Migration, Global

Analysis and Categorization

At the onset of the 21st century, nearly 200 million people, about 3 percent of the global population, were international migrants. Thirty years ago, the figure stood at 85 million (2.1 percent), and 230 million are projected for 2030. Today, around 100 million are labor migrants, 13 million are refugees registered with United Nations (UN) agencies, and the others are family members or students.

The United Nations and International Labor Organization (ILO) official figures of international (labor) migration require some reservations. First, migration is increasingly taking irregular (illegal) forms (a tenth to a fifth of all migration) that go unrecorded. Since no method can calculate levels of irregular migration, existing figures are only estimations. Second, international migration is increasingly temporary; indeed, it is the fastest growing type of migration, and often it is too short (less than 6 months) to count as migration. Third, migration is increasingly difficult to distinguish from other forms of mobility, namely business trips and tourism. For example, businesses might involve stays of more than 6 months, labor migrants often come on tourist visas because this is often the only available means of legal entry, and retirement migrants to southern countries might be counted as tourists. Fourth, the distinction between international migration across international borders and internal mobility within a country but across administrative boundaries often is implausible. For example, geographic mobility in China, India, Nigeria, or Russia is not understood as migration because no international borders are crossed, even though movements within these countries might involve long distances and the crossing of cultural, linguistic, or religious borders. Finally, the predominant form of migration has long been rural to urban. This primary cause of the growth of cities is mostly internal, so it is not recorded as (international) migration.

Consequently, recognizing other forms of geographic mobility would produce some very different figures, perhaps between 1 and 2 billion geographically mobile people. This would mean that at least one sixth to one third of the world's population are migrants. Putting international migration into the perspective of international travel and of internal mobility is essential, first, to produce a complete picture of human geographic mobility, and second, to judge the relevance of migration within the full range of human behavior in geographic space. In this sense, we can then examine whether migration is the behavior of only a minority (thus an exception from an otherwise sedentary norm) that requires explanation, or whether migration is normal and widespread behavior not requiring any extra justification and explanation.

...