What is Migration?
Nomadism: (cyclic) A matter of survival, culture, and tradition. Movement along long-familiar routes repeated time and again. Still found in parts of Asia and Africa
Field Note
After Mexico, the largest source of illegal immigrants in the US is from the Dominican Republic
Remittances: Money migrants send home to family. The economies of these countries can depend on this money. Reverse remittances: from foreign land to the US> The struggling migrant asking back home for money.
"wet foot, dry foot" US policy towards Cuban immigrants: If Cuban immigrants are intercepted at sea (wet foot), they are deported, but if Cuban immigrants make it to land (dry foot), they have the right to stay.
Immigrants are willing to risk their lives to get to places like North America, Australia, China, and Europe, in hope of a better life under the radar, and for employment
"Perception is an overwhelming factor in migration" : as long as migrants perceive a better life abroad, they will continue to migrate, even if they were employed before
Immigrants in the US today: 31.2 million
Legal Immigrants: 20.4 million
NAFTA: North American Free Trade Agreement that established free trade among Mexico, the US, and Canada
Human rights activists have placed crosses on the wall between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, US to memorialize people who died while attempting to cross into the United States
Cyclic VS. Periodic Movement VS. Migration
Factors that affected recent mobility in the US: economy. The mortgage crisis and higher unemployment rates led to a pronounced reduction in the long-distance moves
Cyclic Movement: involves shorter periods away from home
Periodic Movement: involves longer periods away from home
Migration: involves a degree of permanence the other two do not: with migration, the mover may never return "home"
Migrant Labor: (periodic) involves millions of workers in the US and tens of millions world-wide. The need for migrant labor creates a large flow of cross-border movers, many of whom eventually become immigrants.
Transhumance: (periodic) A system of pastoral farming where ranchers move livestock according to the seasonal availability of pastures. Still used in Switzerland and the "Horn" of Northeast Africa
International Migration: movement across country borders (transnational migration)
Internal Migration: migration that occurs within a single country's borders.
The US South has been particularly appealing to immigrants because of the warm climate and available jobs in the Sunbelt
Pattern of internal migration prevalent in Peru: rural to urban. The capital, Lima, is attracting majority of Peru's migrants
Why do People Migrate?
Forced Migration: involves the imposition of authority or power, producing involuntary migration movements that cannot be understood based on theories of choice
Voluntary Migration: occurs after a migrant weighs options and choices, even if desperately or not so rationally, and can be analyzed and understood as a series of options or choices that result in movement
European migration to the US in the 1800s and the 1900s was both voluntary and forced because the Irish were treated badly by the British, and the potato famine, but they also voluntarily chose to go to North America
Studies of the relationship between gender and migration find that men are more mobile than women, and migrate farther. Men generally have more employment options, and women earn less
The largest and most devastating forced migration in the history of humanity was the Atlantic slave trade, which carried tens of millions of African from their homes to South America, the Caribbean, and North America. (Mainly Brazil)
It is difficult to determine whether a certain migration flow is forced or voluntary because ultimately, the decision or directive to migrate happens to an individual migrant within a household, place, country, region, and world, each of which has its own dynamics
The demand for slaves in the Americas was created by the wealth promised through plantation agriculture. Plantation owners paid European shippers for slaves, who in turn paid African raiders for slaves.
Of all crops produced then, sugar was the most important economically. Coffee, fruit, and cotton plantations were also abundant.
Many regions of Africa were most affected by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. West Africa was largely exploited from Liberia to Nigeria and inland to the margins of the Sahara. Many were taken from Benin. The entire Equatorial African coastal region fell victim. Also East Africa and the Horn of Africa, penetrating equatorial Africa.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade inflicted incalculable damage on African societies and communities, and changed the cultural and ethnic geography of Brazil, Central America, and the US
4 other significant forced migrations that have changed the World's demographic map:
- 1778 Great Britain shipped thousands of convicts to Australia
*1800s US government took land from thousands of Native Americans and forcibly moved tribes to far from their homelands
*Soviet Union in Stalins rule, the government forcibly moved millions of non-Russians from their homes to remote parts of Central Asia and Siberia for political reasons
*1930s In Germany, Nazis forced a significant migration from Jews from portions of western Europe that fell under their control.
2012 Haitian Earthquake also impacted Haitians in the US:the Department of Homeland Security granted all Haitian nationals who were in the US a 18 month temporary protected status while Haiti tried to recover from the tragedy of the earthquake, and a new cholera outbreak
The spikes in Haitians attempting to come to the US followed (1)1991/2 military coup d'etat, which overthrew democratically elected President Aristide with military rule. (2)1994, the turmoil leading up to the reinstatement of Aristide as president, under US pressure,
Many Afghan refugees have fled to Pakistan and Iran in search of safety first from the civil war, then the Taliban, and currently the instability of the Afghan War
Repatriation: The return of someone to their own country
Ravenstein's 5 Laws of Migration
- Every migration flow generates a return or countermigration
- The majority of migrants move a short distance
- 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 that young adults
Gravity Model: Predicts interaction between places on the basis of their population size and distance between them.
