Population Migration

• Voluntary/ Reluctant/ Involuntary Migration

• International/ Internal Migration
• Chain Migration
• Refugees/ Asylum seekers
• Internally Displaced People (IDPs)
• Push/ Pull Factors
Case Studies:
• Remittances • Trail of Tears
• Cuba
• Short term migrants/ guest workers • Sahel
• Amnesty • Three Gorges
• Central American
• Sanctuary Cities Caravan
• Diaspora
• Brain Drain/ Gain
Think about migration…
• What migration has happened in your family,
whether in your lifetime, or the previous generation?
• Where did they emigrate from? Why?
• Why did they choose that new location?
Example
• Three of my four grandparents came from England. My
paternal grandmother journeyed alone to Salmon Arm, B.C.
in the spring of 1914. Within a few days of arriving, she
married my paternal grandfather, a man she hadn’t seen for
9 years. He had homesteaded 160 acres north of
Kamloops, a property only accessible after a day long trip
by horse.
 Human Migration

African Cradle
Most geneticists and
paleoanthropologists
agree that modern humans
arose some 200,000 years
ago in north-eastern Africa.

Earliest modern human

fossils were found in Omo
Kibish, Ethiopia.
Immigration: Global Hot Spots (2007)

Territory size is based on the number of international immigrants that live there.
What would this cartogram look like today?
Migration today
• The caravan heading from Central America to the U.S.A.
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/migrant-caravan-us-army-military-
report-reach-border-trump-mexico-central-america-immigration-a8615851.html

• Trevor Noah: A Migrant Caravan Has Donald Trump In A

Panic April, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APKXg1dA2Ds
• Nov. 3 Saturday Night Live
https://globalnews.ca/video/4628220/saturday-night-live-spoofs-migrant-caravan-issue
Push Factors
• Lack of economic opportunities (low wages, unemployment)
• Food shortages
• Overcrowded living conditions
• High crime rate
• Wartime conditions
• Degradation of agricultural land
• Depletion of forests or water
• Political persecution
• Lack of religious freedom
• Natural disaster
Pull Factors
• High wages
• High standard of living
• Havens from political or religious persecution
• Plentiful resources (fresh water, agricultural land)
• Good educational opportunities
• Low crime rates
• Favourable climate
 Kinds of Migration

• Forced/ Involuntary Migration

• Reluctant Migration
• Voluntary Migration
• International/ Internal Migration
• Chain Migration
 Forced/ Involuntary Migration
• Often caused by persecution,
development, or exploitation
• The largest and most
devastating forced migration
in human history was the
African slave trade
• 12 - 30 million Africans were
transported from their homes to
various parts of the Americas
and the Middle East
• Taken against their will and
forced to relocate
Forced Migration: Slave Trade
Forced Migration: Trail of Tears
“… exchange [of] lands, which they have to
• Indian Removal Act of spare and we want, for necessaries, which
1830 forced the we have to spare and they want.”
relocation of Native Thomas Jefferson
Americans living east of
the Mississippi River to
lands west of the river
• “Five Civilized Tribes”
Chickasaw, Choctaw,
Creek, Seminole, and
Cherokee
• By 1837, 46,000 Native
Americans had been
removed from their
homelands thereby
opening 25 million acres
for settlement
Trail of Tears
The Passage
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Beginning of the Trail of Tears

‘Weeping wall' represents the tears

shed as the Cherokee were driven
from their homes and moved along
the Trail of Tears
Geopolitical Cause for Migration
Vietnamese to US (1975)
• Capital city Saigon taken over by Communists
Geopolitical Cause of Migration
War in Iraq (2003-2011)
• 2 million people felt so unsafe that they left Iraq to
become international involuntary migrants in neighbouring
Syria and Jordan.
• 2 million became internal involuntary migrants moving
within the country due to the conflicts among the Shias,
Sunnis and Kurds.

Baghdad in 2003
Three Gorges Dam
Forced migration is not
always violent:
• One of the largest
involuntary migrations in
history was caused by
development.
• In the 1990s, the
construction of China's
Three Gorges Dam
displaced nearly 1.5
million people and put
13 cities underwater.
• Although new housing
was provided for those
forced to move, many
people were not
compensated fairly.
Involuntary Migration
Environmental Causes
• Eco-migration
• Irish potato blight & subsequent migration to America in
the 1840’s
• Dust Bowl relocation to California in the 1930’s
Dust Bowl

• Deep plowing almost eliminated the native grasses of the

Plains – these Indigenous grasses keep moisture in the
soil during dry periods.
• When drought struck the Great Plains regions in 1930, the
high winds common to the Plains blew the dried-up topsoil
– now no longer held in place by native grasses – into
massive dust storms that moved across the land to
swallow farms and settlements.
• Affected US and Canada until 1939
Video 2 mins. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYOmjQO_UMw
Involuntary Migration
• Desertification of the Sahel, southern edge of the Sahara
• degradation of land has forced people to relocate

Nigeria
Central African
Republic
 Desertification
• Land degradation in arid, semi-arid, & dry sub-humid areas
• Caused primarily by human activities & climatic variations
• Dryland ecosystems cover over 1/3 of world's land area;
extremely vulnerable to over-exploitation and inappropriate
land use.

