Migration

Chapter 3

Field Note: Risking Lives for Remittances

• Boat People– Where? Why? Results?

• “Wet Foot - Dry Foot”; Haitian v Cuban immigration

• Remittance:– What is it? How Much? (30% of Haiti’s GNP)

• Legal vs. Illegal (11,000,000 illegals in U.S.)• Globalization (vast majority of legal ag workers in

Canada are Mexican)• Carter v Reagan imm policy

– NAFTA (Clinton initiative)

What is Migration?

Key Question:

Movement

• Cyclic Movement – movement away from home for a short period…

– Commuting– Seasonal movement– Nomadism

• Periodic Movement – movement away from home for a longer period.

– Migrant labor– Transhumance– Military service

Both involve returning home.What are their activity spaces?Who has the largest activity space?D.C. commuters travel up to 100 mi. each way

Migration

Migration –A change in residence that

is intended to be permanent. Long term relocation of an individual, household, or group to a new location outside the community of origin.

Individual vs. Household…

Little Haiti, Miami, Florida

Nomadism

• Type of cyclic movement that is still found in parts of Asia and Africa but dwindling. Takes place according to travel patterns and is repeated time and time again.

International Migration – Movement across country borders (implying a degree of permanence). Emigrate vs. Immigrate

Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986)

US law that gave amnesty and permanent residence to 2.6

million migrants who were living in the US. Under IRCA, legal

migrants could move anywhere, most moved to Great Plains,

Midwest, and South

Internal Migration - Movement within a single country’s borders (implying a degree of permanence).

Peru

Less mobile society than US, pattern of internal migration

is generally from rural to urban (Lima) where global and national investment capital is concentrated.

Common Flows of Americans

• 1900-1980 Black in America South to Northern cities… Now returning to the South.

• Americans moving to Sunbelt and Far West• Most Place migration is rural to urban • Most migrants in poor places move short

distance• Individuals move farther and easier than families• All Migrations have a counter migration• Men are more mobile than women (more

employment opportunities for men & earn more)

Choose one type of cyclic or periodic movement and then think of a specific example of the kind of movement changes both the home and the destination. How do these places change as a result of this cyclic or periodic movement?

Why do People Migrate?

Key Question:

Why do People Migrate?

• Forced Migration – Human migration flows in which the movers have no choice but to relocate… Causes? – Forces = Safety, environmental,

starvation, & warfare

• Big ones in History– Jews out of Israel, African Slave trade, Trail of

Tears, Vietnamese boat people, Irish Potato Famine, Convicts from UK to Aust, Haitians, Afghans

Forced Migration – the Atlantic Slave Trade

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.

Why do People Migrate?

• Voluntary Migration – Human migration flows in which the movers respond to perceived opportunity, not force.– Jobs, Freedom

• Migrants weigh push and pull factors to decide first, to emigrate from the home country and second, where to go.

*Push Factors---the conditions and perceptions that help the migrant decide

to leave a place*Pull Factors---circumstances that attract the migrant to certain locales from other

placesTypes of Push and Pull Factors:•Legal Status•Economic Conditions•Political Circumstances•Armed Conflict and Civil War•Environmental Conditions•Culture and Traditions•Technological Advances

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.

Kinds of Voluntary Migration• Step Migration –

When a migrant follows a path of a series of stages, or steps toward a final destination. i.e. Brazilian peasants

* intervening opportunity –at one of the steps along

the path, pull factors encourage the migrant to settle

there. i.e. Great Migration

• Chain Migration –When a migrant communicates to family and friends

at home, encouraging further migration along the same path, along kinship links.

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

Voluntary Migration – Migrants weigh push and pull factors to decide first, to emigrate from the home country and second, where to go.

Gravity ModelErnst Ravenstien

• Since larger places attract people, ideas, and commodities more than smaller places and places closer together have a greater attraction, the gravity model incorporates these two features.

• The relative strength of a bond between two places is determined by multiplying the population of city A by the population of city B and then dividing the product by the distance between the two cities squared.

Gravity ModelErnst Ravenstien

• Gravity Model --states that spatial interaction b/t places is directly related to the population size and inversely related to the distance b/t them

Equation Population 1 X Population 2 Distance Squared

Laws of MigrationErnst Ravenstien

• http://www.slideshare.net/geographyalltheway/geography-ravensteins-laws-of-migration

Think about a migration flow within your family, whether internal, international, voluntary, or forced. The flow can be one you experienced or one you only heard about through family. List the push and pull factors. Then, write a letter in the first person (if you were not involved, pretend you were your grandmother or whomever) to another family member at “home” describing how you came to migrate to your destination.

Where do People Migrate?

