Causes of Migration
Causes of migration refer to the factors that drive people to move from one place to another. These can include push factors such as conflict, poverty, and environmental degradation, as well as pull factors like economic opportunities, better living conditions, and family reunification. Understanding these causes is essential for analyzing patterns of human movement and their impacts on both origin and destination areas.
8 Key excerpts on "Causes of Migration"
eBook - ePubAn Introduction to Population Geographies
Lives Across Space
- Holly R. Barcus, Keith Halfacree(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The classic formulation envisaged push factors at the origin and pull factors at the destination combining to bring about migration. Bogue summarized these factors as follows: Push factors • Decline in a national resource or the prices it commands; decreased demand for a particular product or service; exhaustion of mines, timber or agricultural resources. • Loss of employment due to incompetence, changing employer’s needs, automation or mechanization. • Discriminatory treatment on the grounds of politics, religion or ethnicity. • Cultural alienation from a community. • Poor marriage or employment opportunities. • Retreat due to natural or humanly-created catastrophe. Pull factors • Improved employment opportunities. • Superior income-earning opportunities. • Opportunities for specialised training or education. • Preferable environment or general living conditions. • Movement as a result of dependency on someone else who has moved, such as a spouse. • Novel, rich or varied cultural, intellectual or recreational environment (especially the city for rural populations). From a present-day perspective or from within specific societal contexts one may wish to modify these factors considerably. Indeed, citing just push and pull factors is now generally considered too simplistic to explain observed migrations. For example, one can recognize both push and pull factors in both origin and destination. In addition, attention must also be paid in particular to “intervening obstacles” (as compared to intervening opportunities; 5.3.1) impeding particular migrations, such as family obligations at the origin, the costs of moving, legal constraints and personal anxiety about migration. (Sources: Bogue 1969; Gilmartin 2008; Lee 1966; Lewis 1982) The key area of statistical migration modeling operationalizing the gravity model, used widely in research today, is regression analysis. Usually, ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression techniques using logarithms are deployed...
eBook - ePubPopulation Geography
A Systematic Exposition
- Mohammad Izhar Hassan(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge India(Publisher)
...In the present time also they are potent forces of migration, both at the international and inter-regional levels. Among the other push and pull factors, as already mentioned earlier, there are several non-economic factors which provoke migration of people. Though the ‘push and pull’ approach is extremely useful in explaining many of the migration flows, it does not by itself lead to any theory on migration (Bhende and Kanitkar, 2011:390). Evidences indicate that in many cases migration occurs due to either of the two factors alone. In the less developed economies, rural-urban migration occurs not because of any ‘pull’ factor operating in the urban areas as such, but because of strong ‘push’ factors in the rural economies in the form of appalling poverty, acute unemployment etc. Todaro has rightly remarked that much of the urban-ward migration in the poor countries is due to the expectation of better opportunities in the large urban centres (Hassan, 2005:285). Likewise, with regard to the immigration in Britain from the West Indies in the period before restrictions were imposed in 1962, ‘pull’ factors were more prominent than ‘push’ factors (Woods, 1979:192). Another problem with the ‘push and pull’ approach relates to its inadequacy in explaining as to why some people under the same conditions choose to migrate, while others do not. Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration The first attempt to spell out the ‘laws of migration’ was made by E. G. Ravenstein as early as in 1885. Using the birthplace data, Ravenstein identified a set of generalisations, which he called as ‘Laws of Migration’ concerning inter-county migration in Britain in the 19th century. Most of these generalisations hold good even today. These generalisations can be listed as follows (see Grigg, 1977:42; Johnston et al., 1981:218): (a) There is an inverse relation between distance and volume of migration. The majority of migrants move to a short distance only...
