A lot of upperwardly mobile, ambitious people don't realize this, or they generally understand it only in terms of chastising their high school peers who stayed home. If you build a society based on the assumption everyone will simply move and re-skill to the regions with economic opportunity, you get a lot of regions of bitter people who stayed behind somewhere and watched their local economy get destroyed by trade deals and technological advances, and that's how you get an anti-globalization populist political movement.
* The "stay behind" terminology is both evocative and biased. I didn't "stay behind". I moved away several times, thousands of miles, and lived in other places that ambitious people live, and then moved back to within 10 miles of where I grew up because the quality of life is better here. I can afford more, I have cultural amenities like world-class music and art, I'm near family and old friends as well as new friends, and people aren't all totally consumed by their work. The "upwardly mobile ambitious" set can frankly get stultifyingly boring and disconnected. I like having friends in construction, non-profits, pet services, etc.
* Like many Americans who really do "stay behind", I contribute to elder care in my family. A lot of people stay put because they need to care for someone, and America does not make it easy to get vulnerable or ill people services. This is part of what contributes to what you call the "bitterness" -- lack of support for child care, elder care, care for the mentally ill or those struggling with addiction, and in many cases it's a vicious circle: gotta stay in Podunkville to take care of grandma and your cousin 'cause you can't afford to get grandma other help and your cousin doesn't qualify for anything but SSI so he can't afford to move either, but staying in Podunkville you tank your own educational and job prospects, therefore keeping you in Podunkville forever. Sometimes it seems you can only truly be upwardly mobile if you can avoid caregiving responsibilities.
It's strange the level of distrust in the west over institutions that the majority of the world find completely uncontroversial. It takes a village to raise a child, and in a world without villages families are the biggest support system most people have. I have a feeling this is another instance of the minority being louder than the majority.
That honestly sounds like a lot of spurious causal assumptions. The Rust Belt and coal mining regions didn't get economically depressed because people left. People left because of the economic collapse. You seem to be saying if all those college kids just moved back to Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, the people there wouldn't be mad about their economies being destroyed? Because they still would have been destroyed.
I'm one of the "upwardly mobile" folks who moved out, and I'm a bit shocked at all the comments here treating the headline like it's a bad thing. Having a local and consistent community is an essential part of a "good" city. I know that many of the places we moved away from were... lacking, but simply abandoning everything isn't going to help at all either.
Worse: Because humans have evolved to live in close-knit communities that cooperate and human species have a 'bonding period' in which young adults bond with others in their group in order to create a social group that will collaborate to survive in the future, people leaving not only their early neighborhoods, but also their families creates subconscious anxiety in those who left. They go and live in locations where they don't know other people, changing places multiple times, often way past the early adulthood bonding period. This further isolates them and amps up the subconscious anxiety. The result are societies with psychological problems, or in worse cases like the US, entire societies running on prozac and other medication. Even further exacerbated with the system trying to isolate people more to make them into individual consumers to get maximum profit and work output out of them, pushing them also to compete with each other, further alienating people from each other.
The system uses concepts like "Social mobility" etc, but these are just terms pushed forward to avoid calling it what it is - the system forcing people to do this in order to maximize its profit by not investing where there is no immediate and maximal return, and instead milking economic centers and urban centers that are already highly profitable. For the same reason the US rural areas lack broadband - there isnt immediate, maximal profit for private companies in bringing broadband to those regions, and they also prevent municipalities from starting their own broadband service for their people with the excuse of 'free market'.
While I partially agree with your assessment, it's worth noting that much of the dynamic settlement of the US has been based on commodity booms, which really can't be considered perpetual parts of the economy. People had to leave their homes to go clear the prairie, log virtually all of the US forest, mine the West Virginia coal and then the Wyoming coal after that, etc. Once those resources are used up, there is little left for people to do, regardless of technological advances that require fewer workers for the same output, much less trade deals (how much wood and grain do we import?). The economies oriented around renewable resources (Oregon timber for example) simply can't sustain as many people because the environment can't continually produce the output that it did during the initial exploitation.
This of course affects the downstream, more industrial elements concentrated in cities as well, which process the ore and lumber and make engines and furniture.
You also have the issue of people who move to high cost locales, raise kids and then their kids who especially can't afford it move away (or wait to inherit the house from you).
It's funny how globalised the anti-globalisation populist political movements may be. Yesterday's news included "Reichsbürger" getting busted in Deutschland for conspiring to coup, and it was mentioned the suspects were also pretty QAnon-aligned. However, Reichsbürger are not indigenous, but are derived from US "Sovereign Citizens", who result from an amalgam of nuttery derived from XIX and XX conspiracies wishing to stand athwart history yelling "stop!": from those who thought the 14A is bogus to those who thought the 16A is bogus to those who didn't care for the Civil Rights Act, etc. Anyway, all these conspiracies apparently became more mainstream in the 1970s US because of the many newly embittered people due to the farming policies of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz .
(incidentally, our farming policy here is diametrically opposed to both "get big or get out" and "plant fencerow to fencerow", and we still have major political centre parties, as well as left and right wing parties. But that correlation may have no relation to causation...)
Well, wtf is wrong with them that they stay when the economy gets destroyed? Move and make money elsewhere? Do they know there is skills and worker shortage all over the country?
Why do they think their little corner in the world is special? I think it is mix of fear and complacency because when it gets bad, it doesn't get bad enough.
As an adult you are responsible for taking care of yourself and those you love above any other obligation. Not just moving towand and states but people move to different countries and continents primarily out of their obligation and desire to fulfi that duty and lead a better life.
Only fix could be Soviet style registration system right? Where you are tied to the place where you were born unless Party sends you somewhere else?
I mean, we are over that phase even on international level. People move countries all the time. Complaining about this being the case within one country is just out of place.
And to mitigate enti-globalization populists, just better propaganda is needed. Let's face it: democracy only works when people are brainwashed (or there is a poll tax or other system that lets only well-to-do vote).
I mean, there is definitely a connection between "area is insanely inhospitable to educated youth, who then leave, and as a result those who remain have diminished opportunities," but this formulation feels like blaming those who leave instead of those who created the environment that ran the escapees off.
I grew up in a shitty place. I knew from early childhood I would leave, and I knew this even though I was living a very privileged existence in that place. My parents were upper-middle class; we had new cars and a country club membership and all that shit. And I knew this despite being low-key discouraged from wanting to leave because Family.
It was (and remains) a racist, sexist, homophobic state, and nothing is likely to change that.
There’s a deeper level here. Conforming economic, security, n judicial blocks to geography more strongly maps onto the governance structure for the US. In other words, this is a system that inherently creates and maintains divisions.