Key Question:

Global Migration Flows• Between 1500 and 1950, major global

migration flows were influenced largely by:– Exploration – Colonization (Eur migration to colonies peaked

1700-1800)– Br colonial auth stimulated migration from S Asia

to Singapore, Fiji, Trinidad– The Atlantic Slave Trade

Impacts the place the migrants leave and where the migrants go.

Major Global Migration FlowsFrom 1500 to 1950

Regional Migration Flows

• Migrants go to neighboring countries:- for short term economic opportunities.

(Remittance)- to reconnect with cultural groups

across borders.- to flee political conflict or war.

Economic Opportunities

Islands of Development –Places within a region or country where foreign investment, jobs, and infrastructure are concentrated.

Why is it so expensive to start businesses in Africa?

Economic Opportunities

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

Huge Chinese Minorities inSE Asia: Thai. 14%, Malay. 32%, Sing. 76%

Reconnecting Cultural GroupsAbout 700,000 Jews migrated to then-Palestine between 1900 and 1948.

After 1948, when the land was divided into two states (Israel and Palestine), 600,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were pushed out of newly-designated Israeli territories.

Balfour Declaration, 1917

Jerusalem, Israel: Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

National Migration Flows• Also known as internal migration

- eg. US, Russia, Mexico

Why is the center of the US population moving W & S?

Guest Workers

• Guest workers – migrants whom a country allows in to fill a labor need, assuming the workers will go “home” once the labor need subsides.

- have short term work visas- send remittances to home

country

RefugeesA person who flees across an international boundary because of a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.

• Subsaharan Africa (Rwanda)• North Africa and Southwest Asia

(Sudan & Somalia, Afghanistan))• South Asia (India, Sri Lanka)• Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Cambodia,

Vietnam)• Europe (Yugoslav Republics)

Regions of Dislocation – (DP’s)What regions generate the most refugees?

What are the characteristics of a Refugee?

The Sudan –Fighting in the Darfur region of the Sudan has generated thousands of refugees. In eastern Chad, the Iridimi refugee camp is home to almost 15,000 refugees from the Darfur province, including the women in this photo.

Afghanistan

The Soviet intervention in the Afghan civil war (1979) caused double

migration stream to Iran and Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban (Islamic

fundamentalists), spawned in Pakistan, created a counter migration of 2.5

million Afghanis to Iran when Taliban came to power.

Gulf War (1991) and Iraqi War (2003-14)

• Millions of refugees• Signif % of Kurds of no. Iraq forced to

leave their villages and flee across the Turkish/Iraqi border (1991).

• Recent war in Iraq generated over 2 million refugees most turning to Syria and Jordan.

Subsaharan Africa

• Among the highest refugee flows in the world but pales in comparison to numbers of refugees in North Africa and Southwest Asia.

• Most from Central and East Africa (DRC, Sudan, Somalia)

• Sudanese Civil War (1999) b/t Arab and non-Arab Muslims led to South Sudan independence (2011).

Imagine you are from an extremely poor country, and you earn less than $1 a day. Choose a country to be from, and look for it on a map. Assume you are a voluntary migrant. You look at your access to transportation and the opportunities you have to go elsewhere. Be realistic, and describe how you determine where you will go, how you get there, and what you do once you get there.

GenocideThe 1948 Convention on

Genocide “acts committed with intent to destroy, in

whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious

group.” i.e. Janjaweed in Darfur,

Sudan

Yugoslavia

• Collapse (devolution) in 1990s produced largest refugee crisis (over 6,000,000) in Europe since the end of WWII (before Syria 2011-15).

Colombia

• Only country in the Western Hemisphere that had a serious refugee problem (3.4-4.9 million) before 2000.

How do Governments Affect Migration?

Key Question:

Governments Place Legal Restrictions on Migration• Immigration laws – laws that restrict

or allow migration of certain groups into a country. i.e. U.S. laws (1882-1907) vs. Chinese– Quotas limit the number of migrants

from each region into a country.

– A country uses selective immigration to bar people with certain backgrounds from entering.Why do countries chooses to limit immigration?

Waves of Immigration

Changing immigration laws, and changing push and pull factors create waves of immigration.

1800-1850ScanIre, Ger.,& GB

1850-1900Port. Sp. It.Rus. & Pol

Gre

at D

epre

ssio

n

Pos

t W

WII

Iso

latio

nism

Switch from Europe to Lat AM., Asia & Africa

Pot

ato

Fam

ine

Post-September 11

One goal of international organizations involved in aiding refugees is repatriation – return of the refugees to their home countries once the threat against them has passed. Take the example of Sudanese refugees. Think about how their land and their lives have changed since they became refugees. You are assigned the daunting task of repatriating Sudanese from Uganda once a peace solution is reached. What steps would you have to take to re-discover a home for these refugees?