1. Key Issue 1: Why Do People Migrate?
Chapter 3 Migration
Key Issue 1: Why Do People Migrate?

2. Migration
Migration is the long-term movement of a person from one political jurisdiction to another. It can include movement at many different scales, from one neighborhood to another or from one continent to another.

3. Emigration
Emigration is movement from a location, whereas immigration is movement to a location. The difference between the number of immigrants and the number of emigrants is the net migration.

4. Reasons for Migrating
E.G. Ravenstein, a 19th century geographer, identified 11 laws of migration which can be roughly organized into three main elements: the reasons migrants move, the distance they move, and the major characteristics of migration.
Migration is a specific type of relocation diffusion and is a form of mobility, a more general term dealing with all types of movement.

5. Reasons for Migrating cont.
3. People generally migrate because of push and pull factors. Push factors include anything that would want to cause someone to leave their present location, whereas pull factors attract people to a new location.
4. Four major kinds of push and pull factors can be identified. These are economic, political, cultural, and environmental.

6. Why People Migrate Reasons for migrating Distance of migration
Push & pull factors
• Economic • Cultural • Environmental
– Intervening obstacles
Distance of migration
Internal migration
International migration
Characteristics of migrants
Gender
Family status

7. Economic Pull Factors
Economic factors that can lead to migration include job opportunities, cycles of economic growth and recession, and cost of living.
The United States and Canada have been important destinations for economic migrants lured by economic pull factors.

8. Cultural Push and Pull Factors
Cultural factors can be especially compelling push factors, forcing people to emigrate from a country.
Forced international migration has historically occurred for two main cultural reasons: slavery and political instability.
Large groups of people were no longer forced to migrate as slaves in the 20th century, but forced international migration increased because of political instability resulting from cultural diversity.

9. Major sources and destinations of refugees

10. Political Push Factors
Armed conflict and the policies of oppressive regimes have been important political push factors in forcing out those who become refugees.
According to the United Nations, refugees are people who have been forced to migrate from their homes and cannot return for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion.
Of the more than 33 million refugees in the world, more than two-thirds of them are from Asia and Africa.

11. Political Pull Factors
There are also political pull factors such as the promise of political freedom.
It was this factor that lured so many people from the communist countries of Eastern Europe to Western Europe in the second half of the 20th century.
Cultural factors can encourage people to move to places where they will be more at home culturally.
A good example of a cultural pull factor is the relocation of Jews to the newly formed state of Israel after WWII. Israel is the ancestral hearth of Jewish culture, and it serves as a place where Jewish people can reestablish social ties and create a sense of political unity.

12. Environmental Pull and Push Factors
Environmental pull and push factors are largely related to physical geography.
People will be pulled towards physically attractive regions such as the Rocky Mountains and the Mediterranean coast of southern Europe.
People might also be pushed from places by floods and droughts. The flooding in New Orleans and other Gulf coast communities in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina caused around 1,400 deaths and forced several hundred thousand people from their homes.

13. Thousands of Americans migrated to CA during the Great Depression dust bowl

14. Environmental push factor Hurricane Katrina forced hundreds of thousands of people to migrate from the Gulf Coast area.

15. Intervening Obstacles
Migrants do not always go to their intended destination because of an intervening obstacle, which is an environmental or cultural feature that hinders migration.

16. Intervening Obstacle Example: migrants going to CA during the Gold Rush

17. Distance of Migration: Internal Migration
According to Ravenstein, most migrants move only a short distance and within a country. Internal migration is permanent movement within a country.
Interregional migration is one type of internal migration, and is movement from one region of a country to another.
The other type of internal migration is intraregional migration, movement within a region.

18. International Migration
One of Ravenstein’s laws states that long-distance migrants to other countries usually relocate to major economic and urban centers.
The permanent migration from one country to another is international migration, and it can be voluntary or forced.
Voluntary migration is when someone chooses to leave a place.
Forced migration is when someone is moved from a place without any choice.

19. Characteristics of Migrants
A century ago Ravenstein stated that most long-distance migrants were male adults rather than families with children.
Today there are much larger numbers of females migrating internationally together with their children, especially from Mexico to the United States. This is a reflection of the changing role of women.
Much of the migration from Mexico to the United States is illegal and seasonal.