I was a military child, and so I moved around my whole life. My best friend has lived their whole life in the city I live in now.
Sometimes I get a little jealous because I don't have any heart-connection to any place. Most of the friends I regularly talk to are people I've met within the last 5 years, and I still don't have any still-standing friendships from the time before my dad retired.
But also, I cannot imagine that life, nor do I know if I really want to. Moving around so much gave me such a wide array of interests and cultural knowledge about places in and outside of the US. I think the benefits of that well-rounded background outweigh whatever pangs of sadness I get occasionally about not really feeling like I have a homeland.
I also grew up as a military kid and continued to jump from place to place in adulthood.
A few years ago I started thinking of myself as a "third culture" person. Characteristics like having an expanded worldview and ability to quickly read new cultures are some of the upsides. Unfortunately, I also find myself very misunderstood and I have a lot of trouble with relationships of all kinds. It's heartbreaking to leave people behind, and it's exhausting to spend the years fitting in with new groups of people. Most cultures are protective and cautious of outsiders, and friendships rarely stick. The Curse of the Traveler means that my favorite people and things are never where I am right now, but I'm none the poorer for having known them.
As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate the benefits more and more. I have favorite places to shop, eat, entertain myself all over the world. I'm confident that I see and use much more of cities than most people. Where you live, work, socialize, entertain yourself, seek education, and so on can all be totally different places. My worldview cherry-picks from anything anywhere. I browse the internet of many countries, and read news from all over.
I'm always thinking "wherever you go, there you are" with people around me. My mom visited me while I was living in Tokyo, and she just wanted to go to Disneyland and see fireworks, and mostly wanted to eat American food she found familiar. She found the unfamiliar things intriguing, but didn't know how to ask good questions and put the unfamiliar things to use in her life. People are largely blind to details of new people and places and it takes some real effort to penetrate layers of language and social access.
I wish individuals would reflect on their cultures more. Americans should be outraged over their broken healthcare system and work cultures (even though the pay can be good). Some places might benefit from forgetting a lot of their religious and political history in exchange for some happiness and freedom. Many cultures have surprisingly high tolerances for pollution, poverty, and civil rights restrictions.
I split my childhood between three places, and my adult life between four, many in different countries. The wife and I are planning to move again next year.
It's sometimes hard when you see others with their consistent lives, and roots laid down, but at the same time they'll often say how they envy you.
It's similar to the choice of having or not having kids. The trade off in life experiences is neither better or worse, just different.
had that too, the place my dad retired to became my "hometown"
having said that, as i got older and started having kids, i did move back to that hometown. i honestly did enjoy moving every 1-3 years as a kid, but my wife had a similar experience and did not enjoy it. now my kids have a home town and can see both sets of their grandparents every week or so. its also pretty cool taking my kids to the same restaurants and places that i went to when i was younger. based on how much trouble my 5 year old had with this move its not something i want to subject them to any more times(shes happy about it now and we wanted to get it over with before kindergarden etc starts). people like us who had a positive outcome from moving constantly are the outliers i think, its better to give the kids a sense of continuity.
I moved from where I grew up. The biggest advantage is access to better career paths and potential with my career. If I get laid off, there are more diverse work options, unlike where I grew up.
The flip side is that being able to have family help out easily when our kid is sick. Also I have friends who stayed back home (the ratio matching this article title pretty closely) and they have barbecues together, can hang out on a random night around a fire pit, watch movies in their backyard, and other fun things. About planting roots and settling down.
I'm really torn about these two ways of going about it. There's something very comforting about setting down roots and having a solid network of friends and family. The flip side is that you're probably leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. The history of success in America seems to lean towards being nomadic.
I moved to the other side of the world from where I grew up in my early 30s, and I grew up at the other end of the country from where I was born and lived my early years.
I have a great group of mates I met in my early twenties and still speak with daily on WhatsApp.
As you say they meet up regularly, know each others families well, and they have not left their home area and have been friends since primary school.
They’re all jealous that I have lived an “adventurous and exciting” life and I’m jealous that they have amazingly solid roots.
I feel like with remote work, it's possible to have your cake and eat it, too. Depends on your career, but at least in software, it no longer feels like you have to move to a tech hub to make it, for example.
That is mind boggling to me. I don't know anyone that lives in the same state they grew up in. I live about 3,000 miles away from where I grew up. I have 7 siblings and none of us live in our home state (and none of us live in the same state as another one - we live in NY, CA, MI, TX, OR, OH, UT, CO - we grew up in FL).
Though, I remember that one of my brothers once lived in Pennsylvania and he met 2 women who had never left their county and were amazed that he lived in so many other places and wondered out loud if he had been scared to live in places other than where he lived right then in PA. The mind set that other places are scary to live in is so foreign to me.
Moving for a job has a huge social cost for most people. You leave behind everyone you know.
That might be worth it for someone who wants to forge a career or explore. But for the average person who pushes paper at a generic office? You can do that anywhere. So why not do it where everyone you know lives?
I'm similar -- 3k miles, but still within the US. My siblings/cousins/family that I grew up less than 10 miles from are now spread between NY, CA, PA, TX, RI, NH, NC, ME, MI.
I was travelling through PA once as well and was at a local dive bar chatting up some folks - and they'd never even left their county either - not even for casual travel.
I'm a child of expats who became an expat. Lived in over a dozen countries.
Sometimes I feel like an enlightened citizen moving about. Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually living in an airport. To quote fight-club, single serving friends and nothing ever stays.
Which is to say, i did me, but i don't see anything wrong at all with staying put.
I don't think many commenters in this thread realize the minuscule size of a human and how the things which most impact our happiness are located in our close proximity and surroundings. It's almost like a physical law , the weight that something has on our happiness diminishes exponentially with the distance from ourselves. The importance of the setup is constantly underappreciated.
Each and everyone of us has 150 people in their circle of acquaintances . And 90% of our happiness depends on the quality of our relationship with the top 10 people in such list.
Similarly with the external enviornment. 90% of our happiness depends on the conditions of the external enviornment in a radius of 300 yds.
It's very easy to be blinded by the lights of NYC or Hollywood, but those megalopolis are incredibly big and again humans are so small.
A good setup in Albuquerque or Salt Lake City beats a mediocre setup in NYC or LA every day of the week.
Sure the Empire State Building is nice to look at,but it gets old fast, especially while you see it in passing while on your way to be screamed at by your boss at your second job that you had to take because you can't make the rent.
