MIGRATION

Migration is the movement of people from one place in the world to another for the purpose of
taking up permanent or semi permanent residence, usually across a political boundary. On the other
hand migration is the physical movement of individuals or households from one place or
community to another for a longer period that involved crossing of administrative boundary.
People’s natural tendency is to lead a well and good life than his current life and search for good
job and better residence.

According to UNO Multi-linguistic Demographic Dictionary, “Migration is a form of geographical

mobility or spatial mobility between one geographical unit to another generally involving a change
in residence from the place of origin or place of departure to the place of destination or place of
arrival.”

Migration is an important source of population change of a country. The people used to migrate in
the past as well but these days there is an increasing trend of migration of people from under-
developed to developed countries resulting in brain drain. Migration in ancient period was by small
groups such as tribes or clans. Modern migration is generally by individuals or families.

Scales of Migration: Migration occurs at a variety of scales:

• intercontinental (between continents),
• intra-continental (between countries on a given continent), and
• Interregional (within countries).
• Rural to urban—the movement of people from the countryside to cities.

Types of Migration
• Internal Migration: Moving to a new home within a state, country, or continent.
• External Migration: Moving to a new home in a different state, country, or continent.
• Emigration: Leaving one country to move to another.
• Immigration: Moving into a new country.
• Forced Migration: When a government forces a large group of people out of a region,
usually based on ethnicity or religion.
• Impelled Migration (also called "reluctant" or "imposed" migration): Individuals are
not forced out of their country, but leave because of unfavorable situations such as warfare,
political problems, or religious persecution.
• Step Migration: A series of shorter, less extreme migrations from a person's place of origin
to final destination—such as moving from a farm, to a village, to a town, and finally to a
city.
• Chain Migration: A series of migrations within a family or defined group of people. A
chain migration often begins with one family member who sends money to bring other
family members to the new location.
• Return Migration: The voluntary movements of immigrants back to their place of origin.
This is also known as circular migration.
 • Seasonal Migration: The process of moving for a period of time in response to labor or
climate conditions (e.g., farm workers following crop harvests or working in cities off-
season).

Type of Migrants/(Who Migrate?)

• Emigrant: A person who is leaving a country to reside in another.
• Immigrant: A person who is entering a country from another to take up new residence.
• Refugee: A person who is residing outside the country of his or her origin due to fear of
persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social
group, or political opinion.
• Internally Displaced Person (IDP): A person who is forced to leave his or her home
region because of unfavorable conditions (political, social, environmental, etc.) but does not
cross any boundaries.

Laws of Migration
Geographer E.G. Ravenstein developed a series of migration 'laws' in the 1880s that form the basis
for modern migration theory. In simple language, these principles state:
Most migrants travel only a short distance.
Migrants traveling long distances usually settle in urban areas.
Most migration occurs in steps.
Most migration is rural to urban.
Most migrants are adults.
Most international migrants are young males, while more internal migrants are female.

Migrant characteristics
For convenient we may classify the characteristics of urban migrant in developing countries into
three broad characteristics- demographic, educational and economic.

Demographic characteristics
• Young adults aged between 15 to 24 years
• Usually unmarried
• Mostly male
• With advancing stage of urbanization more and more single female migrating

Educational characteristics
• The more year of schooling the more tendencies to migrate

Economic characteristics
• For many years the largest percentage were the poor, landless and unskilled labor force
• In case of seasonal migration from almost all strata of income level
• With an emergence of stabilized modern industrial sector
- Both male and female
- From all socio-economic groups
- Majority poor as most rural inhabitants are poor
 Determinants of Migration or Obstacles to Migration

There are many factors which stand in the way of people’s migration from one place to the other.
Some such factors which create hurdles in the way of migration include:

