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In Brazilian Amazonia, deforestation goes along with farmers’ migration. These peasant societies adapt the rules of their social reproduction to their changing socio-economic environment. These migrations work against the principles of a sustainable development which aims at a stabilisation of these societies. Without a utopian change of the socio-economic rules in border regions, such a stabilisation requires a major social transformation in the peasant societies. The paper analyses the stakes of this transformation, focussing on the process of land transfer considered as a total social fact. The passing on the land to the children is indeed the best way to keep them near by and available for assistance, essential values in peasant norms. As a consequence, when the young refuse the land offered by their parents, they bring both the end of the migration process and the entry of the peasant society into modernity.