Given how small humans are, the ideal setup can be everywhere except for maybe Somalia or Congo. But even then if you are the undisputed king of Somalia, that's much better than being an Investment Banker in NYC. Despite the fact that a block in NYC generates more GDP than the entire country of Somalia,the claim of the king on such small GDP is almost total, whereas an investment banker has zero claim on the GDP being produced in a block in NYC, he has zero claim on anything period.
I think it was Julius Caesar who said: "I would rather be first in a little village than second in Rome".
All IMHO of course: we'd be better off if it was 9 of 10. The family is the most important institution we have, it is the backbone driving the most valuable members of our society. The stronger and more cohesive it is the better.
There's a countervailing factor which is that more earnings and economic output arise from jobs in urban areas, which historically can only happen if some members relocate.
Hopefully the trend towards remote work helps alleviate this conflict.
[Citation required] for almost every sentence in your post - most importantly "it is the backbone driving the most valuable members of our society". What a ridiculous assertion.
I live about an hour away from where I grew up, but my family moved nearby so they’re just a few miles away. Modern economic trends that rip families apart have many downsides. It’s much harder to raise kids without family nearby. Likewise, people who don’t have family close are much more likely to fall through the cracks if they don’t have family around.
I get kind of why you could think this, but honestly I think it's far more important to leave your circle and experience something new as a young adult. It becomes increasingly difficult to move as you age, the longer you stay tied to your familiar environment that you were raised in, the harder it is to take the plunge and explore something different.
I am the only person in my direct family that lives outside of the county (very rural) or neighboring county that I grew up in. I really absolutely cannot fathom living my (probably) only life worrying about social cohesion or economic value of society. I live like 2500 miles from my family, and it used to be a lot further (I lived in east Asia for a while). Despite the distance, technology has allowed for me to keep in close contact with my family.
Taking the chance to explore new cultures and really immerse myself in them, and also live through the crazy Bay Area tech bubble before deciding it wasn't for me, really has provided a lot of excellent life experiences and perspectives. I wouldn't trade these opportunities for anything and strongly encourage younger people to try and leave the nest, at least for a bit, while it's still easy to do so and before they have to decide on things like staying near their parents once they become elderly.
I think we would be better if it was 3 of 10; Americans are too clustered into tribes. Urban people would benefit from understanding rural lifestyles and vice versa.
We have become an increasingly urbanized country. Lots and lots of people in massive metro areas—think of the hypersprawl around Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, LA…
Living 10 miles away from where you grew up around Chicago can put you in a total different socioeconomic level of suburb.
Yep, I live in Chicago and I'm about 10 miles from my parents' house, as the crow flies. I have at various times in my life regretted not moving around and living in different cities, but I didn't feel the urgency to move a thousand miles away from home since I grew up next to one of the largest cities in the US. I imagine that if I had grown up in a small town, like my wife, moving far away from home would have been the only option.
I moved away from my Midwest hometown in my early twenties, lived in Seattle for nearly a decade, then got fed up with the path the city was on and moved back. I feel like moving away is valuable, and teaches you to appreciate the things you took for granted living somewhere during your childhood. Now that I’m back, I get to help fundamentally transform the city into a new tech hub, reviving from the state of decay produced by an industry that mostly abandoned it. This has been extremely fulfilling in a way that living in an already established big city cannot — the skyline is yours to help manifest.
So my family has long described ourselves as nomadic. We just seem to get the wanderlust and want to pick up and move after some years in some place. I myself have lived in 5 different countries so far.
My great-grandfather (who died long before I was born) was a fairly extreme example of this. Shortly before WWI he decided to jump on a boat in Germany and immigrate to Australia (coming originally from the Baltic states). It seems like a fortuitous time to leave Europe.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. His brother did basically the same thing (although in his case he was partly motivated by escaping getting conscripted into the Army). His story is fascinating too. A book was even written about it. He actually found an abandoned boat, fixed it up, made his own instruments and sailed to America in the 1930s across the Pacific Ocean because he always wanted to visit America.
I think about that and wonder what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born. I don't really understand that mindset but in some ways I envy it.
One of the most culturally identifiable songs to Australians is a song from the 1970s called Khe Sanh by a band named Cold Chisel. It's quite literally about a Vietnam vet with PTSD. it has a verse that goes like this:
And I've traveled 'round the world from year to year
And each one found me aimless, one more year the worse for wear
And I've been back to Southeast Asia, and the answer sure ain't there
But I'm drifting north, to check things out again, yes, I am
> what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born
IMO the main factors would be your economic situation and your relationship with your family. People with little money and tight family ties probably wouldn't be keen to move very far, whereas someone with a bad or indifferent relationship to family and the means to head elsewhere would probably do so.
Ten miles is huge in an increasingly urbanized world. Within a ten miles radius from where I lived in 2017 there was some of the most expensive housing in the world and ghettos with weekly gang shootings. However the city I lived in is objectively regarded as one of the best places to live in the world: Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ten miles might make a difference in housing or neighborhood quality, but makes little difference in access to job opportunities, higher education, social activities, etc. Especially if one owns a car, as most Americans do.
I purposefully graduated early from highschool (1 semester less and it only worked because of where my birthday was) to move 853 miles from where I grew up to where I currently live. My partner did a similar move (before we met).
When I talk to most of my friends it is a similar story.
I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons).
Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south (as are many of my friends), I also wanted to move to an urban city like so many in my generation.
I was born in a flyover state. There's ~no coding jobs here, and the ones that are here, pay pittances compared to anywhere not adjacent to a (feed)corn field.
I moved 250 miles away (to the other side of my state... dang is the US huge) to take a tech job that payed closer to what coastal companies will pay.
The next step was probably to move to Seattle or SF and take a "real" tech job there. But two things happened at the same time:
1. remote work really grew up. now I can work from anywhere and (mostly. geo-adjusting etc. luckily that seems to be on the decline.) get paid well.
2. We had our first child. Now suddenly close access to our support network (parents etc) is both logistically important ("hey mom can you watch the kids for a weekend so we can sleep") and emotionally important (grandparents getting to see the kids every weekend or two instead of significantly less often).
So now instead of looking to move an additional 2k miles away, I moved back to be ~2 miles from one set of parents and ~20 miles from the other set.
I'm not really thrilled about the local jobs or local politics etc. But family is incredibly important to have physically close, and so here I am. Thank heavens for remote coding jobs.
> I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons).
We want to. But between housing prices and student loans, we can't afford to.
