Rural education and out-migration: The case of a coastal community

In this article I report on findings from a case study, examining the relationship between formal education and out-migration in a Canadian coastal community from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. Although high rates of village-level out-migration were chronic, most migration trajectories were short-range. Contrary to large-scale quantitative analyses of rural depopulation, I found a geographically stable population and persistently high male dropout rates among those who stayed in the proximal area. In the analysis of educational attainment and migration, I found that schools served their traditional role of sorting and selecting youth for out-migration.