Migration

Question 1

What is migration?

Answer 1

A semi or permanent change of residence of an indivivual or group of people.

Question 2

What is forced migration?

Answer 2

The migrant has to migrate because of circumstances.

Question 3

What is international migration?

Answer 3

The movement of people across national frontiers, for a minimum of 1 year.

Question 4

What is net migration?

Answer 4

The difference between the number of in-migrants and out-migrants in an area. When in-migrants exceed out-migrants there is a net migrational gain. When out-migrants exceed in-migrants, there is net migrational loss.

Question 5

What is voluntary migration?

Answer 5

The migrant makes the decision to migrate.

Question 6

What is rural-urban and urban-rural migration?

Answer 6

In less developed countries, the net migrational gain of urban areas at the expense of rural areas results in urbanisation. In more developed countries, movement from urban areas to rural areas have led to counter-urbanisation.

Question 7

What causes migration?

Answer 7

Migration is more volatile than fertility (birth rate) and mortality (death rate) as it is affected by physical, economic, social, cultural and political circumstances.

Question 8

What is internal migration?

Answer 8

Migration within a country.

Question 9

What causes internal migration?

Answer 9

The desire to move within a country is generally inhibited only by economic and social factors.

Question 10

What causes the desire to move out of a country?

Answer 10

Usually because of political factors e.g immigration laws.

Question 11

What are push factors?

Answer 11

Factors that make people want to move OUT of a place they’re in. They are negative factors about the place they’re leaving e.g. lack of jobs, poor living conditions and services, fear of political persecution.

Question 12

What are pull factors?

Answer 12

Factors that attract people to a new place. Positive factors about the place they’re moving to e.g. better jobs and more job opportunities, better living conditions and services.

Question 13

What are obstacles?

Answer 13

Thus affects migration as it makes moving more difficult e.g. the cost.

Question 14

What are opportunities?

Answer 14

Opportunities individuals encounter that mean they stop before they reach their intended destination e.g. polish migrants heading to Ireland for work might stop in London because there are plenty of jobs there.

Question 15

What percentage of the worlds population do international migrants make up?

Answer 15

About 3%.

Question 16

What increases in the pattern of international migration have there been since 1980?

Answer 16

1. Attempts at illegal, economically motivated migration as a response to legal restrictions.
2. Those seeking asylum
3. Migration between more developed countries, especially between countries within the Eu where restrictions have been removed to allow the free movement of labour.
4. Short term migration, as countries increasingly place limits on work permits. Its now common for more developed countries e.g. The UK and USA to limit their length of work permits, even for qualified migrants coming from other more developed countries.
5. Movement of migrants between less developed countries, particularly to those where rapid economic development is taking place, for example the countries of the person gulf and the asian economic growth areas of Singapore and Indonesia.

Question 17

What declines in the pattern of international migration have there been since 1980?

Answer 17

1. Legal, life long migration, paticulary from less to more developed countries. Host countries provide fewer opportunities for migrants because the number of available low-skilled jobs has dropped. Many host countries have also tightened entry requirements and introduced more rigorous monitoring at the point of entry.
2. The number of people who migrate for life. many newer migrants want to return home at some point. For example, a common feature of villages in Italy, Portugal and Greece is new housing built by returnees.
3. The number of people migrating with the purpose of reuniting family members, as the amount of long term family separation reduces and many migrants eventually return home.

Question 18

What are refugees?

Answer 18

Defined by the UN as people unable or unwilling to rerun to their homeland for fear of persecution (based on reasons of race, religion, ethnicity or political opinion or those who have been displaced forcibly by other factors)

Question 19

What were the UN predictions about refugees by 2003.

Answer 19

By 2003, the UN estimated that there were over 22 million refugees in the world.

Question 20

Explain refugee movement.

Answer 20

Many refugee movements are large volume, non-selective and over short distances. They are often caused by war. Such migrations are often temporary- when the cause of the migration ends, the refugees return to their former homes.

Question 21

Explain refugee movement at the end of 20th century/beginning of the 21st.

Answer 21

1. 2 million from Ethopia, Sudan and Somalia as a result of famine and civil war.
2. 6 million from Mozambiqe as a result of famine, civil war and flooding.
3. 1 million Kurds from northern Iraq fleeing oppression
4. 1 million Afghans into neighbouring Pakistan fleeing civil strife and war.
5. 100,000 Tamils fleeing opression and civil war in Sri Lanka.
6. 7,000 residents of Montserrat fleeing a volcanic eruption in the soufrière Hills.

Question 22

What are Asylum Seekers?

Answer 22

‘The formal application by a refugee to reside in a country when they arrive in that country’

Question 23

Has the number of asylum seekers increased or decreased in recent years?

Answer 23

Increased steadily as countries seek to curtail immigration.

Question 24

What are the reasons for the increase in asylum seekers?

Answer 24

1. Pressure to migrate from the poorest states is increasing because of economic decline and political instability.
2. Improved communications enable people to learn more about potential destinations.
3. In real terms, the cost of transport has declined.
4. More gangs of traffickers are praying on would-be migrants and offering a passage to a new life.