Would that affect the villagers as well, then? Unless the village borders are treated like walls for the villagers, it's not the same problem.
Playing Windows 10 Edition, all of the villagers disappeared about a week ago. Very few were roaming the nearby forest for a day maybe, now the site of their village it's a ghost town. The village has been there and active since I discovered it last August.
Might be helpful to note that they didn't start disappearing until we moved close to the village to work on a project there. And there's no world backup from before they disappeared.
I could see the villagers roam the nearby forest for a while when they started disappearing (they didn't go all at once, it took a few real world days). Now they're nowhere to be seen. So, I'm not sure if they despawned totally or just roamed away, brainless.