Humanity has been on the move since the beginning of time. The concept of migration isn’t new; instead, it has an extended history that predates the history of humanity. The causes of migration from the very beginning have been to try to find better and more secure living conditions that were no longer available in the home country.
People have a couple of reasons to migrate, which include relocating to join their own family in a foreign country, increasing educational possibilities, discovering employment possibilities, rescuing from hostilities, persecution, terrorism, escaping natural catastrophes, and so on.
What is Migration?
Migration is defined as the movement of people from one location to another. Migration can be within a country or among countries. Migration may be temporary, permanent, or seasonal. Migration occurs for several reasons. They can be financial, social, political, or environmental. Push and pull factors drive migration. Migration affects both the area left behind and the place where migrants settle. These effects can be both positive and negative.
Some people make the decision to migrate, e.g., someone who moves to another country to improve their career possibilities. And some people are forced to migrate, e.g., a person who moves due to famine or war. A refugee has fled their home and does not have a new one. Often, refugees do not carry possessions with them and do not know where they will eventually settle.
Causes of Migration with Examples
People migrate for lots of reasons, ranging from security, demography, and human rights to poverty and weather trade. While discussing the reasons for migration, the mention of push factors and pull factors is necessary. Push factors are the motives for people to leave a country. Pull elements are the reason they circulate in a specific country. These factors never operate in isolation, but collectively.
For example, if a person is leaving a place due to inadequate employment opportunities (push issue), they may be going to a place with plentiful employment opportunities (pull factor).
Environmental Reasons for Migration
Natural disasters and weather changes are environmental factors that disproportionately affect poor households, particularly in less developed countries.
Individuals who experience regular occurrences of floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes are most likely to migrate. Additionally, weather changes are known to worsen weather activities, leading to an increase in immigration. Environmental immigrants are obliged to leave their place of origin, be it permanently or temporarily, and either migrate within their country or abroad to escape the adversities of nature.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s statement on climate change and immigration, there are three environmental factors that could affect immigration in a big way:
- Effects of Warming: Constant warming in some areas will slowly bring down agricultural productivity, which can also cause a loss of fertile soil and clean water.
- Increase in Extreme Weather Events: Extreme climate activities resulting from the change in climate, such as violent storms and resulting flash floods, may displace millions of people.
- Rising of Sea Level: The steady sea level upward rise poses a severe environmental hazard to low-lying coastal areas and can bring about the permanent displacement of more than one million people.
Environmental Migration Examples
Environmental migration has existed nearly since the beginning of society itself, even becoming a driving force in the formation of the first urban city societies. For example, the societies of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia emerged as people migrated far away from the dry rangelands into extra-fertile river valleys. This resulted in densely packed populations needing to manage scarce sources, influencing their desire to form a complex society.
Environmental migration has persevered to play a role in forming societies, countries, and cultures. For example, the drought in the Middle East in the 8th century played a massive role in Muslim growth in the Mediterranean and southern Europe. It additionally inspired a large migration to California in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl.
The Dust Bowl became the result of multiple years of below-average rainfall and above-average temperatures in the Great Plains of the USA, coinciding with the Great Depression. This induced a substantial failure of small farms, influencing about 300,000 people to leave the place, many going to California.
Political Causes of Migration
Persecution because of one’s ethnicity, religion, race, politics, or culture can push people to leave their country. An essential component is warfare, government persecution, or the enormous risk of them. Those fleeing conflicts, human rights violations, or persecution are more likely to be humanitarian refugees.
This will affect the way they settle, as some nations have more liberal tactics toward humanitarian migrants than others. In the first instance, those people are likely to be transported to the nearest safe country that accepts refugees.
Social Causes of Migration
There are many factors in society that motivate people to emigrate to another region or part of the world and lead their lives. Social bonds, lifestyle, and emotional dependence are a number of the social factors that result in migration.
For instance, the choice to be with family or household members who have formerly migrated to some other country, the identification of similar cultural and social trends in the favored region with those of the person, the urge to improve social popularity and state of affairs, and many others are some of the social reasons for migration.
Economic Causes of Migration
One of the most important elements of migration is the financial demands that could affect people in their countries of origin. The UN’s 2018 World Migration Report notes that that is a major driving force in West Africa, where temporary and permanent migrant workers commonly relocate from nations like Niger and Mali to Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire for more opportunities to work and support their families.
Niger, for instance, has one of the fastest-growing populations in the world (by 2050, it’s predicted to triple in comparison to 2017 figures). However, the country is unable to keep up with the demand for jobs as increasingly more Nigeriens grow to be old enough to join the workforce.
Factors of Migration
People migrate for numerous reasons. But the motives can also be ‘push’ or ‘pull’ factors.
Push Factors
Push factors are those that force the person to migrate voluntarily, and in lots of instances, they’re compelled because the person risks something if they stay. Push elements may additionally consist of war, drought, famine, or excessive religious activities.
Low economic development and a shortage of job possibilities are also massive push factors for migration. Other push factors consist of race and discriminating cultures, political intolerance, and persecution of people who question the status quo.
Pull Factors
Pull factors are the factors in the destination country that entice the person or group to leave their home. Those factors are called place utility, which is the desirability of an area that attracts people. Better financial opportunities, more jobs, and the promise of better lifestyles often pull people to new places.
Sometimes people have ideas and perceptions about places that aren’t always correct but are pull factors for that individual. As people grow older and retire, many search for places with warm weather and peaceful, quiet locations to spend their retirement after a life of difficult work and financial savings. Such ideal locations become pull factors too.
Conclusion
Though there are many extra micro factors that affect migration, the list is very long. Migration has an undeniable effect on the person or the family, regardless of the cause of migration. In many instances, migrants emigrate because they cannot live without their families. This suggests migration isn’t the result of completely or majorly a financial or political factor but rather emotional terms and attachments.
Migration patterns are a mirrored image of rotted issues in their origin country. Even though international migrants make up a major percentage of the world population, it is still a truth that cannot be ignored: the minimal migrants’ demanding situations and difficulties they face on arrival at destination nations, regardless of their reasons.
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Question and Answers on Causes of Migration
1. How does Migration have an Effect on Society?
Unemployment is decreasing, and those get higher process possibilities. Migration facilitates improving the quality of life for people. It allows for the improvement of the social existence of people as they find out about new subcultures, customs, and languages, which helps to enhance unity among people.
2. How does Migration Affect our Way of Life?
Migrants make the places they migrate to more culturally diverse. This means: they bring new languages, new delicacies, new religions, new kinds of music, and more.
3. What is Migration within a Country Referred to As?
People who migrate willingly within a country are referred to as internal migrants and move for numerous reasons, both formally and informally. If their movement is forced, they’re called internally displaced persons (IDP).
4. Is Migration a Choice?
People migrate for economic reasons or to join their families; others are refugees, displaced individuals, or uprooted people. Voluntary migrants are those who have made their personal choice to migrate; this decision might have been brought about due to financial or other pressures.
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