1 AP Human Geography Population Migration. 2 Population migration What we need to know about this topic: Types of migration: Push and pull factors contributing.

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AP Human Geography

Population Migration

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Population migrationWhat we need to know about this topic:

• Types of migration: Push and pull factors contributing to migration

Cultural Demographic Economic Environmental Political

Concepts of forced and voluntary migration as applied to historical and contemporary examples

Major historical migrations Consequences of migration

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Population migration The process of migration

involves the long-term relocation of an individual, household, or larger group to a new locale outside of the community of origin.

Your etext defines migration as move beyond the same

political jurisdiction, involving a change of residence either as emigration or as immigration

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• When migrants move from one country to another and therefore cross an international boundary, they become part of the vital statistics of the country they leave as well as the one they enter.

• They become emigrants and immigrants.

Russian Jews emigrated from tsarist Russia to

escape the pogroms in the 1800s.

Immigrants arriving at Quebec City, Quebec c.

1908.

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12 million immigrants to the United States between 1892 and 1954 were processed at Ellis

Island in New York harbour.

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• In Canada, from the 1920s to the 1970s, Pier 21 in Halifax harbour was Canada's 'front door' to over a million immigrants, wartime evacuees, refugees, troops, war brides and their children.

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What specific factors impel people to pull up stakes and leave the familiar for the

uncertain? Usually it is not just one factor but a combination of factors that

leads to the decision to move. These are the key factors, or catalysts, of migration.

Economic conditions Political circumstances Armed conflict and civil war Environmental conditions Culture and traditions Technological advances Flow of information Push and pull factors Distance decay Intervening opportunity

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Questions:1. What economic conditions would impel people to cross

a. The Pacific Ocean? b. The Rocky Mountains?

c. The Fraser River?

2. Identify a political circumstance that has resulted in migration streams.3. Identify a recent (within the last decade) armed conflict or civil war that has

resulted in migration streams.4. Identify a significant environmental condition that resulted in migration streams.5. People who fear that their culture and traditions will not survive a major political

transition, and who are able to migrate to places they perceive as safer, will often do so. When British India was partitioned into a mainly Hindu India and an almost exclusively Muslim Pakistan, millions of Muslim residents of India migrated across the border to the new Islamic sate of Pakistan. Can you think of another such migration impelled by culture and tradition?

6. How can technological advances promote or facilitate migration? 7. How can the flow of information promote or facilitate migration?

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Push and pull factors

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Push and pull factors

• A pull factor is one that induces people to move to a new location.

• A push factor is one that induces people to leave old residences.

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Push/pull factors can be

cultural – e.g. religious freedomdemographic – e.g. unbalanced

sex ratios, overpopulationeconomic – e.g. jobsenvironmental – e.g. natural

disasterspolitical – e.g. persecution

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Human mobility – of which migration is one form - takes several forms and occurs

at various scales. In addition to migration, these are some other types of

human movement.

Cyclic movement, including circulation

Seasonal movement Nomadism Periodic movement

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Cyclic movement Cyclic movement refers to

repetitive cyclical movements that have a closed route repeated annually or seasonally.

Cyclic movement includes• Circulation - from home to school

and back home again; from home to shops or to places of worship and home again; commuting to work and home again

• Seasonal movement – from a home based to a vacation spot, to a business trip and home again

• Nomadism – movement among a definite set of places; most nomads are pastoralists; nomads are dwindling but still prevalent in Asia and Africa

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Seasonal movement is the seasonal transfer of hundreds of thousands of travelers from one area to another, e.g. from the northern US (including the ‘Rustbelt’) and Canada to the “Sunbelt” states.

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Nomadism

Nomadism is movement among a definite set of places.Most nomads are pastoralists, that is, they practise a particular type of agriculture that involves the raising of livestock.

