Migration

Migration is a temporary or permanent, short- or long-distance movement of people within or across a societal border to access better opportunities. Migration, fertility, and mortality are demographic basics and determinants of population and labor force structures, yet migration-related data from censuses are excluded in some demographic-based reports. The world had 740 million domestic migrants in 2009, while in 2010, over 215.8 million people, or 3.2 percent of the world’s 6,775 million population stayed outside their birth countries. However, accurate migrant population numbers remain unattainable because of migration flows, state-led data-gathering systems, and the exclusion of civil societies from migration-centered research and data collection on developing nations and women. Yet increasing migration rates continue to spark discussion on the types and patterns of migration and responses to migrants.

Migration is categorized into internal and international. The former is mobility between villages, towns, cities, states, and regions or rural-urban, urban-rural, rural-rural, and urban-urban areas within a country, while the latter is entering other people’s country—immigration, and/or leaving one’s country, emigration. At times, some migrants’ statuses are undermined, when labeled as nonnative, nonindigenous, and settler; alien and noncitizen; deportee and returnee; trafficked or smuggled persons; illegal, unauthorized, unregistered, undocumented, and irregular; asylees, refugees, stateless, and displaced persons. This has generated debates among development agencies, scholars, researchers, policymakers, and activists.

Distance, commercial and industrial prosperity, rural-urban progress and dichotomy, bilateral relations, the gender differential, economic interest, and advanced technology cause migration. Causes of migration include the origin country’s repressive laws, heavy taxes, war, flood, famine, and bad weather; access to jobs, peace, freedom, good weather in the destination; intervening obstacles, including distance, physical barriers, and transportation; and personal factors. Furthermore, the urban-rural real income differential and likelihood of securing an urban job fuel rural-urban migration, but the model is ecocentric and neglects other migration patterns. Structural and technological changes enhance rural-urban migration. Migration is a product of varied forces because migrants’ survival strategies and contributions to human development are multifaceted.

Migrants work in agricultural, manufacturing, construction, and service sectors in countries with a relatively low birthrate, rising employment, a growing aging population, and locals’ relinquishing of domestic help for babysitting, guarding, gardening, cleaning, waiter/waitress jobs, and other perceived low-paid, dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs to migrants. Migration fosters cultural progress and frees individuals to partake in new enterprises and associations, but it creates a marginal man, a person who lives in diverse cultural worlds, and migration enriches urban growth and economic and political progress. Economic remittances to low- and middle-income countries surpass foreign direct investment and official development assistance, and social remittances such as news, ideas, skills, and other cultural ideals are useful. Rural-urban movement enhances the well-being of migrants in wage employment. Self-employment in the lucrative informal sector also improves living conditions.

Yet migration has some limitations. Rural-urban migrants’ exhibition of rural cultures in cities usually leads to ruralization of cities, while there is increasing fertility and migration [Page 1039]to overstressed public facilities in the developing world’s large cities. Additionally, migrants face various individual and institutional abuses and discrimination around the world, while formulation and enforcement of strict regulations and policies against migration affect rapid global development. The act of moving to other people’s homelands, its diverse patterns, and movers’ work-related survival strategies symbolize significant progress in poverty reduction and multicultural and human development. This is achieved through migration-development advocates, particularly the United Nations and World Bank. Still, activism needs to be intensified against rights abuses, denial of better choices, and opportunities experienced by migrants across the world.

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