I've live many hours away from my parents, and I no consider it insane to do so. When I lived with my parents I could make a few phone calls and have a dozen people on my roof - now if there is a problem I have to pay a crew even though I know how to do the work (since there are things that cannot be done alone) When my wife and I want a date - too bad: there is no babysitter nearby that will work on Friday night that we trust, so we don't have that option. There are many other similar things about being close to family that I miss.
I enjoy exploring the world. However eventually I want to come back home.
It's probably helped by just the difference in scale between urban and rural communities. Most people wouldn't share your feeling to move to an urban city, because most people are already in one.
I did the same thing though and moved away from my family. I moved back during the pandemic and while I know everyone has a different family dynamic, I can't believe what I was missing. The physical, financial, and emotional support system of having family 15 min down the road is hard to quantify.
I left the south and never looked back, too. (Not gay, but I am non-conformist, which didn't play well in an evangelical town with more cows than people.)
In talking to people who got out vs. some who didn't, there seem to be three main, interrelated things that hold people local: money, class and fear.
- Obviously money makes moving to the Big City much easier, and more of it is always better. But below some point, it becomes incredibly hard to make work - if your parents are in the bottom half of the income gradient, first, last + deposit on a San Francisco apartment and a couple $k on moving and move-in is a huge expense.
- Class matters a lot, in that it colors how distant, urban places are perceived. Some members of my family have an almost cartoonishly apocalyptic fantasy vision about what cities are like, and the fact that nobody's sucked the marrow from my bones in 30 years of urban living will never change that.
It also effects the likelihood of knowing people who did move away. If nobody you personally know has done it, it really does become much harder to do for multiple reasons, both psychological and concrete.
- Finally, fear of "not making it", of something Bad happening, and of making a costly choice that you regret, of having to "slink back home" for whatever reason really weigh on people. Of course if you don't know anyone who's ever lived in a major metro, and if the cost of trying is big enough, that fear can massively amplify.
I moved to SF almost 30 years ago. It was a leap of faith - I landed with enough money for food for about two weeks and slept on a friend's floor for a few months while I worked shit jobs to get established. That path is harder now - I wouldn't now be able to get an apartment here now washing dishes and serving drinks. So if anything, I suspect the above is more salient now than it was a generation ago.
The differing cultures in the US. I come from an Italian America family in the the NYC suburbs. All of my siblings and extended family live within like at most a 30 minute drive and I have 4 close family members within like a 2 block radius. There was never any idea of having to get out of here to make it because we were already in commuting distance to Manhattan.
Whereas I can't imagine leaving everyone I know, my entire social support structure, to run off to some strange new are where I know nobody and need start all over again.
> Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south
I am currently very conflicted about this. I grew up in India but was fortunate to live in the US and now in Europe for undergrad/grad school. I am (slightly) older than the demographic in the article. I am planning on settling down with my girlfriend soon, after I finish some career related stuff. If I want to start a family, I really want to move back to my hometown in India, with the strong social support system. While moving around has been exciting and an eye-opening experience, I am tired of constantly making new friends and leaving them after a few years, and miss my family some times, and eventually the kids would benefit from being around their grandparents. On the other hand, moving back would be career limiting.
Does anybody who is further along on the journey have any advice? How did you make this decision?
It's really too bad that people have to move around for economic and other opportunity. It kind of speaks to the damaged modern psyche with illnesses like schizophrenia virtually absent in the ancient world that anyone would regard not dispersing from their home area as a bad thing. Like, we all just aspire to the condition of the multi-national economic elite, paying allegiance to no country or place, making an abode of bouncing around a few world cities.
Like, maybe we just shouldn't have crappy places that people need to flee, by putting roots in the community and making it a place to be.
A friend of mine lives in a town in the Midwest and often wonders why there are so many hardworking people in California struggling to make ends meet when the foundry in his town is looking for anyone who can show up to work on-time and sober, is paying overtime (b/c there aren't enough workers), and is willing to train people. All in a town where you can buy a house for under $200k.
People don't move. We like to talk about FOMO, but fear of making major changes is much bigger.
When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way.
Most Americans live in and around big cities. Ive lived my entire life in commuting distance to Manhattan along with 10s of millions others. There was never any notion from myself or my peers of having to move to "make it". The end goal was always to find a job and get on a bus or train every morning.
Coming from a smaller town (<30,000) I was pretty much taught this. I couldn't go a month without someone wishing I would move away and leave the town behind. I live in a bigger city now and I'm glad but it took effort not to feel ashamed of living in my home town for so long.
Most people in America are born and live in metro areas and I wonder if the same kind of mentality is taught to those people?
> When I was growing up I always thought this was kind of a sign of, like, giving up, so I'm surprised the numbers are so high. I guess not everyone was thinking the same way.
It’s possible that they just gave up earlier than you did. Many people where I grew up never put any effort into anything because they had resolved themselves to being helpless.
Good to know my siblings are representative: we're 3 of 5 living within 10 miles of where we grew up. I'm 2000 miles away (other coast), and the youngest sibling is about 500 miles away. This (likely) works even given the 26 years old milestone. I wasn't quite so far away yet, but still a few hundred miles away. The youngest sibling isn't 26 yet, but I don't expect them to move back in time to change the count.
I'd like to make bold, sweeping claims about which is better, but I don't have any. I've moved the most, and because of that make the highest salary of any of my siblings. (The other sibling who moved is likely second, but possibly not due to being younger in their career.) Because of my location it's going to be hard to be a good uncle to my first niece, due in January. There are definite trade-offs involved in moving.
I moved back in with my parents during the pandemic to provide support for some health issues, since I had the ability work remote easily during that time. It was great to be back local for that time, though there were obviously some confounding factors due to the personal and societal health issues in 2020.
I have nothing to back this up, but it feels like this has probably been the rule for most of human history, and it was just that unusual period in the 20th century where things may have been different for a while. We tend to measure everything against that period, which may someday be recognized as a specific kind of fallacy. Again, I have no data in this case, and am not going to look any up.
If you say that periods where people move a lot are "mobile" periods, and periods where people stay put a lot are not "mobile" periods, than this is one of the least mobile periods in our modern history, despite what you may believe about remote work and transplants and gentrification. [1]
Of course, this is because housing is more expensive than it has ever been. It costs too much damn money to move, even if economic opportunity is better than it used to be.
A lot of ink being spilled in this thread about non-mobile people being bitter about the lack of opportunity in their hometown. That may be part of it, but I think the far larger and more important part is that it is too fucking expensive for them to move! In large part because of all of the people who did move away and got their fancy degrees and then financialized the whole economy so badly.
I'm not familiar with the research in this area, but what exactly separates an adult from a young adult (for the purposes of research on the labour force, not biology), and why study them specifically? 60% of young adults don't move, how does that differ from the rest of the workforce? Retirees?
