Migration has both psychological and sociological elements in Hillbilly Elegy. For Vance, one form his migration takes is that of migrating from one class to another. He transcends his poverty to become a Yale Law School graduate and member of the upper-middle class, living in Silicon Valley. This is in juxtaposition to the fates of the vast majority of Appalachians who grow up poor and in single-parent homes.

Vance spends his youth in a state of perpetual migration, moving from one home to the next with his mother, in between living with his biological father in Kentucky, and with Mamaw in Middletown. As an adult, he leaves Middletown for the Marines, returning to Ohio to attend Ohio State University, before again leaving to attend Yale. While Vance does return to Ohio at the end of the text, he settles in Cincinnati and is thereby representative of the phenomenon known as “brain drain,” where the best and brightest of those from rural areas leave their native regions for better opportunities in urban centers.

In the 20th century, a very large number of Kentucky Appalachians departed their native area for employment opportunities in the Midwest and beyond.