In order to revise the traditional push-and-pull model of migration, as well as the concept of delimited ethnic groups, the first part of this essay applies theories of acculturation and of transnational lives and identities to migrants in Canada who have selected options in the frame of family economies. In the second part, I evaluate societal/structural constraints in both the societies of origin and the receiving societies. I argue that structure and agency influence each other on a meso-level of regions. The relationship between migrants and the macro-level of state government or national economies is tenuous, at best, while the micro-level is not one of individualism (US paradigm) but of neighbourhood and kinship relations. I discuss the reach of this approach in terms of free and forced migrations.