Step + chain migration

What is step migration?

Idea that people will move to the next largest settlement that has positive place utility for them.

1. During initial move (rural to relatively small urban) migrants may develop skills and increase their knowledge.

2. May become aware of better employment opportunities and develop the personal contacts, that are so important in the migration process.

3. For those working in formal sector a move up the urban hierarchy may be linked to a promotion within the company or a transfer linked to public centre employment.

4. Another important form of urban-urban migration is from town and cities in economic periphery areas to urban areas in economic core.

Difference in trends between LICs and HICs in regards to migration along the hierachy

LICs follow a pattern up the hierarchy

HICs increasingly are showing more flows down the hierarchy with counter-urbanisation + urban-rural flows.

What is chain migration

A process that occurs when, after one or a small number of pioneering migrants have led the way, others from the same rural community follow.

‘movement in which prospective migrants learn of opportunities, are provided with transportation, and have initial accommodation and employment arranged by means of primary social relationships with previous migrants’

Why are some governments concerned about chain migration

can lead to an uncontrolled flow

Chain migration in the UK

accounted for some significant flows, particularly from within the EU

due to very similar points of origin, these migrants often end up living in geographical proximity, creatin residential segregation by ethnicity

2008 - 81% of visas were for family unification

2018 - 44% of UK’s foreign born population had ‘family’ as their main reason for migration