Multiplication of the two populations divided by the distance between them.
Push Factors: the conditions and perceptions that help the migrant decide to leave a place.
Pull Factors: the circumstances that effectively attract the migrant to certain locales from other places, the decision of where to go
A migrant will likely perceive push factors more accurately than pull factors because of his familiarity with his own country's problems
Distance decay: impacts pull factors. Prospective migrants are likely to have more complete perceptions of nearer places than of farther ones, which confirms the notion that the intensity of human activity, process, or function declines as distance from its source increases.
Step migration: A series of stages towards a final destination. A migration stream is not a long, unbroken route
Intervening opportunity: On a path towards their goal destination, a migrant encounters intervening opportunities that compel them to stop
It is a combination of factors that leads to deciding it's time to move and deciding where to go. Any single factor can be either a push to leave the home country or a pull to the new country
Deportation: Being sent back home
Goal of the United Nations convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families: Develop standards of the treatment for migrant workers: the right of migrant workers to equal wages
European Union: political and economic union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe.
(G-20): the 20 largest economies in the world including the European Union
3 major politically driven migration flows:
- Desperate migrants fled Vietnam after the communists took control of the country 1975
- 1972 Uganda's dictator Idi Amen, expelled Asians and Ugandans of Asian decent from his country.
- The Cuban communist dictatorship expelled more than 125,000 Cubans in 1980 in the "Mariel Boatlift"
Two major armed conflict driven migration flows:
- Conflict in the former Yugoslavia drove 3 million people from their homes, mostly into Western Europe permanently.
- In Rwanda, a civil war engulfed in conflict that pitted militant Hutu against the minority Tutsi and "moderate" Hutu. Claimed many lives and produced huge migration flows of over 2 million into neighboring Zaire (now Congo) and Tanzania
Environmental Crises types that can stimulate migration:
Drought and bad crops (potato famine of Ireland)
Earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, tsunamis
After hurricane Katrina, the population of New Orleans fell by 11% . Many migrated out permanently
1995 volcanic eruption impacted Montserrat: it brought long-term environmental damage to the landscape, making it hard to return. Half the island is inhabitable, and majority migrated out, while the rest migrated to the other half of the island that was unimpacted
When the British partitioned South Asia into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, millions of Indians migrated across the border to the new Islamic state, and millions of Hindus migrated from Pakistan to secular India
Decades after the Soviet Union obstruction, more than 2 million Jews left the former Soviet Union for Israel and other destinations.
The decline in minority white power and uncertain political conditions in South Africa during the mid-1990s impelled many whites to emigrate to Australia, Europe, and North America
Most refugees move by foot
Advances in communication technology have impacted migration: Television, radio, cellular phone, and telephone stimulate millions of people to migrate by relaying information about relatives, opportunities, and already established communities in destination lands.
Kinship links: When deciding where to go, a migrant is often pulled to places where friends and family have already found success.
Chain Migration: Flows along and through kinship links. When a migrant reassures family and friends, and encourages further migration along the same chain.
Immigration Waves: Swells in migration from one origin to the same destination
Where do people migrate?
Most global-scale migration prior to 1500 was motivated by pursuit of spices, fame, or exploration.
Colonization: a physical process whereby the colonizer takes over another place, putting its own government in charge and either moving its own people into the place or bringing in indentured outsiders to gain control of the people and the land
Two waves of European colonization:
- Europeans colonized the Americas and the coasts of Africa and parts of Asia from the 1500s to the 1800s
- Europeans colonized interior Africa and Asia starting in the late 1800s and into the 1900s
Europe was tied to almost every large emigration movement
Island of Development: The port cities that become islands of economic development within larger undeveloped regions
In the 1800s, many Chinese laborers fled southern China to work as contract laborers in Southeast Asia. Their descendants account for substantial portions of the South Asian populations
The oil-producing areas of Nigeria were islands of development in the 1970s because`poor migrants saw how life was better in coastal Nigeria, and were lured in to short-term jobs.
