Migration and urbanization

1. Motivations for migration
Migration and Urbanization
(MA 3rd Semester)
Kanhaiya Sapkota
Central Department of Geography
Tribhuvan University

2. Difference between Immigration and Emigration
Immigration Emigration
Meaning Change of a person’s residence to a new country where
they are not natives or possess citizenship.
Leaving a person’s country of
citizenship to settle in another
country
Example Strict immigration laws can prevent people from relocating
to the US or any country.
One of the major reasons for
emigration is the lack of
employment opportunities.

3. Meanings of Emigration and Immigration
• Though both terms sound the same, they mean totally different things. Immigration is the term that refers to
a change of a person’s residence to a new country in which they have no citizenship rights. Immigration
can be based on the idea of seeking refuge/work in another country or family reunification. The process
of immigration can be difficult and involves many factors such as the skill set required for the job, age
restriction, and waiting periods.
• Emigration is the process in which people leave their country of citizenship to live in another country.
There are many reasons why someone might want to emigrate, and one of them would be to start a new
life in another country where there are more opportunities.

4. • What is migration? Immigration and emigration - YouTube
• The World Migration Report 2020 (iom.int)
• Migrants try to force entry into US at Mexico border – YouTube
• The DARK REALITY of Illegal Migration to USA and Europe from Nepal
- YouTube

5. Why do people migrate?
People migrate for many
reasons, ranging from
security, demography,
and human rights to
poverty and climate
change.
Push and pull factors
Push factors are the reasons
people leave a country.
Pull factors are the reason they
move to a particular country. There
are three major push and pull
factors.

6. Socio-political factors
• Torture/discrimination because of one's ethnicity, religion,
race, politics, or culture can push people to leave their
country. Example - Rohingya people
• A major factor is war, conflict, government
persecution/harassment or there being a significant risk of
them.
• Those fleeing armed conflict, human rights violations, or
persecution are more likely to be humanitarian refugees.
• This will affect where they settle as some countries have more
liberal approaches to humanitarian migrants than others.
• In the first instance, these individuals are likely to move to the
nearest safe country that accepts asylum seekers.

7. Glimps
e
of
migrant
s

8. Demographic and economic factors
• Demographic change determines how people move and
migrate.
• A growing or shrinking, aging or youthful population has an
impact on economic growth and employment opportunities in
the countries of origin or migration policies in the destination
countries.
• Demographic and economic migration is related to labor
standards, unemployment, and the overall health of a
country’s economy.
• Pull factors include higher wages, better employment
opportunities, a higher standard of living, and educational
opportunities.
• If economic conditions are not favorable and appear to be at
risk of declining further, a more significant number of

9. • According to the UN International Labor Organization, migrant
workers - defined as people who migrate with a view to being
employed - stood at roughly 164 million worldwide in 2017 and
represented nearly two-thirds of international migrants.
Almost 70% were found in high-income countries, 18.6% in
upper-middle-income countries, 10.1% in lower-middle-income
countries, and 3.4% in low-income countries.

10. Environmental factors
• The environment has always been a driver of migration, as
people flee natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, and
earthquakes.
• However, climate change is expected to exacerbate extreme
weather events, meaning more people could be on the move.
• According to the International Organization for Migration,
“Environmental migrants are those who for the reason of
sudden or progressive changes in the environment that
adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to
leave their habitual homes, either temporarily or permanently,
and who move either within their country or abroad.”
• It is hard to estimate how many environmental migrants there
are globally due to factors such as population growth, poverty,

13. Background
• SO…………………….. How can we identify the different reasons that
mobilize individuals under different conditions?
• Like other forms of demographic behavior, migration may be
viewed as an aggregate phenomenon or from the perspective of the
individual.
• With the former approach, patterns, and trends in migration may
be identified, distinguishing characteristics of migrants may be
revealed, and socioeconomic or ecological factors associated with
systems of population movement may be analyzed.
• Such research provides a fundamental understanding of migration
as an aspect of demographic change.
• It does not, however, satisfactorily explain mobility choices at
the micro level, i.e., the decision to move or to stay and

14. • To understand such migration choice behavior, it is
necessary to adopt the perspective of the individual,
whereby perceived alternatives come into play.
• Therefore, in migration cases there are two broad
psychological aspects revealed; i.e “determinants” and
“motivations (reasons for moving)”
• Motives are often identified in terms of the goal toward which
behavior is directed and usually refer to the personal or
situational strength of goal-oriented behavioral tendencies.
• Taylor (1969) and Pryor (1975), among others, have pointed
out the need to integrate societal-level factors and
individual-level motives for an adequate understanding of
migration decision-making and subsequent behavior.