1. Distance of destination: If the distance of destination from the place of origin is long then the
perspective migrants may not feel tempted to migrate. The fears always are that coming back
will be costly and also there will less chances of meeting kins and family members.
2. Religion, culture and social-customs: Usually the people do not wish to migrate to places
where social customs, religions attitude and cultural heritage is so different that it is almost
impossible to adjust. The preference, therefore, always is to migrate to places of simple social
religions and culture heritage.
3. Attachment to locality: Sometimes people become so much emotionally attached to their place
and nature of work that they do not wish to migrate to any other place, in spite of knowing the
facts that if he migrate will get many benefits.
4. Travelling expenses: It also becomes a hindrance on the way of migration. Some people may
like to migrate but knowing to and fro cost of travel they hesitate to incur expenditure and
decide to remain where they are. Thus, less the travelling expenses more inducement for
migration.
5. The capacity of migrant: Those who have no such capacity will never like to migrate. Thus
migrating capacity of the person which is of course very limited proves a hindrance on the path
of migration.
6. Migration laws: One important factor on the way of migration is that in some countries the
laws are so strict that it becomes almost impossible to migrate. When migration laws are strict
obviously these will prove a great hindrance on the path of migration.
7. Maintaining double establishments: This particularly happens when those who are migrating
are not in a position to wind up for their establishment. They may not be sure of their future at
the new place or may not have sufficient accommodation to house the whole family and so on.
8. Social condemnation: In a country like India a migrant may be socially condemned for leaving
behind aged and old parents or widowed mother or dependent growth up sisters and brothers
and thus lose all his social respect.
9. Discouragement by receiving country/region: The people from some countries may be
willing to leave their country but the receiving country may not be willing to receive them due
to her own problems.

Measurement of Migration
In-migration: people moving into one place from another place within a nation (internal
migration).
Out-migration: people moving out of one place to another place within a nation (internal
migration).
Gross migration: total number of in-migrants and out-migrants (internal migration).
Net internal migration: the difference between in-migration and out-migration.
Net migration: the difference between net internal migration and movers from abroad.
 Type of Migration According to Geographical Boundary

According to geographical boundary we can classify migration in two ways:

(i) Internal migration
(ii) International migration

• Internal migration
Internal migration means the movement of individuals or households from one place to another
inside the country. Internal migration may be permanent or seasonal. Internal migration can be
categorized into two categories:
In-migration: It refers to movement into a particular area. In Migration
Out-migration: Out migration refers to movement out of a particular area.

Again internal migration can be categorized as follows

a. Rural to rural
b. Rural to urban
Out Migration
c. Urban to rural (Return migration)
d. Urban to urban (Stage migration)

Rural to rural
About 80% people of our country live in villages. They migrate from one village to another for the
following reasons.
If the density of population becomes too high in a village then the people migrate to another
village of low density.
People migrate from one village to another where the working facilities are available.
People also migrate to those villages where the price of agricultural land is low.
Another type of migration which is permanent in nature is migration of wives to join their
husbands.

Rural to urban
Migration from rural to urban is a very common feature in each country of the world especially in
third world countries. It is an important component of urban growth. There are several reasons for
rural to urban migration such as:
Job opportunities for the educated people are very rare in the villages. So they
migrate in the towns for seeking jobs.
For the high growth rate of population in villages many people become landless. So
the landless and labourious people gather in the urban area for their livelihood.
In order to get higher education many people come to town from rural areas where
education facilities are available.
People migrate from village to town for business purpose.
 Urban area includes public facilities such as roads, supply of electricity with street
lights, water supply, sanitary arrangement, etc. These facilities attract the rural
people which causes rural to urban migration.
Other factors which cause internal migration in Bangladesh are: physical factors
such as river erosion, natural hazards such as cyclone, flood, drought, etc.; social
factors such as prestige, marriage, pressure of relatives and friends; socio-political
factors such as family dispute, political disturbance, etc.

Urban to rural (Return migration)

About 95% people of urban area of Bangladesh have relation with village. Most of them have some
land properties in villages. So, when they retire from their job or at the end of their contact for work
they migrate in villages. This is also called return migration. In third world countries the return
migration is not found in a large scale.

Urban to urban (Stage migration)

Such movements are normally inter-district and inter states. Urban to urban migration occurs
usually for educational, commercial and service purpose. This kind of migration is mainly found in
developed countries. It is also called stage migration.