Fewer than 50,000 Jews lived in Palestine, which was under control of the UK, having fled to Europe 1000 years ago. The British encourages them to return. 1948, more than 750,000 Jews lived in Palestine when the UN came to partition the land and establish the independent state of Israel
Palestinian Arabs fled or were pushed out of Israeli territories. They sought refuge in neighboring Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and beyond
Israel has expanded its territory since 1948 through a series of wars, and actively built new settlements for Jewish immigrants in Palestinian territories
Migration streams from Europe after WWll:
15 million Germans migrated westward from their homes in Eastern Europe, voluntarily and by force. Before the Berlin Wall, several million Germans fled Soviet-controlled East Germany to West Germany
*Millions of migrants altogether left Europe to go to the US, Canada, Australia, Israel, Argentina, Brazil Venezuela, and more. As many as 8 million left in the postwar stream
Cubans have fled Cuba since 1959 in swelled numbers after Fidel Castro came to power. The government established the Communist Party of Cuba
Most Cubans settled in Florida
The "wet foot, dry foot" stemmed the flow of Cubans migrants to the US
Two major US internal migration flows before 1950, Massive migration stream carried the center of population west, and recently, south. This is the reverse of the pervious one
- After the American Civil War, millions of African Americans had gone north in the industrial Northeast and Midwest
- 1970s, trend began to reverse itself: African Americans began leaving the North and returning to the South through civil rights movements, growing Southern economies, and shrinking Northern ones
Russia's major internal migration: People migrated east, from the heartland of the Russian state to the shores of the Pacific. Russian and Soviet rulers tried to occupy the far eastern frontier, moving industries eastward
Russification: Soviet government policy that sought to assimilate all the people in the Soviet territory into the Russian culture
Mexico's recent internal migration: Many northern Mexicans are leaving to work in the southern US. To fill in the northern labor shortages, southern Mexican are migrating up, but are facing the same lack of acceptance
Europe needed guest workers after WWll took out a large supply of young men labor workers. Workers from both poorer European countries, and countries from outside of Europe were allowed in assuming the workers would fill the void left by those who died in the war, then return, but the guest workers stayed
North American workers went to France
Turks went to Germany
Caribbean region, India, and Africa went to the UK
Turks were finally able to become German citizens in 2005 after a couple generations of Turks had been born there
Guest workers often work as agricultural laborers, or in service industries, including hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions
Guest workers are sometimes abused despite the legal status by their employers because guest workers are often unaware of their rights. Long hours and low pay are common
Guest workers impact the cultural landscape of the countries in which they are working. Temples, mosques, restaurants, grocery stores, shops, and service industries geared towards migrants take root
UNHCR: United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees
UNHCR estimated 15.2 million refugees fleeing from their homelands across national borders
Refugee: a person who has a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion
The UNHCR monitors the refugee problem and is the key organization supporting refugees. It organizes and finds international relief efforts and negotiates with governments and regimes on behalf of the refugees
The definition is problematic because many countries interpret it in different ways, specifically the phrase "well founded", which leaves much room for judgement
The biggest definition problem is is IDP's
IDP: (internally displaced persons) who have been displaced in their own countries, but do not cross international borders as they flee. They are highly undercounted
2010 UNHCR estimated 27 million people (in addition to the 15.2 million international refugees) are IDP's
Asylum: The right to protection in the first country in which the refugee arrives
In Jordan, Palestinian refugees have become so integrated into the host country's national life that they are regarded as permanent refugees. In Lebanon, other Palestinians wait in refugee camps for resettlement and still qualify as temporary refugees
Repatriation occurs once the violence subsides and the conditions improve in a place, the UNHCR helps to return refugees to their homelands in this process
Thousands of refugees fled Rwanda in the 1990s after hostilities broke out between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups that led to a genocide to Congo, Tanzania, and Uganda
The world region that generates the most refugees today is North Africa and Southwest Asia, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Subsaharan Africa comes in Second
When the US and its allies began their retaliation bombing in Afghanistan following the terrorist attack, thousands of Afghan refugees climbed across mountain passes to reach the relative safety of Pakistan
Most refugees travel by foot, bicycle, wagon, or open boat
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African Union: an organization committed to finding African solutions to African problems
Genocide:Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group
How do governments affect migration?
Four famous walls/fences built to control human migration: 1. Great Wall of China 2. The Berlin Wall 3. The Korean DMZ 4. The fences along the Rio Grande
Types of migration restriction that are more common than physical barriers: Legal restrictions. In the US, Congress designed immigration laws to prevents immigration
Two major waves of migration to the US before 1930:
- In the later 1800s, the a greater proportion of Europeans who immigrated to the US came from Southern and easter Europe (No restriction laws)
- 1910, the greatest proportion of immigrants in the US came from northern and western Europe
Immigration quota: limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the US through a national origins quota
Selective immigrationL in which individuals with certain backgrounds (criminal record, poor health, subversive activities) are barred from entering
Major wave of migration to the US that we are experiencing today: Refugee policies and guest worker policies over the last three decades allowed many more immigrants than the limitations set down
The US immigration quotas changes in the 1940s and 1950s: Congress modified the restrictions on immigrations to the US. Gave China equal status to that of European countries, and Japan later the same. Immigration began to rise up again
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Changes in the US immigration policy in regard to asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and legal immigrants since 9/11: US detained anyone from one of the 33 countries Al Qaeda was operating in, or any other terrorist group. The Justice Department can detain any illegal immigrant, even without ties to a terrorist group. The Mexican fence is another response. Stepping up inspections and questioning at travel checkpoints.
Amelia Potter
Hour 5
Chapter 3 Notes