15. • Taylor emphasizes that area and community opportunities
form a context for psychosocial determinants such as motives.
• Pryor questions whether answers people give to the question
"Why did you move?" constitute analytically valid microlevel
motives.
• Bogue (1977) has pointed out that the traditional "push-pull"
framework has limited utility for micro-level research and
must be replaced with a cost-benefit or value-disvalue
approach which emphasizes the particular combination of
economic and noneconomic forces that the individual
perceives in migration decision-making.

16. • More explicit treatment of motives related to migration may
be found in other schemes. For example, the general "push-
pull" continuum was basic to George's (1970) classification of
international migration into two forms:
(1) moves caused by necessity or obligations, and
(2) moves caused by needs.
• The first type of moves related to area-of-origin political or
religious (push) factors for racial, religious, or national
subgroups, whereas the second type of moves stemmed from
economic pressures from the area of origin (push factors)
accompanied by the economic opportunities (pull factors)
from the area of destination.

17. • The importance of economic and noneconomic factors was
also emphasized in a typology of migration.
• The basic categories of their typology were rural-urban spatial
relationships and differing time spans of mobility (circular or
more permanent migration).
• This differentiation of time span involved in mobility is also
important for the developing-country cityward migrants - into
six types: seasonal migrants, sporadic short-term migrants,
target migrants, cyclic migrants, working-life migrants,
permanent migrants. For each type of migrant, different
motivational factors may be adduced.

18. Major dimension of Petersen’s classification considered the "class
of migration," described as:
(1) primitive migration, where innovating and conservative
movements are largely attributable to man's inability to cope
with natural forces;
(2) forced or impelled migration, where the primary causal agent
is the state or some functionally equivalent social institution;
(3) free migration, where the will of migrants either to achieve
the new or to retain what they have had is the decisive
element in the decision to move; and
(4) mass migration, where innovating or conservative movements
become a style or an established or semiautomatic behavior.

19. Motivational approaches of migration
1. Migration Differentials and Selectivity
2. Volume, Direction, and Distance Models
3. Ecological Theory and Migration
4. Lee's Theory of Migration
5. Systems Approach to Migration
6. The Mobility Transition Hypothesis
7. Economic Maximization Theory
8. The Economic Motive in Household Decision Models
9. The Social Mobility/Social Status Migration Motive
10. The Residential Satisfaction Motive
11. Maintaining Community-Based Social and Economic Ties
12. Family and Friend Influences as Motives for Migration
13. The Motive of Life-Style Preferences
14. "Reasons for Moving" Responses

20. 1. Migration Differentials and Selectivity
• Much of the migration literature is directed toward
explanatory or predictive patterns of population aggregates
(i.e. , youth, aged, income levels) or migration between
geographic areas.
• The most frequently researched differential factors include
age, education, and occupation, although other variables such
as sex, life-cycle stage, fertility, home ownership, race and
ethnic origin, and labor force status also differentiate
migrants from non-migrants in specific times and places.

21. 2. Volume, Direction, and Distance Models
• Another subset of the migration literature that does not identify
migration motives focuses on the volume, direction, and distance
of spatial moves between areas. Among the most important efforts
in this field is the gravity concept model (Zipf 1946).
• This model basically hypothesizes that migration is directly related
to the size of the relevant origin and destination populations and
inversely related to distance.
• Although the intellectual roots of the gravity model lie in physical
science principles, the relationship to spatial organization is
through the concept of central place theory.

22. • In contrast to the gravity model, Stouffer (1940 and 1960)
suggested that population movement in space was attributable to
the number of opportunities available over a specified distance.
Factors such as number of labor force opportunities and housing
vacancies become key components of this explanatory system
which Galle and Taeuber (1966) found to be highly predictive of
inter metropolitan area migration streams.

