Migration
The movement of any multicellular animate life from onelocationto another. Vari-
ous species of insects, birds, and mammals all migrate, but the discussion here will
focus on human migration.Populationgeographers and demographers study the
migration of people because this movement transpires across space and directly
influences the dynamics of population growth in many parts of the world.Homo
sapiens sapiens, or modern humans, have migrated throughout their history, at times
in quite large groups. Anthropologists who support the “out of Africa hypothesis”
(sometimes called the “candelabra theory”) believe that modern humans populated
theEarthover many centuries by migrating from a central location in eastern
Africa, starting about 50,000 years ago. If accurate, this would represent the largest
and most important migration in human history, but there are many additional epi-
sodes of massive migration in the human experience. Migration may be temporary
or permanent, as some people migrate to another place for a few months or years,
but return to their point of origin after some period of time. Migration within a
developing country’s borders often takes place between thecore and periphery,
as people move to urban areas seeking economic opportunity, but often must settle
insquatter settlements. Migrants frequently cross internationalboundaries, either
legally or illegally, and controlling the level of migration, regulating who is allowed
to migrate, determining the status of illegal migrants and other aspects of migration
policy often become important and controversial political issues in many countries.
In the United States, policy decisions aimed at controlling illegal migration have
recently received a great deal of attention at the federal level as well as in some
states located near the border with Mexico.
People relocate from one place to another for a great range of reasons. In many
historical instances, thousands or even millions of people were forced to migrate
against their will. Some well-known cases of such forced migration include the
so-called “Babylonian captivity” of the Jewish people in the sixth century BCE,
and the enslavement and transport of 8 to 10 million Africans from their home
continent to the New World from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Many others move
to flee religious or political oppression. Today the majority of those relocating
are economic migrants, who seek better wages and living conditions, either within
the confines of thenation-statethey live in or abroad. Some economic migrants
represent seasonal laborers, who frequently are employed to harvest certain
labor-intensive agricultural products, as is the case with sugar cane harvests in
some Caribbean countries. Generalizations about migratory motivation are diffi-
cult to support, given the various types and rationales for migration and the many
different historical circumstances in which movement has occurred. The geogra-
pher Everett Lee developed thepush-pull conceptin attempting to identify228 Migration