In feudal times, most of the people were bound to the feudal's property and land. To move, you had to get an approval of both your's and target location feudal. Usually, paying tributes to both of them - to let you go and let you in.
Truth is that in much less densly populated europe, you could find a place to live away from civilization. The price was that you could not leverage full benefits of labour division and everything yourself.
There were many culteral differences amoung the various forms of feudalism.
I assume you're honing in on serfdom, but even that has it's differences.
I'm most familiar with central europe. Don't know much about eastern forms.
I just don't like the romantic lenses people use when talking about medieval.
Even in the end guilds and feudals had all the power. Economic and political
The life for common was pretty much hell. The only upside was that they probably paid much less in taxes then we pay now. In central europe it was around 20%.
Lot less work than we have now, but yea. Tottally agree.
