The migration is the displacement of a population (human or animal) from a place of origin to another destination and brings with it a change from the usual place of residence in the case of people or of habitat in the case of migratory animal species. According to the above there are two types of migrations: human and animal migrations. The migrations of human beings are studied by demography as well as by the geography of the population. And the migration of animals is studied in the fields of biology (zoology), biogeography and ecology. The articles that can be consulted in this regard are:
- Human migration presents two approaches: emigration, from the point of view of the place or country that the population leaves from; and immigration, from the point of view of the place or country that the migrants arrive at.
- Animal migration :periodic displacements, seasonal or permanent, of animal species, from one habitat to another.
History
editHuman history has been a history of large migrations, each migratory movement has caused that the human was displaced from his places. This process of constant migration was the natural condition of life for the original tribal societies. The migration from Africa to Asia and later to the rest of the world began some 70,000 years ago and we can still say that it is happening.
When talking about migration it is important to remember the historical periods that preceded the current migration. Only from a historical context and by taking into account the economic and social variables, will we be able to understand the reasons that people emigrate, people originate from every continent and arrive at their destination country with the expectation to remain for a period of time or, perhaps, to build a life there.
Human history references large cultural, economic, geographic and political movements that started to displace a large portion of the population, as many spontaneous as there are forced.
- The expansion of humanity began prehistory, reaching almost all the habitable regions.
- In ancient times, Greece, Carthage and Rome organised emigration flows as a method to establish the necessary colonies in order to expand the trade of the mother country, which was their main means of survival.
- The Middle Ages lasted a millennium in Europe and was witness to three massive migratory processes: the barbaric invasions, the expansion of the Islam and the formation of the Byzantine Empire, which was replaced, during the Modern Age, by the Turkish Empire (or Ottoman Empire).
- Since the discovery of America, millions of people emigrated to the new territories. The north United States are the best example of a territory populated by successive waves of immigration.
- In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution, which began in Europe the century before, started a period of extraordinary growth in colonization with the goal of obtaining the raw materials needed for this industrialization, in part by European countries in the process of industrializing.
- And in the 20th century (and into the present century), the extraordinary progress of media and transportation (cars, trains, airplanes, ships, etc.) have made massive migrations of people on a global scale possible in a way that has never been seen before. Dealing with socioeconomic migrations, triggered by a process of increasing inequality between the developed, underdeveloped, and developing countries, especially in this last case, by bad and even awful governments.
Important Processes in the History of the Migrations
editTheories of Migration
editTypes of theories
editMigration has been analysed from the point of view of several academic disciplines, today there exists a combination of these highly specialized theories. Unfortunately, this specialization has not always benefited the interdisciplinary dialogue and the more holistic vision of the migration process.[1] In particular, the economic approaches, with their application of very sophisticated and mathematically formed models, have tended to create, practically, a separate a field of studies from the other disciplines.[2]
In spite of this diversification and specialization, some parameters can be established to group together the distinct currently used approaches. A simple way to classify these approaches is putting emphasis in the specific aspects of the migratory phenomenon. For example, there are approaches that emphasize what's called “expulsion factors” (push factors in academic terminology) that push migrants to leave their respective regions or countries (wars, economic difficulties, religious persecutions, environmental disasters, etc.). On the other hand, there are approaches that emphasize the “attraction factors” (pull factors) that call migrants to certain regions or countries (better income, democracy, peace, access to land and favorable living conditions in general).
Another way of grouping the diverse approaches, that follows, is giving attention to the level of analysis offered. For example, there are analysis that focus primarily on the aggregated or structural aspects (comparative levels of development, standards of life, demographic conditions, big sociocultural changes, communication and transportation technology, etc.) and thus they can be called explanations or “macro” approach. These were the first theories on the migratory phenomenon and its explanatory strength is remarkable on a general level. However, the decision to migrate does not involve all those that are affected by the same macro factors nor can it be deduced in an axiomatic way for some structural disparities. Thus other approaches have tried to understand the decision to migrate on an individual level or from the human surroundings that directly influence it. We are thus facing approaches that can be called “micro” or oriented to understand the why of the particular decision to migrate. However, during the last decades greater interest is being put in the intermediate level, or mediator between the structural conditions and the individual decisions,in a perspective we call “meso”. It tries to fundamentally understand the social networks, the organizations and specific institutions that make migration possible. The migratory networks or chains have been, especially, a big focus of interest in the meso perspective.[3] Criminal organizations have also been studied at this level.[4]
The following are examples of these three types of approaches, macro, micro and meso, trying in this way to understand the contributions that each one has to help understand migrations.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Para buenas introducciones a los enfoques existentes véanse PNUD (2009), Superando barreras: Movilidad y desarrollo humanos (http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2009_ES_Complete.pdf); Joan Lacomba (2001), “Teorías y prácticas de la inmigración: De los modelos explicativos a los relatos migratorios”, Scripta Nova 94/11 (http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn-94-3.htm); y Bob Sutcliffe (1998), Nacido en otra parte, Bilbao: Hegoa (http://www.bantaba.ehu.es/obs/ocont/obsinter/doc/nacotrpar/).
- ^ Una amplia presentación de las teorías económicas y sus resultados empíricos se encuentra en Guillermo de la Dehesa (2008), Comprender la Inmigración, Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
- ^ Véase Rocío García Abad (2001), “El papel de las redes migratorias en las migraciones de corta y media distancia”, Scripta Nova No 94/11; y Graciela Malgesini (1998), Cruzando Fronteras, Barcelona: Icaria.
- ^ Véase por ejemplo Francisco Javier Vélez Alcalde (2008), “Pateras, cayucos y mafias transfronterizas en África: el negocio de las rutas atlánticas hacia las Islas Canarias”, Madrid: Real Instituto Elcano.
External links
edit[[Category:Demography]] [[Category:Human geography]] [[Category:Human migration]] [[Category:Geography terminology]]