AbstractThe dismantling of government research throughout rural North America has altered the ways environmental scientists understand their ties to rural places like northwest British Columbia. As growing numbers of researchers have leveraged their professional mobility to move to small mountain towns and other rural locales—a process known as “amenity migration”—many have increasingly described their role in these transformations through idioms of personal commitment and individual expertise. At times, these articulations have overshadowed other migratory strategies enacted in response to the neoliberalization of resource extraction and environmental governance in the region, including those of First Nations technicians and blue collar workers in extractive industries. The kinds of jobs that draw experts to live and work in places like northwest British Columbia have shifted away from full‐time government positions into consulting and contract work. In the process, researchers’ growing tendency to present their movements as intentional processes has obscured the ways neoliberal reform redistributes compulsion and choice among residents of the new rural north.