eBook - ePub- Dina Ionesco, Daria Mokhnacheva, François Gemenne(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In particular, it directly depends on each person's perception and the interpretation of environmental risks. Migration is above all a life story. Each migrant embodies a personal trajectory that is part of a shared destiny, Numerous aspects of personal life influence each individual's choice to migrate – or indeed their lack of choice. At household level, a number of economic factors such as income and access to property and employment weigh on an individual's ability to assume the financial cost of migration, A large number of social, political and cultural determinants also influence the decision to migrate, such as age; gender; the status within the family; different roles, responsibilities, and attachment; religion; and education, as well as inclusion within social networks and access to information and rights. On top of that come physical factors; not only health, but also access to transport and infrastructure enabling travel, bearing in mind that an individual's level of knowledge and information allow the environmental risks incurred and the available options of mobility to be considered differently. Psychological aspects are key to understanding what motivates migration on an individual level. The decision to migrate questions, for example, the level of attachment to the individual's lands of origin, but each individual will have a different interpretation of the notion of geographical remoteness; for certain people, the prospect of uprooting is inconceivable even though their environment has become increasingly hostile, whereas for others, migration is perceived as one lifestyle opportunity among others. Finally, when a natural disaster occurs it is manifestly the principal cause that encourages an individual to migrate...
eBook - ePub- Luke Martell(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...Within the EU, for instance, borders are relatively relaxed and people can move around in search of work, although restrictions on EU borders have increased. But controls on migration into the EU are very restrictive. This is the result of political decision-making and treaties by governments that have opened some borders through mutual union agreements, while maintaining tight control over others. In some places restrictions on migration have been as much on people migrating out as in, notably in some communist countries of the twentieth century, for instance in Eastern Europe and intermittently in places like Cuba. Economic Causes of Migration This book argues that economic factors and material interests are key motivations behind globalization. Economic explanations for migration, or globalization in general, are easy to dismiss. The economy is an impersonal force – how can it cause things? Don’t actual agents such as individuals or states make decisions about whether migration happens or not? If it’s all about economics, how come people often don’t move when wages in their country are lower than in other countries they could migrate to? Surely individuals are not just economically rationally calculating beings. They also have loyalties and emotions and make non-rational and less individualistic calculations. Non-economic factors seem to play a role. However, economic explanations for globalization need not be as crude as such criticisms imply. Stressing economic motivations does not necessarily mean that the economy is the cause of globalization. The facilitating of globalization by governments or states can be economically motivated, to find labour or contribute to production and growth, for example. In situations like this, economic factors come in without the economy itself being determinant. Globalization can be economically driven but by agents rather than impersonal structural forces, and by actors outside the economy, such as political actors...
eBook - ePubGoverning Climate Induced Migration and Displacement
IGO Expansion and Global Policy Implications
- Andrea C. Simonelli, Kenneth A. Loparo(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...This is an opinion which is posited from the outside in that the migrant is not consulted to understand if that was indeed his/her motivation. Stark and Taylor (1989) reinforce this view by providing evidence that international migration is influenced by both relative as well as absolute income considerations. However, their research demonstrates that migration motives have more to do with one’s relative income based on his/her peer’s versus a basic determination based on poverty. This adds support for other theories in the field, which argue that it is not the poorest that migrate, but those who have the means to do so; this is a consequence of globalization. Contending literature, however, argues that if migrants are asked about their motives, a different picture will prevail. Winchie and Carment (1989) demonstrate that non-monetary career reasons can also be important. Their research shows that having existing familial relations overseas can be an equally strong pull factor as the desire for economic mobility. Migration in this fashion is considered voluntary in that one wants to improve his/her lot and thus moves in order to do so. However, migration theory often omits those voices which oppose capitalist globalization or heavily critique it. Pull factors like wanting economic mobility suppose the decision to migrate is purely selfish; one is currently economically secure but chooses to find a way to acquire more. However, capitalist development often raises some while disaffecting others. Migration is an instrument of the capitalist work economy and the exploitative economic and development policies by dominant states which affect weaker ones (Belton and Morales, 2009). Capitalist development causes both pull- and push-based migration. Globalization essentially means flows across borders of capital, commodities, ideas, or people. National governments remain suspicious of the latter two (Castles, 2007)...
