Migration flows

Source BBC: picture This picture shows migration flows from and to different continents in the past

short description

Migration

When large numbers of people go to live in another area or country, especially in order to find work.

Flow

if goods, people, or information flow from one place to another, they move there in large numbers or amounts.

example: The number of refugees flowing into the area is still increasing.

In depth

Introduction

According to the UN Population Division, in 2005, 191 million people, representing 3 per cent of the world's population, were living outside their countries of origina significant shift compared to 75 million in 1960

What is a migration flow:

People migrate from one area to another if their not satisfied with their current place of living, their are many reason for this: war, personal issues or economic problems. A Migration flow can be very small a few people who are migrating because of family. On the other hand you have very large migration flows for example the migration from North-Africa to Europe, where thousands of people try every year to reach the shore of Spain. A migration flow can be for a short periode, their is a war going on in a country and that causes a migration flow, but if their is peace again people will stop migrating. On the other side you have a constant migration flow from for example Africa and Mexico to the western world. migration to europe

There are many push factors en pull factors why people migrate for example:

Push factors

economic crisis

political instability

war

nature disasters

Pull Factors

Welvare state (high standard of living)

Good health care system

political stability

push and pull factors

push and pull factors

This are reasons why people migrate or immigrate to/from a country. It's not always easy to immigrate from one area to another, sometimes there are barriers to migration. A barrier can be no money for a flight or a very strict migration policy. Migration flows have large impacts on international level, especially when a lot of people migrate it even can effect the economic and culture aspects of a country. If only one persons moves from one area to another it's not of a big influence, only if there are more people who are moving from one area to another you see the changes is a area or country.

Migrant population by regions and in the world (2000)

Source: International Migration Report 2002, United Nations (Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division)

Their are places on the world where more people migrate to, you can see the table above that Europe, North America and Asia have the highest precentage of migrants.

The relevance of Migration flows for Migration and Migration Policy

Migration flows are all over the world, its an international issue which affects a lot of people and a number of international organization for example: The united Nations, OECD, UNHCR etc. These organizations make policies and try to help refugees to get a citzenship or help them get back to the country where they came from if their new country doesn't accept them. This involves migration policy and continents because countries have people who are migrating to or are immigrating from. I will give you some examples of the causes migration flow can have on macro perspective and on micro perspective.

macro perspective

overpopulation

economic (aging, young people migrate, economic migrants)

Culture (when a lot of people of the same nationality migrate to a country, it can influence your own culture)

Macro perspective is where the international migration policy concentrated on, it's a difficult subject. This has mostely to do with globalization, it's easier to get from one country to another, people have more acces to information about other countries and see which countries have a higher standard of living then them.

micro perspective

refugee camps (when a country is at war, most of the time temporally)

personal reasons ( family, love, other job)

nature disaster (temporally)

migrant worker (people who go and work in a other country temporally)

Micro perspective is only important for the countries in question. Most of the time it are temporally issues or small migration flows which are for example cause by war. This doesn't affect the countries culture or economic situation in most cases, because the migration flows are just to small for that.

Examples

Example: U.S VS Mexico Their are a lot of migrants going from Mexico to U.S, you can call it a migration flow because thousands of people try every year to migrate to the U.S. The U.S is not happy with all these economic migrants and set up border control and also build a large wall to try and stop people from migrating to their site of the wall. Still people of Mexico try to get to the other site because the standard of living is much higher than in their country. Their are now so many Mexicans in the U.S that they are a diaspora. The people of Mexico are not refugees but economic migrants.

Example: refugees from Zimbabwe to South-Africa Since the trouble with President Mugabe, there are many refugees fleeing from Zimbabwe to South-Africa. It’s a rare case because normally a country needs to be at war to have such a high number of refugees. The problem is South-Africa can’t handle all these refugees and put up fences, transport the refugees back to their side of the fence and has a strict asylum policy. The South-African government is afraid the refugees will cause economic problems in their country, so they try to stop them. A lot of International Governmental Organizations have put up help post on the border line to help the refugees with a hot meal or to transport them back to home. This is an example of a large migration flow where the receiving country doesn’t want to have the refugees and a lot of people die trying to get over the border. The only solution will be trying to make the situation better in Zimbabwe so people will go back and stop trying to flee the country. This is a whole different case as U.S and Mexico because that are economic migrants and the people from Zimbabwe are fleeing the country because they have got the risk to get killed.

Sources, further reading, links

• OECD
• document about migration flows
• pubic opinion and immigration policy
• lecture 2 migration project
• UNCHR
• Refugees Zimbabwe -> South-Africa
• Mexico -> U.S
• mexico->U.S
• Multicultural society

Basingstoke, Migration, minorities, and citizenship, MacMillan, 2001, 0333710479

Oxford dictionary english

Related Educational Pages

• IPMProject1
• Migration
• Multicultural society