Learning Objects

MIGRATIONS

Migration is a concept related with a bigger concept, which is spatial mobility or geographical mobility. It means person’s displacement from one place to other place involving a residence change. Usually, we may understand that as a permanent change. Apart from the spatial dimension, a migrant is someone who breaks off activities and associations in one place and reorganises their daily life in another place.

Types of movements

The second point is about how we classify these movements. There are two basic types of migration depending on the distance of the displacement, which are studied by demographers and geographers:

Internal migration: This refers to a change of residence within national borders. An internal migrant is someone who moves to a different administrative territory. For instance, if you move from Valencia to Barcelona you became an internal migrant.
International migration is the second type: This refers to a change of residence over national borders. An international migrant is someone who moves to a different country. International migrants are further classified as legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and refugees. Legal immigrants are those who moved with the legal permission of the receiver nation, illegal immigrants are those who moved without legal permission, and refugees are those who crossed an international border to escape from a persecution.

Reasons of movements

Last point refers to the main reasons that make people move. There are several factors involved in migrations:

Politics push out people though violence, wars, political persecution and terrorism.
Cultural causes as religion, language and traditions influence in the place people go.
Socioeconomic reasons like unemployment make people move.

The vision of a geographer

Ernest Ravenstein, an English geographer, concluded that migration was governed by a “push-pull” process; that is, unfavourable conditions in one place “push” people out, and favourable conditions in an external location “pull” them out. He studied different causes of migration, that the first cause for migration was better economic opportunities; the volume of migration decreases as distance increases; migration occurs in stages instead of one long move; and migration differentials (gender, social, class, age, studies) influence a person’s mobility.

jocofu@alumni.uv.es