I would say that I owe my career to not staying in my home town or even my home state. The state has plenty of charms but opportunity is generally speaking not among them. Those of my graduating high school class who I've followed since also moved out of state. Looking at the data from this tool it seems we were outliers, though.
With remote work being more common now I could probably move back, but that would carry some amount of risk as long as I'm working for another company rather than running a business of my own. Where I live now has a decent balance between locally available jobs and cost of living which is a bit scary to give up.
While I am not within the 60%, I live about 80km from where I grew up (basically the same metro area), and I feel fortunate enough to not have to move very far for my career. I have only ever worked remote, and truly love where I live.
I have traveled to most US states and about a dozen countries, and wouldn't trade my home for any of them. The structural advantages (family, friends, regional knowledge, activities) are tremendous. If you are planning to have children, having parents/relatives around to share in the childcare is an enormous financial advantage.
I wish the data explorer also showed per-capita moving rates. It's hard to tell if a place is sending proportionately more migrants to another place or if the source just starts with a high population.
I think I count as one of the six. Since I live in an expensive and affluent area, I think I am one of the few people who lives close to where they grew up. In my opinion, moving away gives you more opportunity and life experiences. It is a very US American and “immigrant” thing to do. Personally, I haven’t taken that route because I have no idea what my living situation would be like and I think it would probably be worse for me in terms of psychology and social life.
Wow, I really did not expect it to be that high. I could understand that number if it was "live in the state where they grew up" (esp. if they went to college in-state which most do), but within 10 miles? That's a pretty small radius. In many cities you could move to the other side of town and be outside the 10 mile range.
I'd be interested to see this data weighted against population density. As-is, I suspect it's massively tilted by how in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, or NYC you can go 5 miles and practically be in a different country.
I live not far from where I grew up--I moved away and lived in NYC for a while, but eventually came back. I live only about a mile from where my great-grandparents lived when they first came to the US from Romania.
If I had become a doctor or a hotelier I definitely would've stayed in my home town. I miss it greatly, but there's zero tech presence and remote jobs seem to be drying up.
I moved away from home but I moved back as well. I now live within 10 miles of where I grew up, but I spent 7 years in the sf bay area, 2000 miles away.
i had the best of both worlds. moved from my hometown to seattle for while, made a lot of money in tech, bought and sold a house in seattle at the right time, moved back to my hometown. now i have a paid off house 5 mins from the house i lived in during high school. i was able to keep the seattle salary so now i am living like a king in my old hometown, honestly its amazing
I detect a bit of defensiveness in the comments. I also detect a certain egalitarian undertow almost tending toward "everyone should move around" or "no one should move around". There is a third option: some people benefit from moving around. And we may also speak of the social consequences of migration, both for the origin and target societies.
I would say this:
- Moving around isn't for everyone.
- There is a tinge of oikophobia that's common in much of the West today that makes the thought of caring for and willing the genuine good of your own people frightening to many, inconvenient, and for some reason synonymous with chauvinism or some weird exclusivity that construes benevolence as "either/or" instead of in subsidiarian terms. Soon, the mere general prioritization of the good of one's own family members (a duty) will come off as "not inclusive" and "inequitable".
- Statistically, there is a certain healthy amount of average migration of certain kinds (the specifics will vary). Some spice enhances the flavor of a soup, but too little leaves it bland, and too much overpowers it.
- Travel and living elsewhere can help deprovincialize the mind, but do not guarantee it.
- Social networks and social order are important. Note the principle of subsidiary. A human being typically grows up in a family that is itself nwsted within an extended family and a community and so on, like layers of an onion. People typically become alienated when removed from them.
- As people get older, it becomes more common to settle down and commit oneself to the good of some particular community (original or adopted) instead of spending one's life drifting anonymously.
- One of the big incentives behind traveling or living in different places is to learn about other cultures. But if everyone were moving around, no local culture would ever have the chance to develop because locality requires continuity and a stable, sustaining local population, i.e., a true society. Places with very high rates of inward and outward migration tend to be less distinctive and tend to resemble other hubs of the same kind with which they likely swap inhabitants. If that's what attracts you, then your travelling or moving around isn't motived by a desire to learn about other cultures so much as a desire for a change of scenery while maintaining a more or less consistent, homogenous cultural "experience" globally. It's like being an American who goes on vacation and never talks to the locals, only other Americans in the hotel, or one who wants the "locals" to be like Americans.
- There is, of course, a difference between frequent moving and living more than 10 miles away from where you grew up.
I attach moral judgement to neither "remaining in the area" nor "living far away" nor even "moving frequently". These are quite personal matters per se.
I grew up about a hour from DC and an hour from Richmond. Had I stayed, I don’t think I would have made it very far as a developer or had the chance to live an interesting life.
In my experience, moving is related to aspiration. If I stayed where I grew up I’d honestly likely be an opioid statistic and definitely not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I still keep in touch with a few people from youth who didn’t ruin their lives, and I’m the standout success story despite being the socially awkward and poor one.
Moving thousands of miles has changed my life in ways I’d never dream of, staying still was not on the cards: it would have been lethal. I had to upend to get the education I needed, find my person and the tech job I love.
fullshark|3 years ago
kaitai|3 years ago
* The "stay behind" terminology is both evocative and biased. I didn't "stay behind". I moved away several times, thousands of miles, and lived in other places that ambitious people live, and then moved back to within 10 miles of where I grew up because the quality of life is better here. I can afford more, I have cultural amenities like world-class music and art, I'm near family and old friends as well as new friends, and people aren't all totally consumed by their work. The "upwardly mobile ambitious" set can frankly get stultifyingly boring and disconnected. I like having friends in construction, non-profits, pet services, etc.
* Like many Americans who really do "stay behind", I contribute to elder care in my family. A lot of people stay put because they need to care for someone, and America does not make it easy to get vulnerable or ill people services. This is part of what contributes to what you call the "bitterness" -- lack of support for child care, elder care, care for the mentally ill or those struggling with addiction, and in many cases it's a vicious circle: gotta stay in Podunkville to take care of grandma and your cousin 'cause you can't afford to get grandma other help and your cousin doesn't qualify for anything but SSI so he can't afford to move either, but staying in Podunkville you tank your own educational and job prospects, therefore keeping you in Podunkville forever. Sometimes it seems you can only truly be upwardly mobile if you can avoid caregiving responsibilities.
tsol|3 years ago
parker_mountain|3 years ago
nonameiguess|3 years ago
Fauntleroy|3 years ago
unity1001|3 years ago
The system uses concepts like "Social mobility" etc, but these are just terms pushed forward to avoid calling it what it is - the system forcing people to do this in order to maximize its profit by not investing where there is no immediate and maximal return, and instead milking economic centers and urban centers that are already highly profitable. For the same reason the US rural areas lack broadband - there isnt immediate, maximal profit for private companies in bringing broadband to those regions, and they also prevent municipalities from starting their own broadband service for their people with the excuse of 'free market'.
cossatot|3 years ago
This of course affects the downstream, more industrial elements concentrated in cities as well, which process the ore and lumber and make engines and furniture.
theGnuMe|3 years ago
082349872349872|3 years ago
(incidentally, our farming policy here is diametrically opposed to both "get big or get out" and "plant fencerow to fencerow", and we still have major political centre parties, as well as left and right wing parties. But that correlation may have no relation to causation...)
badrabbit|3 years ago
Why do they think their little corner in the world is special? I think it is mix of fear and complacency because when it gets bad, it doesn't get bad enough.
As an adult you are responsible for taking care of yourself and those you love above any other obligation. Not just moving towand and states but people move to different countries and continents primarily out of their obligation and desire to fulfi that duty and lead a better life.
anovikov|3 years ago
ubermonkey|3 years ago
I grew up in a shitty place. I knew from early childhood I would leave, and I knew this even though I was living a very privileged existence in that place. My parents were upper-middle class; we had new cars and a country club membership and all that shit. And I knew this despite being low-key discouraged from wanting to leave because Family.
It was (and remains) a racist, sexist, homophobic state, and nothing is likely to change that.
the_optimist|3 years ago
throwaway5959|3 years ago
[deleted]
saraton1n|3 years ago
Sometimes I get a little jealous because I don't have any heart-connection to any place. Most of the friends I regularly talk to are people I've met within the last 5 years, and I still don't have any still-standing friendships from the time before my dad retired.
But also, I cannot imagine that life, nor do I know if I really want to. Moving around so much gave me such a wide array of interests and cultural knowledge about places in and outside of the US. I think the benefits of that well-rounded background outweigh whatever pangs of sadness I get occasionally about not really feeling like I have a homeland.
lizardhair|3 years ago
A few years ago I started thinking of myself as a "third culture" person. Characteristics like having an expanded worldview and ability to quickly read new cultures are some of the upsides. Unfortunately, I also find myself very misunderstood and I have a lot of trouble with relationships of all kinds. It's heartbreaking to leave people behind, and it's exhausting to spend the years fitting in with new groups of people. Most cultures are protective and cautious of outsiders, and friendships rarely stick. The Curse of the Traveler means that my favorite people and things are never where I am right now, but I'm none the poorer for having known them.
As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate the benefits more and more. I have favorite places to shop, eat, entertain myself all over the world. I'm confident that I see and use much more of cities than most people. Where you live, work, socialize, entertain yourself, seek education, and so on can all be totally different places. My worldview cherry-picks from anything anywhere. I browse the internet of many countries, and read news from all over.
I'm always thinking "wherever you go, there you are" with people around me. My mom visited me while I was living in Tokyo, and she just wanted to go to Disneyland and see fireworks, and mostly wanted to eat American food she found familiar. She found the unfamiliar things intriguing, but didn't know how to ask good questions and put the unfamiliar things to use in her life. People are largely blind to details of new people and places and it takes some real effort to penetrate layers of language and social access.
I wish individuals would reflect on their cultures more. Americans should be outraged over their broken healthcare system and work cultures (even though the pay can be good). Some places might benefit from forgetting a lot of their religious and political history in exchange for some happiness and freedom. Many cultures have surprisingly high tolerances for pollution, poverty, and civil rights restrictions.
another_story|3 years ago
It's sometimes hard when you see others with their consistent lives, and roots laid down, but at the same time they'll often say how they envy you.
It's similar to the choice of having or not having kids. The trade off in life experiences is neither better or worse, just different.
fdsfdxfvcx|3 years ago
having said that, as i got older and started having kids, i did move back to that hometown. i honestly did enjoy moving every 1-3 years as a kid, but my wife had a similar experience and did not enjoy it. now my kids have a home town and can see both sets of their grandparents every week or so. its also pretty cool taking my kids to the same restaurants and places that i went to when i was younger. based on how much trouble my 5 year old had with this move its not something i want to subject them to any more times(shes happy about it now and we wanted to get it over with before kindergarden etc starts). people like us who had a positive outcome from moving constantly are the outliers i think, its better to give the kids a sense of continuity.
aaronax|3 years ago
Yhippa|3 years ago
The flip side is that being able to have family help out easily when our kid is sick. Also I have friends who stayed back home (the ratio matching this article title pretty closely) and they have barbecues together, can hang out on a random night around a fire pit, watch movies in their backyard, and other fun things. About planting roots and settling down.
I'm really torn about these two ways of going about it. There's something very comforting about setting down roots and having a solid network of friends and family. The flip side is that you're probably leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. The history of success in America seems to lean towards being nomadic.
siquick|3 years ago
I moved to the other side of the world from where I grew up in my early 30s, and I grew up at the other end of the country from where I was born and lived my early years.
I have a great group of mates I met in my early twenties and still speak with daily on WhatsApp.
As you say they meet up regularly, know each others families well, and they have not left their home area and have been friends since primary school.
They’re all jealous that I have lived an “adventurous and exciting” life and I’m jealous that they have amazingly solid roots.
chrisco255|3 years ago
irrational|3 years ago
Though, I remember that one of my brothers once lived in Pennsylvania and he met 2 women who had never left their county and were amazed that he lived in so many other places and wondered out loud if he had been scared to live in places other than where he lived right then in PA. The mind set that other places are scary to live in is so foreign to me.
HPsquared|3 years ago
rhino369|3 years ago
That might be worth it for someone who wants to forge a career or explore. But for the average person who pushes paper at a generic office? You can do that anywhere. So why not do it where everyone you know lives?
There is a trade off to never putting down roots.
daveslash|3 years ago
I was travelling through PA once as well and was at a local dive bar chatting up some folks - and they'd never even left their county either - not even for casual travel.
maurits|3 years ago
Sometimes I feel like an enlightened citizen moving about. Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually living in an airport. To quote fight-club, single serving friends and nothing ever stays.
Which is to say, i did me, but i don't see anything wrong at all with staying put.
JumpinJack_Cash|3 years ago
Each and everyone of us has 150 people in their circle of acquaintances . And 90% of our happiness depends on the quality of our relationship with the top 10 people in such list.
