Hand out- 1

Types of Migration
Given below, is some information on Types of Migration. Please read and annotate (mark
new words, add questions and connections, and summarize) on the document or in your
notebook. Please think of and add elaborate examples, as your connections, when you
annotate the reading.

What is Migration?
Migration is the movement of a person or a group of people, to settle in another place, often
across a political or administrative boundary. Migration can be temporary or permanent, and it
may be voluntary or forced. Depending on the goal and reason for relocation, people who
migrate can be divided into three categories: migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Each
category is defined broadly as the mixed circumstances that motivate a person to change their
location.
As such, migrants are traditionally described as persons who change the country of their
residence for general reasons and purposes. These purposes may include the search for better job
opportunities or healthcare needs. This term is the most generally defined one as anyone
changing their geographic location permanently can be considered a migrant.
Contrastly, refugees are not defined and are described as persons who do not willingly relocate.
The reasons for the refugees' migration usually involve war actions within the country or other
forms of oppression, coming either from the government or non-governmental sources. Refugees
are usually associated with people who must unwillingly relocate as fast as possible; hence, such
migrants will likely relocate undocumented.
Asylum seekers are associated with persons who also leave their country unwillingly, yet, who
also do not do so under oppressing circumstances such as war or death threats. The motivation to
leave the country for asylum seekers might involve an unstable economic or political situation or
high rates of crime. Thus, asylum seekers relocate predominantly to escape the degradation of
the quality of their lives.
Important terms that relate to migration:
Immigration (people coming in from elsewhere) and Emigration (people leaving their home
country). Immigration is when people move from other places into a place to settle. Such
migrants are called immigrants. Emigration is when people move out to new places, and the
migrants involved are called emigrants.
Migration is not a new phenomenon that is known historically, people have always had
migratory lifestyles. There is enough evidence that people have moved from far away, places to
inhabit new areas. For example, Migrants from Asia ended up in North and South America over
a period of time, via a land bridge over the Bering Strait. There have been several bulk
movements of people in the history of humans, all of which were caused by some specific events
during those times.
In more recent years, such as the Industrial revolution period (1843-1939), over 50 million
people left Europe for the USA, Canada, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa,
Many of them left to escape poverty and periodic crop failures in Europe.
The concept is very similar today. In fact, people find it easier to move because of the
availability of efficient transport, and way-finding technology. improved communications,
media, and information, even though new policies, laws and controls in entry points are much
more rigorous than ever before.

Types of Migration

1. Intercontinental migration is when the movement is across continents, such as from

Arica to Europe. For example, migration from Africa to Europe has increased in recent
years. African migration to Europe traditionally occurs over two routes: the Western
Mediterranean route and the Central Mediterranean route. In 2014, the use of the Central
Mediterranean route to Europe (from Libya or Egypt to Italy or Malta) sharply increased:
from approximately 40,000 in 2013 to 170,000 in 2014. In 2015 this number will
probably stay the same. Syrian refugees have the highest share of this growth, but African
migrants also account for a huge part.

Graph 1: Six main nationalities of irregular migrants from Africa to Europe (source: Frontex,
2015)
2. Intracontinental migration- If the movement is on the same continent, we say
intracontinental migration Sometimes, people migrate from one place to the other within
the same region, continent or country. This is also known as regional migration or
internal migration. For example, According to a recent United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development report, 19 million people migrate across Africa each year,
compared with 17 million to other continents, and 5.5 million migrating from the rest of
the world to Africa.

3. Rural-Urban Migration: This involves the movement of people from rural areas or
countryside to urban areas of the same country in search of new opportunities and
lifestyles. For example, China has been experiencing the largest rural to urban migration
in history. Rural-to-urban migrants are those who leave their hometown for another place
in order to work or live without changing their hukou status, which is a household
registration system in China, categorizing people as either rural residents or urban
residents. Rural-to-urban migrants typically find better job opportunities in destination
cities, and these pay higher salaries than available in their home regions.

4. Forced or involuntary Migration: is when the government or authorities of a place

forcing people to migrate for reasons like drought, lack of clean water, hunger, flooding,
earthquakes, war and conflict, and economic circumstances. The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defines 'forced displacement' "as a result of
persecution, conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations". Forced migration
(also known as forced displacement) has caused millions of people around the world to
be uprooted, including refugees, internally displaced persons, and migrants. 1 person is
uprooted every 2 seconds, and the global total of forcibly displaced people currently
stands at over 68.5 million. The UN’s 2018 World Migration Report notes that this is a
major driver in West Africa, where temporary and permanent migrant workers commonly
relocate from countries like Niger and Mali to Ghana and the Côte d’Ivoire for more
opportunities to work and support their families.
5. Seasonal Migration: Sometimes people move during specific seasons such as crop
harvesting and climate to work and then go back when the season is over. Seasonal
migration can also be linked to movement from urban areas to rural areas and back
during the festive season. A study conducted to explore the patterns of seasonal migration
of human resources in India found that the majority of seasonal migration is related to
socially backward communities, low income, and residing in rural areas.
6. Return Migration: This involves the voluntary return of migrants to their original place
after they outlive the reasons for which they left. Oftentimes, young people who move
into the cities to work return home when they retire to spend the rest of their lives in the
quiet of their towns and with old friends and family. Return migration is particularly
apparent in the Asia–Pacific region where there are large and established transnational
labour migration flows. Across the region, workers who are typically from less
prosperous localities move to access employment in more prosperous localities. The
prominent practice of sending remittances suggests that many migrants maintain close
networks with their home community. These migrants may seek to return to their home
communities when they cease to be engaged in the workforce. For some, restrictive visa
conditions limit their opportunities to remain in their destination community once they
 leave that workforce. Those who do remain in the destination country often have few
legal protections.
7. Long and short-term migration: Those individuals who are residing at their current
location for less than 6 months, but have been away from their permanent residence for
over 6 months. People may consider migrating for good if the condition in their home is
one that is threatening. For example, people move for better health care if they have some
disease that requires some level of attention that can only be received in another place.
On the other hand, those individuals who have resided at their current location for more
than 6 months, but their place of permanent residence is elsewhere. It may be temporal in
nature. For example, a person may study or work in another place but may decide to stay
and work for many years before going back for good.
8. Step migration- Step migration occurs in short distance migration when individuals
migrated from rural towns to an urban centre by stepping through intermediate-sized
towns. Countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are increasingly
introducing study migration pathways, based on step migration, to attract international
students with the aim that these students will later become skilled workers. Scholars
emphasise the economic value that step migration can bring to local economies, and how
it creates a reliance on skilled migrants. Step migration was used by domestic Filipino
workers in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore to gain migrant capital and work
their way up a destination hierarchy of countries to gain legal entry into their ultimate
preferred destinations, usually in the West.
9. Chain Migration: is 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. Chain migration results in migration fields—the
clustering of people from a specific region into certain neighbourhoods or small towns.
Examples of this trend include the many neighbourhoods called Kleindeutschland, Little
Italy, and Chinatown throughout the United States.

Citations
https://www.thebrokeronline.eu/sandbox-version-african-migration-calls-for-an-intercontin
ental-outlook-d57/
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-11-520
https://www.concernusa.org/story/forced-migration-causes/
https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1090&context=atlas_docs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_human_migration
https://www.worldofstatistics.org/files/2014/03/Pull-and-Push-Factors-of-Migration-Thet.p
df
file:///D:/Users/IT/Documents/Migration/all_in_one_assignment_4_unit_2_push_and_pull_
factors.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_migration
http://geographymonkey.com/uploads/3/5/2/1/35215747/migration_nat_geo.pdf