalization of the second home phenomenon. Taking a comparative approach, the paper outlines a range of similarities and differences between the two cases. A key theme is that the promotion of second home opportunities for foreign nationals is interrelated with broader mobility governance and economic development strategies; however, there are significant tensions between policies as well as between different levels of governance. The findings emphasize the need for a contextual understanding of how frameworks on multiple levels are entwined and articulated in the local place.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.