Land’s fertility undermined by:

• deforestation
• overgrazing
• bad irrigation practices

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDWS6AzEkE0
Geopolitical Cause of Migration
Freedom Flotillas: Cubans to the US (1980)
• For 8 months Castro opened the port of Mariel to anyone
who wanted to leave Cuba
• Mariel boatlift: 125,000 Cubans migrated to US in
hundreds of small craft that originated in Florida
• Aided by US Coast Guard, only 27 drowned
Geopolitical Cause for Migration
Cubans to the US
• Open-arms policy for Cubans fleeing their homeland
• 90 miles from Cuba to Florida
• 1994 Clinton announced
that Cubans interdicted at
sea by the U.S. Coast
Guard would be detained
at Guantánamo Bay and
repatriated to Cuba
US Embargo on Cuba
President Obama started normalizing
relationships with Cuba
US Embargo on Cuba Continues

The General Assembly’s vote on the Cuban-sponsored

resolution on the “Necessity of ending the economic,
commercial and financial embargo imposed by the U.S.A.
against Cuba” was 189-2 with no abstentions.
The U.S. and Israel voted “no” and Moldova and Ukraine
did not vote.
November 1, 2018 “Our reason for the embargo is and has
always been Cuba’s denial of freedom and
the denial of the most basic human rights
for the Cuban people.”
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley
Reluctant Migration
A form of migration in which
individuals are not forced to move,
but do so because of an unfavorable
situation at their current location.
• Cubans legally and illegally
immigrated to the U.S.A. following
the 1959 Cuban Revolution

• Rohingya
refugees use
home-made
rafts to flee
Myanmar and
get to
Bangladesh
Reluctant migration: Hurricanes
Example: Internal
relocation of many
Louisiana residents after
Hurricane Katrina
• Many people decided to
either move further from
the coast or out-of-state.
Their homes were
destroyed, the state's
economy was in ruin,
and sea levels continued
to rise.
Gentrification
At the local level, a
change in ethnic or
socioeconomic
conditions can cause
people to reluctantly
move
• The housing in a
previously poor area is
renovated by wealthier
people. The area
becomes popular, the
rents rise and the original
inhabitants can’t afford to
live in the area anymore.
Voluntary Migration
Migration based on one's free
will and initiative.
• The strongest factors
influencing people to
voluntarily move are the
desire to offer better
opportunities for the children
and employment
opportunities.
• Other factors include:
• change in life's course (getting
married, empty-nest, retirement)
• politics (from a liberal state to a
conservative state, states that
recognize gay-marriage)
• individual personality (suburban
life to city life)
Voluntary Migration
“Thousands of Africans try to make the journey to Europe
each year as illegal migrants - risking people smugglers,
deserts, sea crossings and the possibility of being sent
home, all for the dream of a better life.” BBC 2007
 Voluntary
Migration
•More than a million
migrants and refugees
crossed into Europe in
2015
•Many were fleeing
wars in Asia and the
Middle East
•This sparked a crisis
as countries struggled
to cope with the influx
•It created division in
the EU over how best
to deal with resettling
people.
 Voluntary Migration

Sub-Saharan
migrants try to climb
up a 6m high parallel
border fence into
Melilla, the Spanish
enclave in north Africa
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/news/2017/
03/migrants-hustle-spanish-enclave-ceuta-
170311143354271.html
Voluntary vs. Involuntary vs. Reluctant
Migration

Which type of migration are represented by the following?

• ~12 million people came from Africa to USA between 1500 and 1810
• Convicts settled Australia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
• Blacks moved to cities in the northeastern USA after WWI
• Relocation of non-Russians to Siberia gulags during Stalin’s era 1930s & 1940s
• Japanese moved to interior of BC during WW II
• Palestinians to Jordan, Syria, & Egypt after the creation of Israel
• Vietnamese to US after Vietnam was taken over by Communists in 1975
• Kurds relocated to Turkey after 1st Gulf War
• Muslims from N. Africa go to France & other western European countries
• ~220,000 people immigrate to Canada every year.
Migration Overview
The Economist 2009 video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcoOENLfpUI