“Those Who Leave Home and Those Who Stay,” Vox.com
Updated by Alvin Chang@alv9nalvin@vox.com
In the late 2000s, some researchers had a novel idea: They would "crash" a few dozen high school reunions and interview more than 300 people.
The goal was to figure out why people returned to their rural hometowns after leaving for whatever reason.
But John Cromartie, one of the researchers, noticed a trend as he and his colleagues — Christiane von Reichert and Ryan O. Arthun — attended the gatherings.
The people who stayed in their hometown were less likely to show up.
And even when they did, Cromartie said asking them why they never left was "a difficult question to even broach."
"There's perhaps a stigma associated with not leaving," he told me. "And high school reunions tend to be places where the people who come are relatively more successful."
We often talk about the rural-urban split in America — between country folk and city folk. But this distinction misses a nuance: Americans are some of the most frequent migrants in the world; we don't attach ourselves to a set geography.