The preliminary analysis of the data collected within several projects to which I have participated in recent years in the Apuseni Mountains area reveals common perceptions and attitudes on local socio-economic problems as well as the similar impact of these perceptions on the behaviors of some categories of population. One such category is that of young people, who perceive as very low the life chances they have in the locality where they live, and their future plans are aimed at migration to the large cities of the region. Ongoing demographic processes, important and current, such as the ageing of the population and the depopulation of localities, are causes, but also effects of a process of involution of socioeconomic development of small towns in the Apuseni Mountains area. The life chances and the possibilities of personal development in the locality are perceived by young people as being very low, young people leave the locality, in increasing numbers, the population is getting older, the labor supply is precarious, the local labor market is becoming increasingly unsuitable for investors. The results of the analysis (based on the secondary analysis of data collected in the context of the said projects) of how the mechanisms that maintain such a spiral of underdevelopment work, on the one hand, the identification of factors and mechanisms that can favour local development, on the other hand, represent the added value of the research approach that I propose to materialize by publishing this article.