23. 3. Ecological Theory and Migration
• Motives for migration are also largely absent from the "ecological"
approach to migration.
• A basic tenet of human ecology is that a population will tend to
redistribute itself through the vital processes and through
migration so as to achieve a balance between population size and
life chance.
• Thus migration is a dynamic process for population change in areas
through which an equilibrium is maintained.
• Viewing migration as a population response forces the ecologist to
seek causes of movement in the physical and social environment
without reference to individual motives or values.

24. • While it is legitimate to approach migration analysis from the 'individual
perspective one must bear in mind that values and motives are
themselves part of the behavior, and as such, should be explained
rather than be used as the explanation.
• The major explanatory components in the ecological approach are
indicators of the level and change in technology, environment,
organization, and population।
• From the numerous "ecological" analyses of migration, organizational and
environmental variables tend to be the most prominent sources of direct
influence on country and/or metropolitan area net migration patterns.
• The findings from this perspective can be compared with those of the
economic theory which emphasizes the impact of income-based
differentials as major explanatory factors for migration.
• As in the economic approach, the operationalization of testable models

25. 4.Lee's Theory of Migration
• Lee's (1966) general framework for analyzing internal migration, based
on Ravenstein's earlier analysis (1885, 1889), provide s the basis for
considering social and economic cause s of migration with an implicit
push-pull perspective.
• Lee, however , does not conceptualize the motivational dimension in
migration decision making in a concrete way. Relying primarily on
macrolevel variables, Lee hypothesize s that the factors that enter the
decision to migrate are (1) factors associated with the area of origin, (2)
factors associated with the area(s) of destination, (3) intervening
obstacles, and (4) personal factors.
• Each origin and destination is hypothesized to have a set of positive and
negative factors which attract and repel migrants. The greater the
differences among these push and pull factors, the higher the probability

26. • Intervening obstacles limit migration to those persons with the ability to
overcome these difficulties.
• The positive and negative effects at the area of origin, those at the area
of destination, and the intervening obstacles vary with the potential
migrant's personal characteristics, such as education, skill level, sex,
race, personality, and aspirations (objectives/goals, etc.).
• With these elements Lee generate s several basic hypotheses concerning
the volume of migration between areas, the development of streams and
counter streams, and the characteristics of persons in migration streams.
• Clearly this framework assumes that the potential migrant has a
perception of the positive and negative influences at the areas of origin
and destination and that he reaches a decision against the background of
goals and expectations as well as uncertainty and risks.

27. 5. Systems Approach to Migration
• While fully recognizing the importance of understanding why people
move, the systems approach to migration developed by Mabogunje
(1970) does not address motivations for migration as such. In one of the
most comprehensive theories of the social and environmental contexts of
migration in developing countries, this approach postulates that rural-
urban migration is controlled by systematic interrelationships of rural
control systems, rural adjustment mechanisms, urban control systems,
urban adjustment mechanisms, positive and negative feedback channels,
migration channels, and specific stimuli to migration.
• These stimuli include overpopulation and environmental deterioration in
the rural areas (push factor) and the allure or attraction of the city (pull
factor).

28. 6. The Mobility Transition Hypothesis
• Motives are an assumed element in Zelinsky's (1971) statement on the
mobility transition.
• The hypothesis of mobility transition states that "there are definite,
patterned regularities in the growth of personal mobility through space-
time during recent history, and these regularities comprise an essential
component of the modernization process“.
• Zelinsky’s argument is that mobility is a defining feature of modernity
and one can find regular patterns of that mobility in time and space.

29. • Central to his argument is a five stage demographic transition:
(1) The premodern traditional society (mortality equals natality in the long
term and population remains stable),
(2) The early transitional society (slight increase in fertility is accompanied
by a sharp drop in mortality and the population increases rapidly),
(3) The late transitional society (the population continues to increase but at
lower rates than in the previous phase due to a decline in fertility, slow
first, rapid later, and a slowing decline in mortality),
(4) The advanced society (after a marked decline, the evolution of fertility
flattens and remains at low levels. Mortality rates start to converge with
fertility in the medium and long term and the population stabilizes or
grows at a low rate),
(5) A future super-advanced society (difficult to make plausible predictions
but it is sensible to expect careful birth management informed by
personal (individual) and political objectives. Mortality may decrease
slightly but not significantly).