5.1 Why do People Migrate?

What is Migration?

• Human mobility has transformed the planet through the spread of cultures and ideas.

Mobility: All types of movement from one location to another, whether temporary or permanent or over short or long distances

Circulation: Temporary, repetitive movements that recur on a regular basis

• This can be as short-distance as walking to a bus stop everyday or as long-distance as the seasonal routines of farm workers traveling to spend winters in warmer locations.

Human migration: The permanent movement of people from one place to another

• Human movement affects the population of both the place of origin and the destination

Emigration: Movement away from a locatio

Immigration: Movement into a location

• Any given migration is both an emigration and an immigration, depending on the standpoint.

Net migration: The difference between the number of emigrants and immigrants in a location, such as a city or a country

• If more people emigrate than immigrate, the net migration is negative and the overall population decreases.

• Long-distance migrations can be dangerous, time consuming, and demanding. Anyone can die trying to migrate. So why do people risk it?

• Trends have been identified to explain where and why people migrate.

  • Ernst Ravenstein concluded that there are factors that “push” and “pull” people to and from any given location. He also noticed that population size and distance affect migration.

Gravity model: A model that predicts the interaction between two or more places; geographers derived the model from Newton’s law of universal gravitation

• When used to describe migration patterns, the model suggests that as the population of a city increases, migration to the city increases, and as the distance to a city grows, migration to that city decreases.

  • Also an application of distance decay theory.

• While economic circumstances play a major role in migratory decisions, environmental and political conditions, as well as demographic and cultural factors, also drive migration.

Push and Pull Factors

• Typically, a combination of factors drive people to migrate.

• For example, there are many factors driving previous agriculturalists to migrate from their rural communities.

  • Climate change is creating a decline in agricultural productivity, the use of machines has lessened the need for human laborers, there are property-right and border conflicts, inheritance issues, eviction fears.

  • These factors discourage people living in rural areas from staying there and push them to migrate.

Push factor: A negative cause that compels someone to leave a location

• Sometimes a push factor peoples migrants no choice but to move, like deadly conflict or destructive natural disasters.

Pull factor: A positive cause that attracts someone to a new location

• This can be a stable government, safe neighborhoods, plentiful job opportunities, and more.

• Migrants perceive push factors more accurately than pull factors, being more familiar with their home and its problems than their potential destination.

  • Migrants also tend to have slightly simplified or outdated perceptions of pull factors.

  • For example, if a safe neighborhood has recently seen some rise in crime, a migrant isn’t likely to know of this change and still hold a positive opinion of the area.

• Perceptions of locations are heavily impacted by media and social networks.

• Technology has transformed migration is a myriad of ways, both negative and positive.

  • Connectivity can help many migrants choose where, when, and how to migrate.

  • Technology also offers migrants access to information about local resources, such as immigration lawyers and available health-care options.

• Misinformation on the internet is also a factor, however, and can be problematic for finding safe passage and knowing who to rely on when in a new community.

Economic Factors

• Most people migrate for economic reasons, to support themselves and/or their family.

• Stable employment and higher wages are some of the strongest pull factors that affect many populations, such as recent college graduates searching for career-starting opportunities and laborers looking for seasonal and permanent work in other countries.

• Economic conditions are sometimes push factors. Job loss and the lack of employment opportunities force people to look elsewhere for work.

Cultural Factors

• Cultural reasons for migration are often push factors involving discrimination, persecution, and political instability resulting from cultural diversity.

  • Lack of religious freedom, racism, and unequal treatment have driven humans from their homelands for centuries.

• More so than other factors, a single cultural reason can be a pull for some and a push for others.

  • For example, people tend to gravitate to areas that share their religious beliefs.

  • A country with a national religion may appeal to one person if they share that religion, but would discourage someone of a different belief.

  • This can be applied to a number of situations and isn’t exclusive to cultural factors either.

• Gender roles and discrimination also affect migration.

  • Since most people move for economic reasons, gender roles in terms of earning potential and responsibility for the family often determine who will migrate.

Demographic Factors

• Demographics, the characteristics of a population such as age, education level, and geographic location, often play a role in migration.

  • For example, some people located in rural communities migrate because of lack of access to health care.

• Rapidly growing population and imbalanced gender ratios also spur migration.

• Large populations competing for limited employment opportunities and resources push people to move to less-populated regions.

Political Conditions and Conflict

• Historically, the promises of peace and freedom have served as compelling pull factors for countless migrants.

Environmental Conditions

• A variety of environmental factors can also influence migration decisions, pushing or pulling people to relocate.

• A desirable climate or landscape can pull migrants to certain regions.

  • Adverse physical conditions, including intense heat, drought, or substantial flooding, can push people from affected regions.

• Scientific evidence indicates that climate change contributes to crop failure and water scarcity, intensifies storms, and causes sea levels to rise, displacing people from their homes around the world.

• Some people will adapt to the new environmental conditions by voluntarily leaving home.

  • Others will be forced to become migrants as more areas, especially island, coastal, or desert communities, become uninhabitable.

5.2 Types of Migration

Voluntary Migration

Voluntary Migration: Type of migration in which people make the choice to move to a new place

Forced Migration: Type of migration in which people are compelled to move by economic, political, environmental, or cultural factors

• People voluntarily migrate for many reasons.