Similarly with the external enviornment. 90% of our happiness depends on the conditions of the external enviornment in a radius of 300 yds.
It's very easy to be blinded by the lights of NYC or Hollywood, but those megalopolis are incredibly big and again humans are so small.
A good setup in Albuquerque or Salt Lake City beats a mediocre setup in NYC or LA every day of the week.
Sure the Empire State Building is nice to look at,but it gets old fast, especially while you see it in passing while on your way to be screamed at by your boss at your second job that you had to take because you can't make the rent.
Given how small humans are, the ideal setup can be everywhere except for maybe Somalia or Congo. But even then if you are the undisputed king of Somalia, that's much better than being an Investment Banker in NYC. Despite the fact that a block in NYC generates more GDP than the entire country of Somalia,the claim of the king on such small GDP is almost total, whereas an investment banker has zero claim on the GDP being produced in a block in NYC, he has zero claim on anything period.
I think it was Julius Caesar who said: "I would rather be first in a little village than second in Rome".
user3939382|3 years ago
There's a countervailing factor which is that more earnings and economic output arise from jobs in urban areas, which historically can only happen if some members relocate.
Hopefully the trend towards remote work helps alleviate this conflict.
babelfish|3 years ago
rayiner|3 years ago
hnthrowaway7518|3 years ago
I am the only person in my direct family that lives outside of the county (very rural) or neighboring county that I grew up in. I really absolutely cannot fathom living my (probably) only life worrying about social cohesion or economic value of society. I live like 2500 miles from my family, and it used to be a lot further (I lived in east Asia for a while). Despite the distance, technology has allowed for me to keep in close contact with my family.
Taking the chance to explore new cultures and really immerse myself in them, and also live through the crazy Bay Area tech bubble before deciding it wasn't for me, really has provided a lot of excellent life experiences and perspectives. I wouldn't trade these opportunities for anything and strongly encourage younger people to try and leave the nest, at least for a bit, while it's still easy to do so and before they have to decide on things like staying near their parents once they become elderly.
p0pcult|3 years ago
bombcar|3 years ago
That's not surprising, especially with how many college graduates move home now.
I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial amount of the remainder stay near where they colleged.
perardi|3 years ago
Living 10 miles away from where you grew up around Chicago can put you in a total different socioeconomic level of suburb.
hnuser847|3 years ago
samgranieri|3 years ago
cassonmars|3 years ago
cletus|3 years ago
My great-grandfather (who died long before I was born) was a fairly extreme example of this. Shortly before WWI he decided to jump on a boat in Germany and immigrate to Australia (coming originally from the Baltic states). It seems like a fortuitous time to leave Europe.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. His brother did basically the same thing (although in his case he was partly motivated by escaping getting conscripted into the Army). His story is fascinating too. A book was even written about it. He actually found an abandoned boat, fixed it up, made his own instruments and sailed to America in the 1930s across the Pacific Ocean because he always wanted to visit America.
I think about that and wonder what is it about some people who seem to be constantly restless while others seem content to staying pretty much exactly where they were born. I don't really understand that mindset but in some ways I envy it.
One of the most culturally identifiable songs to Australians is a song from the 1970s called Khe Sanh by a band named Cold Chisel. It's quite literally about a Vietnam vet with PTSD. it has a verse that goes like this:
I think about that too.canniballectern|3 years ago
IMO the main factors would be your economic situation and your relationship with your family. People with little money and tight family ties probably wouldn't be keen to move very far, whereas someone with a bad or indifferent relationship to family and the means to head elsewhere would probably do so.
keewee7|3 years ago
chrisco255|3 years ago
nerdjon|3 years ago
I purposefully graduated early from highschool (1 semester less and it only worked because of where my birthday was) to move 853 miles from where I grew up to where I currently live. My partner did a similar move (before we met).
When I talk to most of my friends it is a similar story.
I just can't imagine not wanting to explore a new area and have distance from your parents. I love my parents, we talk a couple times a week, but I don't need them physically close to me. (last couple years being the exception for obvious reasons).
Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south (as are many of my friends), I also wanted to move to an urban city like so many in my generation.
This just seems insane for me to think about.
atomicnumber3|3 years ago
I was born in a flyover state. There's ~no coding jobs here, and the ones that are here, pay pittances compared to anywhere not adjacent to a (feed)corn field.
I moved 250 miles away (to the other side of my state... dang is the US huge) to take a tech job that payed closer to what coastal companies will pay.
The next step was probably to move to Seattle or SF and take a "real" tech job there. But two things happened at the same time:
1. remote work really grew up. now I can work from anywhere and (mostly. geo-adjusting etc. luckily that seems to be on the decline.) get paid well.
2. We had our first child. Now suddenly close access to our support network (parents etc) is both logistically important ("hey mom can you watch the kids for a weekend so we can sleep") and emotionally important (grandparents getting to see the kids every weekend or two instead of significantly less often).
So now instead of looking to move an additional 2k miles away, I moved back to be ~2 miles from one set of parents and ~20 miles from the other set.
I'm not really thrilled about the local jobs or local politics etc. But family is incredibly important to have physically close, and so here I am. Thank heavens for remote coding jobs.
why5s|3 years ago
We want to. But between housing prices and student loans, we can't afford to.
bluGill|3 years ago
I enjoy exploring the world. However eventually I want to come back home.
duped|3 years ago
I did the same thing though and moved away from my family. I moved back during the pandemic and while I know everyone has a different family dynamic, I can't believe what I was missing. The physical, financial, and emotional support system of having family 15 min down the road is hard to quantify.
_jal|3 years ago
In talking to people who got out vs. some who didn't, there seem to be three main, interrelated things that hold people local: money, class and fear.
- Obviously money makes moving to the Big City much easier, and more of it is always better. But below some point, it becomes incredibly hard to make work - if your parents are in the bottom half of the income gradient, first, last + deposit on a San Francisco apartment and a couple $k on moving and move-in is a huge expense.
- Class matters a lot, in that it colors how distant, urban places are perceived. Some members of my family have an almost cartoonishly apocalyptic fantasy vision about what cities are like, and the fact that nobody's sucked the marrow from my bones in 30 years of urban living will never change that.
It also effects the likelihood of knowing people who did move away. If nobody you personally know has done it, it really does become much harder to do for multiple reasons, both psychological and concrete.
- Finally, fear of "not making it", of something Bad happening, and of making a costly choice that you regret, of having to "slink back home" for whatever reason really weigh on people. Of course if you don't know anyone who's ever lived in a major metro, and if the cost of trying is big enough, that fear can massively amplify.
