Migration

AP HuG

Migration

• Migration – A change in residence that is intended to be permanent

• Emigration – leaving a country

• Immigration – entering a country

• On average, Americans move once every 6 years

• US Population is the most mobile in the world with over 5 million moving from one state to another every year

• 35 million move within a state, county or community each year

• Migration is a key factor in the speed of diffusion of ideas and innovation

Types of Migration

Forced Migration – migrants have no choice – must leavePeriodic movement – short term (weeks/months) seasonal migration to college, winter in the south, etc.Cyclic movement – daily movement to work, shopping.Transhumance – seasonal pastoral farming – Switzerland, Horn of AfricaNomadism – cyclical, yet irregular migration that follows the growth of vegetation.

Key Factors in Migration

• External Migration – from one country to another (emigration & immigration)

• Internal Migration – from one part of a country to another part

• Direction• Distance

Catalysts of Migration

Economic conditions- poverty and desire for opportunity.Political conditions – persecution, expulsion, or war.Environmental conditions – crop failures, floods, drought, environmentally induced famine.Culture and tradition – threatened by changeTechnology – easier and cheaper transport or change in livability

• Chain migration – migration of people to a specific location because of relatives or members of the same nationality already there.

• Step migration – short moves in stages – e.g. Brazilian family moves from village to town and then finally Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro

• Refugees – those who have been forced to migrate.

• Push-Pull Factors – push factors induce people to leave. Pull factors encourage people to move to an area.

• Distance decay – contact diminishes with increasing distance. (both diffusion and migration)

• Intervening opportunity – alternative destinations that can be reaches more quickly and easily.

Internal Migration – Movement with a single country’s borders

Voluntary Migration – Migrants

weigh push and pull

factors to decide first, to emigrate from

the home country and

second, where to go

• Distance Decay weighs into the decision to migrate, leading many migrants to move less far than they originally contemplate.

Economic Conditions – migrants will often risk their lives in hopes of economic opportunities

that will enable them to send money home (remittances) to their family members who

remain behind.

Environmental Conditions – In Montserrat, a 1995 volcano made the southern half of the island, including the capital city of Plymouth, uninhabitable. People who remained migrated to the north or to the U.S.

• Economic Opportunities – Islands of development – places within a region or country where foreign investment, jobs, and infrastructure and concentrated.

• Economic Opportunities – In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Chinese migrated throughout Southeast Asia to work in trade commerce, and finance.

• Reconnecting Cultural Groups

• About 700,000 Jews migrated to then – Palestine between 1900 and 1948

• After 1948, when the land was divided into two states, 600,000 Palestinian Arabs fled newly-designated Israeli territories.