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• A specialized form of agricultural migration is transhumance - a system of pastoral farming in which livestock and their keepers move according to the seasonal availability of pastures:

from warmer, lowland areas in the winter to cooler, highland areas in the summer (altitudinal migration) or from warmer, southerly areas in winter to cooler, more northerly areas in summer (latitudinal)• Example: Switzerland; the ‘Horn’ of northeast Africa

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In the 1880s, the British demographer Ernst Ravenstein studied internal migration in England. He proposed several “laws” of

migration. These “laws,” or generalizations, are still relevant today.

• Net migration amounts to a fraction of the gross migration between two places [counter migration].

• The majority of migrants move a short distance [step migration].

• Migrants who move longer distances tend to choose big-city destinations.

• Urban residents are less migratory than inhabitants of rural areas.

• Families are less likely to make international moves than young adults.

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Ravenstein also considered that there was an inverse relationship between the volume of

migration and the distance between source and destination; that is, the number of migrants

declines as the distance they must travel increases. This relates to the gravity model,

which is a measure of the interaction of places.

Forced and Voluntary Migration

Patterns of forced and voluntary migration may be affected by distance and physical features.

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Distance decay involves the various degenerative effects of distance on human spatial structures and interactions. Since interaction with faraway places

decreases as distance increases, prospective migrantsare likely to feel much less certain about distant

destinations than about nearer ones. This leads manymigrants to move less far away than they originally

contemplated. Many migration streams that appear on maps as long, unbroken routes in fact consist of a

series of stages, or step migration. For example, a peasant family in Brazil is likely to move to a village, then to a nearby town, later to a city, and finally to a metropolis such as Sao Paulo or Rio

de Janeiro; at each stage or step a new set of pull factors comes into play.

• Intervening opportunities are nearer opportunities that greatly diminish the attractiveness of sites farther away.

• Chain migration involves the migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migration there.

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Forced migrations

• Include those involving refugees, internally displaced persons, and asylum seekers

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Voluntary migrations

• May be transnational, internal, chain, step, and rural to urban.

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A growing trend in today’s world involves transnational migrants –

those people who set up homes and/or work in more than one nation-state.

Countries also experience internal migration, often in well-

defined streams that change over time. For example, in the USA in the early 20th

century tens of thousands of African-Americans moved from the South to the industrializing

cities of the Northeast and Midwest.

Before you learn the facts about refugees, spend a few minutes at

http://www.playagainstallodds.ca/

Refugees

Refugees According to the United

Nations, refugees are people who have been dislocated involuntarily from their original place of settlement.

Your etext defines a refugee as someone who crosses national boundaries to seek safety and asylum.

• The most common reasons for refugees to leave their region or country are war, famine (often war-induced), environmental degradation or disaster, or governmental coercion or oppression.

• Examples: – Rwanda 1994 (see next slides)– Afghanistan after 9/11– Japan in 2011– Libya, Tunisia, Egypt 2011– Syria and Iraq at present

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Many refugees live in camps, some of them for the rest of their lives.

Alternatively, they seek asylum or refuge in other countries, hoping to gain permanent residence. Some countries restrict the number of

refugees they accept, and it is often difficult to gain refugee status.

The Rwandan Genocide, 1994

During the Rwandan genocide of 1994,

hundreds of thousands of Rwandans fled to neighboring African

countries such as Zaire (now the

Democratic Republic of Congo), Uganda,

Tanzania, and Burundi to escape the

atrocities in their home country.

• Asylum seekers are migrants who claim escape from armed conflict or political persecution as a way to attain legitimacy in the country they have entered. In many instances, the claim is based on genuine circumstances, but in others it is fraudulent. Since documentation may not be available and claims cannot be easily checked, asylum seekers tend to be confined to special facilities to await their fate.

• Watch a related story at http://bc.ctvnews.ca/boat-migrants-could-file-successful-refugee-bid-1.445016

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Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)

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Read Window on the World,pp 88-89, on Internal Displacement and

answer the questions below.1. Distinguish among refugees, internally displaced persons

(IDPs), and asylum seekers.

2. Using two or three specific examples from Africa and Latin America cited in this reading and/or the video clip, summarize the reasons that countries experience growing numbers of IDPs.

3. What do you think are some significant consequences of internal displacement in the regions you have discussed above?

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