Through the examination of British migration to rural France, the article explores how imagination is put into practice and aims to determine what it is that makes some individuals act on the basis of these imaginings to improve their quality of life. It becomes clear that, for lifestyle migration to occur and in order to explain the timing of migration, it is necessary to question and consider the other factors—structural, cultural and biographical—that might drive people to act on the basis of their imaginings. Through recognition of the various contingencies that need to be in place for lifestyle migration to occur, the paper argues for a theoretical approach that accounts for the dialectic between structure and agency in the act of migration.