This article develops the concept of cumulative outmigration to shed light on the recursive dynamics of rural depopulation. Departing from migration research’s mobility bias, and critically complementing approaches focused on migration ‘drivers’ and their networked reproduction, my analysis turns to how those who remain inhabit a social world recast by others’ movement. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in a Ghanaian village characterized by substantive outward mobility, I examine how successive departures remake social institutions, economic prospects, and ritual life, generating rippling effects that gradually render remaining less viable. I show how sustained outmigration redefines what it means, and what it is worth, to stay, and how leaving may, paradoxically, become a way for securing social continuity. These shifts arise from processes of social thinning – the uneven reduction of relational density and collective capacities – that accompany cumulative outmigration, offering a way to understand migration-related rural transformation as an incremental remaking of social life in Africa and beyond.

Published open access in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.