I moved to SF almost 30 years ago. It was a leap of faith - I landed with enough money for food for about two weeks and slept on a friend's floor for a few months while I worked shit jobs to get established. That path is harder now - I wouldn't now be able to get an apartment here now washing dishes and serving drinks. So if anything, I suspect the above is more salient now than it was a generation ago.
paulcole|3 years ago
What seems unimaginable to one of us is not just normal but desirable to the other.
The same is true for deciding where to live.
kcb|3 years ago
AnIdiotOnTheNet|3 years ago
> Maybe this is because I am gay and I needed out of the south
...well ok, that makes a lot of sense.
occamschainsaw|3 years ago
Does anybody who is further along on the journey have any advice? How did you make this decision?
rr888|3 years ago
rr888|3 years ago
theonemind|3 years ago
Like, maybe we just shouldn't have crappy places that people need to flee, by putting roots in the community and making it a place to be.
dibt|3 years ago
The article doesn't support your bias. It's mostly those from affluent families that move farther from home, not people looking for work.
"By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families."
dibt|3 years ago
"Childhood locations are measured at age 16 and locations in young adulthood are measured at age 26."
"By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families."
It's not all young adults, just a specific demographic we would expect to move away farther from home.
Many people in this thread are using this to confirm their bias that it says something about the young adults. The title is doing more harm than good.
aidenn0|3 years ago
People don't move. We like to talk about FOMO, but fear of making major changes is much bigger.
emodendroket|3 years ago
kcb|3 years ago
ckosidows|3 years ago
Most people in America are born and live in metro areas and I wonder if the same kind of mentality is taught to those people?
bradlys|3 years ago
It’s possible that they just gave up earlier than you did. Many people where I grew up never put any effort into anything because they had resolved themselves to being helpless.
timerol|3 years ago
I'd like to make bold, sweeping claims about which is better, but I don't have any. I've moved the most, and because of that make the highest salary of any of my siblings. (The other sibling who moved is likely second, but possibly not due to being younger in their career.) Because of my location it's going to be hard to be a good uncle to my first niece, due in January. There are definite trade-offs involved in moving.
I moved back in with my parents during the pandemic to provide support for some health issues, since I had the ability work remote easily during that time. It was great to be back local for that time, though there were obviously some confounding factors due to the personal and societal health issues in 2020.
karaterobot|3 years ago
mlsu|3 years ago
Of course, this is because housing is more expensive than it has ever been. It costs too much damn money to move, even if economic opportunity is better than it used to be.
A lot of ink being spilled in this thread about non-mobile people being bitter about the lack of opportunity in their hometown. That may be part of it, but I think the far larger and more important part is that it is too fucking expensive for them to move! In large part because of all of the people who did move away and got their fancy degrees and then financialized the whole economy so badly.
[1] https://archive.vn/8ecXR
e63f67dd-065b|3 years ago
egberts1|3 years ago
All of us has been to at least 7 different states/countries, me almost 12! Even "towed" our elders with us, and they love it too.
Cannot imagine being in a one-town ... forever.
Always seeking different cultures.
We must be explorers!
kitsunesoba|3 years ago
With remote work being more common now I could probably move back, but that would carry some amount of risk as long as I'm working for another company rather than running a business of my own. Where I live now has a decent balance between locally available jobs and cost of living which is a bit scary to give up.
Hasz|3 years ago
I have traveled to most US states and about a dozen countries, and wouldn't trade my home for any of them. The structural advantages (family, friends, regional knowledge, activities) are tremendous. If you are planning to have children, having parents/relatives around to share in the childcare is an enormous financial advantage.
jchanimal|3 years ago
layman51|3 years ago
WheelsAtLarge|3 years ago
kube-system|3 years ago
For 80% of the world, travel is something that 'other people' do.
insane_dreamer|3 years ago
crooked-v|3 years ago
Finnucane|3 years ago
atlgator|3 years ago
dibt|3 years ago
According to the study, you would likely have not stayed:
"By linking young adults to their parents, we can see that this migration is primarily driven by individuals who grew up in affluent families."
A low-income family is less likely to send their kid to school to be a doctor or hotelier.
aftbit|3 years ago
fdsfdxfvcx|3 years ago
lo_zamoyski|3 years ago
I would say this:
- Moving around isn't for everyone.
- There is a tinge of oikophobia that's common in much of the West today that makes the thought of caring for and willing the genuine good of your own people frightening to many, inconvenient, and for some reason synonymous with chauvinism or some weird exclusivity that construes benevolence as "either/or" instead of in subsidiarian terms. Soon, the mere general prioritization of the good of one's own family members (a duty) will come off as "not inclusive" and "inequitable".
- Statistically, there is a certain healthy amount of average migration of certain kinds (the specifics will vary). Some spice enhances the flavor of a soup, but too little leaves it bland, and too much overpowers it.
- Travel and living elsewhere can help deprovincialize the mind, but do not guarantee it.
- Social networks and social order are important. Note the principle of subsidiary. A human being typically grows up in a family that is itself nwsted within an extended family and a community and so on, like layers of an onion. People typically become alienated when removed from them.
- As people get older, it becomes more common to settle down and commit oneself to the good of some particular community (original or adopted) instead of spending one's life drifting anonymously.
- One of the big incentives behind traveling or living in different places is to learn about other cultures. But if everyone were moving around, no local culture would ever have the chance to develop because locality requires continuity and a stable, sustaining local population, i.e., a true society. Places with very high rates of inward and outward migration tend to be less distinctive and tend to resemble other hubs of the same kind with which they likely swap inhabitants. If that's what attracts you, then your travelling or moving around isn't motived by a desire to learn about other cultures so much as a desire for a change of scenery while maintaining a more or less consistent, homogenous cultural "experience" globally. It's like being an American who goes on vacation and never talks to the locals, only other Americans in the hotel, or one who wants the "locals" to be like Americans.
- There is, of course, a difference between frequent moving and living more than 10 miles away from where you grew up.
I attach moral judgement to neither "remaining in the area" nor "living far away" nor even "moving frequently". These are quite personal matters per se.
Ekaros|3 years ago
pcthrowaway|3 years ago
cwmoore|3 years ago
cpsns|3 years ago
kylehotchkiss|3 years ago
TedShiller|3 years ago
amelius|3 years ago
ifightcrime|3 years ago
thepangolino|3 years ago
mikrl|3 years ago
Moving thousands of miles has changed my life in ways I’d never dream of, staying still was not on the cards: it would have been lethal. I had to upend to get the education I needed, find my person and the tech job I love.