• International migration
International migration means the movement of individuals or households from one country to
another country. Immigration and Emigration are the two category of international migration.
Immigration

Immigration: This term refers to movement into a particular territory

such as migrants leaving Bangladesh to settle down in the USA are
immigrants to the USA.

Emigration: This term refers to movement out of a particular territory such as

migrants leaving Bangladesh to settle down in the USA are emigrants from Bangladesh. Emigration

Factors of Migration
The factors which motivate people to migrate from one place to another are classified into two
broad categories.

• Push Factors
• Pull Factors
Pull Factors: The factors which attract the migrants to an area are:
Job opportunities
Better education
High standard of living
Better health care facilities
Higher wages
Better working environment
Better facilities and amenities etc.

Pull Factors: the factors compel a person to leave a place and go to some other place.
Low productivity
Landlessness and poverty
Unemployment
Underemployment
Poor economic conditions
Lack of job opportunities
Exhaustion of natural resources and natural calamities

In most developing countries, due to population explosion land man ratio has declined resulting in
significant increase in unemployment and underemployment. Introduction of capital intensive
methods of production into the agricultural sectors and mechanization of certain process reduce
labor requirement in rural areas.

Non availability of alternative sources of income in rural areas is also important factor of
migration.
Sometimes, subdivision of property leads to migration as the property become too small to
support a family.

Other important factors which motivate people to migrate are given below.
• Economic factors
• Political Factors
• Demographic factors
• Socio cultural factors

Economic Factors
This is the most important factor of migration. From ancient time to till now man migrate due to
economic reasons. The people leave their place, district, state or even country of birth in search for
having better economic opportunities. The movement can be in the following ways.
• The movement of people from developing (like Bangladesh) to developed country (like
USA) for better living condition.
 • The movement of people from least developed (like Bangladesh) to the newly
industrialized country (like Malaysia) for better earning.
• Similarly people go to the Middle-East to earn money for themselves as well as for their
families.
• In areas where famines frequently occur, the people will like to leave that and migrate to
areas where they do not suffer from the pang of famine.
Thus the economic factors of migration are:
Non availability of job,
poverty,
crisis in agriculture,
failure to meet daily necessities
food shortage

Political Factors
The political factors are becoming important for migration. Some people do not tolerate
dictatorships and leave their country to raise protest against the system. In some cases the people
leave their country when there is fear of war or disturbances breaking out at any point of time or
when the government fails to check inflation, price rise or maintain security and law and order.
Other factors can be the followings:
Political instability
Terrorism
Insecurity of life
Inhuman attitude/activities by political leaders

Demographic factors
The people of high density area tend to move in low density area. People also have a natural
tendency of moving in places where people of their same status and standard live. Other
demographic factors are:

Marriage especially the female migration is largely sequential to marriage.

Large family
More sisters
Fertility and natural increase in the population
Presence of relatives and friends in urban areas who mostly provide help

Socio cultural factors

Social and cultural factors also play an important role in migration. The factors can be the
followings

Conflicts among the family members also act as social factor for migration.
They also migrate to remain away from family feuds and disputed family life or to end their
unhappy married life.
Thus the socio cultural factors are:
Family conflicts
to save early marriage
To make own way of life
religious freedom
religious persecution,
lack of safety security,
to save for dowry especially the female garment workers
Quest for independence especially in the younger generation
Improved transport and communication facilities

Communication factor
• Improved communication facilities such as transportation
• The “modernizing” impact of the introduction of radio, television and the cinema
• Impact of the TV/Cinema and resultant change in attitudes and values.

Environmental factors
Natural calamities: flood, cyclone, river bank erosion,

Geographic factors
Geographical factors considerably help in migration process. The people migrate to places where
there is better climate or where minerals are found in abundance. Similarly people do not wish to
live at places where the chances of floods and fires or earthquakes are quite frequent. The people
wish to settle or migrate to places which are comparatively safe and climatically attractive.