eBook - ePubMigration Theory
Talking across Disciplines
- Caroline B. Brettell, James F. Hollifield, Caroline B. Brettell, James F. Hollifield(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...6 Geographical Theories of Migration Exploring Scalar, Spatial, and Placeful Dimensions of Human Mobility Marie Price DOI: 10.4324/9781003121015-7 Geography is a discipline closely associated with maps and spatial reasoning. Maps, especially thematic ones, challenge us to visualize spatial distribution of phenomena across space and over time at various scales. Anything that is unevenly distributed is eminently mappable and thinking in maps invites us to consider spatial arrangements. The varied movement of people has been an irresistible subject for geographical inquiry and theorization since the inception of the modern discipline. Why is a cluster of migrants located in one place and not another? How are clusters linked through networks and how do these distributions influence space and place? What structural or environmental forces are driving human mobility? Mapping forces one to select a scale of analysis; consequently, geographers have a proclivity to shift scales, from the local to the global, and even jump scale when necessary. Not limited to any single container of convenience, such as the territorial state, geographers consider various socio-legal containers when theorizing about migration from neighborhoods, to cities, to meta-regions such as Europe or Africa. Geographic scholarship is increasingly interested in how these containers are enforced, deformed, and reconstituted in response to migration. Finally, geography is concerned with a deeper understanding of context and placemaking, seeing space as layered with information such as: the physical environment, the ethnic composition of residents, and their socioeconomic well-being. Human mobility is often a response to and a catalyst for these layers, and thus the social and environmental contexts of areas of departure and reception invite geographical theorization. This chapter will consider some of the foundational theories that shape geographical understandings of migration and human mobility...
eBook - ePub- Nicholas Van Hear(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In respect of an integrated approach, the literature on forced migration is in some ways perhaps more suggestive than that on economic migration. The following synthesizes and refines the approaches of authors who have tried to develop models of forced migratory movements, some for the purposes of early warning (notably Clark 1989), and others as part of more general theoretical investigation (notably Richmond 1994). Their approaches are modified substantially here, and an attempt is made to incorporate in addition approaches to so-called economic or voluntary migration. If the features outlined on pages 14–16 can be seen as components of migration orders, their dynamics might be located in four domains. In the first domain are located what are variously described as root causes, or as structural, background, underlying factors which predispose a population to migrate. These derive mainly from the macro-political economy as defined above, and in particular from the disparities between places of migrant origin and destination. Among the dimensions featuring in this domain are the state of supply and demand for labour and the structure of employment in countries of destination; the state of social order and security in countries of origin; and trends of nation- building, disintegration and reconstitution in regions of migrants’ origin. Economic disparities between territories sending and receiving migrants include differences in earnings, livelihoods and living standards. What might be called political disparities include the relative prevalence of conflict, persecution and other dimensions of human rights and human security. Environmental disparities between sending and receiving territories might be added; these include the relative state of the land, water supply, forest and other resources...
eBook - ePubCrossing Borders
Regional and Urban Perspectives on International Migration
- Cees Gorter, Peter Nijkamp, Jacques Poot, Cees Gorter, Peter Nijkamp, Jacques Poot(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...4 Causes of International Migration: A Survey THOMAS BAUER AND KLAUS ZIMMERMANN 4.1 Introduction The migration question seems to be one of the most demanding social issues for Europe at the turn of the century. Large migration pressures are expected from developing countries, especially from North Africa, and from East Europe. Driving forces are economic and political motives. (An analysis of the empirical dimension of future European migration issues is given by Zimmermann, 1995.) In comparison, internal European migration seems to be rather unimportant in relative and absolute terms. The motives of migration decisions are largely unexplored at the empirical level. There is also an excess demand for good economic theories. Currently, no up-to-date survey paper of empirically oriented economic studies is available. (An earlier evaluation is Krugman and Bhagwati 1976.) Economists generally support the view that formal methods are useful to structure the empirical analysis even if not all model implications can be tested. On the other hand, more explorative approaches are useful to stimulate theoretical modelling. At present, most applied research of economists is devoted to issues of assimilation of migrants and their effects on the receiving country. (See for an overview Simon (1989), Borjas (1990) and Zimmermann (1994).) The problems of the sending countries, which were much discussed for instance in the brain drain debate two decades ago, are mostly ignored. There is however a rich set of new theoretical ideas (Stark 1991) that were not yet implemented in practice. The empirical analysis of international migration is a black hole in economics. As in other disciplines this can be explained in part by the poor quality of time-series data and the lack of appropriate individual data. However, it is also caused by an insignificant interest of applied economists in the migration question per se...
