During the past 30 years migration trends in most European countries have revealed some signs of deconcentration. The aim of this paper is to analyse the reasons of such deconcentration. For that purpose we will give an overview of literature on reasons of migration turnaround and provide a deeper case analysis of one country – Estonia. In Estonia internal migration fi rst turned in favour of rural areas in 1983. The trends of deconcentration continued and rural population increased at the expense of urban population at least until the end of the 1990s. The Retrospective Estonian Living Conditions Survey of 1999 is used to analyze the possible changes in reasons for migration turnaround. That survey provides a unique opportunity for comparing reasons of migration during periods of concentration and deconcentration. In the empirical part of this paper deconcentration will be defi ned as an outfl ow of population from administrative town borders into rural areas. We will not distinguish between particular types of deconcentration for practical reasons of data limitation. We are particularly interested in migration because migration seems to be the most important factor contributing to quick population changes.