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New Zealand is a peculiar case because it has both high immigration (roughly 23% born abroad) and high emigration (24% of highly skilled New Zealanders live overseas). Within this context, the purpose of this research is to a) examine why some people selfselect to migrate internationally and others do not, b) explore how people make a decision to leave their country of origin, c) investigate how they select a destination, and d) consider how insights learned can contribute to Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) theory of how decisions are made in the real world. In the first study, three of the largest immigrant source countries were selected for inclusion: United Kingdom/Ireland (with higher wages than New Zealand), South Africa (similar wages), and India (lower wages). Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 20 pre-departure and 26 post-arrival migrants to New Zealand. A thematic analysis was conducted separately for each country’s data, resulting in a total of 1564 coded extracts in 43 themes and subthemes. The findings support the view that the migration decision process contains three decisions: whether to go, where to go and when to go. Regarding the question of whether to go, Indian and British participants had very similar reasons for leaving their country of origin: lifestyle and work/life balance, opportunities for work and children, and environment. South Africans were overwhelmingly concerned with quality of life, particularly safety. New Zealand was selected as a destination of choice due to quality of life, climate, accessibility of nature, cultural similarity, career opportunities, visa process transparency and the …