  • Push factors such as joblessness or drought might cause them to leave their current home; pull factors like economic opportunity or a mild climate might draw them to a new home.

• Whatever reasons migrants have for moving, these factors must outweigh the inconvenience of having to travel with everything they own or to leave possessions behind, as well as the uncertainty of what life will be like in the new location.

• Crossing international borders often requires immigrants to travel long distances under difficult conditions, to seek permission to enter a destination country (and risk denial,) and learn to adapt to the new culture once settled.

  • The United States hosts the largest number of immigrants (50 million in 2017), followed by countries such as Germany and Russia.

  • The countries losing the most emigrants are India, Mexico, Russia, China, Bangladesh, Syria, Pakistan, and Ukraine.

  • The single largest flow of immigrants from one country to another is from Mexico to the United States.

• People tend to migrate from periphery and semi-periphery countries to core countries with stronger economies.

• Transnational migration: International migration in which people retain strong cultural, emotional, and financial ties with their countries of origin

• It is more common for people to move from place to place within a country than move across borders.

Internal migration: Movement within a country’s borders

• Moving a short distance is significantly easier than moving a long distance, both physically and psychologically.

Friction of Distance: A concept that states that the longer a journey is, the more time, effort, and cost it will involve

• Factors such as language, customs, and climate can present difficult hurdles for international migrants.

• When moving from place to place within a country as internal migrants, however, they may face smaller changes, as people likely speak the same language and have similar traditions.

• Internal voluntary migrations often happen in waves or patterns.

Transhumance: The movement of herds between pastures at cooler, higher elevations during the summer months and lower elevations during the winter

• Transhumance can be international migration if nomads cross national borders.

Chain Migration

• Once immigrants have established themselves, they share information about their new home with people from their place of origin.

  • Family members, friends, or other members of the community often follow in their footsteps.

Chain migration: Type of migration in which people move to a location because others from their community have previously migrated there

• Immigrants who follow others to a new location usually have similar reasons for leaving their home country, and they have an added pull factor—their way has been eased by those who arrived before.

• Chain migration can create ethnic enclaves, as migrants who follow in the footsteps of those before them tend to stick together.

Step Migration

• Migration doesn’t always occur along the most direct route.

  • A migrant may set out to move from a rural farm to a big city but end up living for a time in villages along the way.

Step migration: Series of smaller moves to get to the ultimate destination

• Whether a migration is voluntary or forced, most migrants have limited financial resources that make it necessary to take a long move in smaller steps.

Intervening obstacle: An occurrence that holds migrants back

Intervening opportunity: An occurrence that causes migrants to pause their journey by choice

Rural-to-Urban Migration

• One of the most important migration trends at present is the movement of people from rural areas into cities.

  • People leave rural areas as the agricultural opportunities decline and head to cities where jobs may be easier to find.

  • Cities offer increased access to education and health care.

• Many people, especially women, find more personal freedom in cities than in rural areas.

  • Greater access to reproductive health care promotes empowerment, and the urban lifestyle offers women some independence from their families, which might allow them to escape some of the traditional restrictions placed on them.

• Some of the challenges brought about by urbanization include poverty and inequality, giving rise to difficult conditions for the poor.

• As cities grow more crowded, rural-to-urban migrants—especially those living in poverty—may face such issues as high crime rates, inadequate housing, and pollution.

Guest Workers

Guest workers: A migrant who travels to a new country as temporary labor

• Guest workers are brought in to work jobs that cannot be done by citizens of the host country, usually manual labor, agricultural work, or work in the service industry.

• Guest workers are typically drawn by the opportunity to make more money than they could at home. Many of them send money home to family members or save money for when they return home.

Circular migration: Migration pattern in which migrant workers move back and forth between their country of origin and the destination country where they work temporary jobs

Forced Migration

• Not everyone who leaves their home does so by choice.

• Forced migration occurs when people are compelled to leave their homes by extreme push factors.

  • Conflict, political upheaval, or natural disaster.

  • Persecution due to their ethnicity, religion, or social or political beliefs.

  • Escaping the violence of war.

Refugees: A person who is forced to leave his or her country for fear of persecution or death

• Because of the danger they face at home, refugees may be granted special status when they attempt to enter a new country.

• They can request asylum.

Asylum: The right to protection in a country

Asylum seeker: A migrant seeking refugee status

• It is important to note the difference between refugees and asylum seekers:

  • Refugees cannot go back to their home country for fear of persecution/safety

  • This may also be true for asylum seekers, but they have not yet been granted the title of refugee and the permissions that come with it.

Internally displaced persons: Person who has been forced to flee his or her home but remains within the country’s borders

• Internally displaced persons include those running from conflict and those evacuating their homes because of a natural disaster such as flooding, an earthquake, or a hurricane.

• For people who are forced from their homes, migration can be more dangerous than if it was voluntary.

  • Especially if they’re fleeing from violence, they usually do not have time to prepare properly.

  • They may have to leave with only what they can carry, and don’t know where they’ll end up, or how long until they’ll be safe.

• The transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in history. 10 to 12 million people, including children, were transported from Africa to the Americas against their will.

  • The voyage and life that awaited them in the Americas was horrific, and massive numbers died on the way or soon after arriving.

  • Those who survived were sold into lives of hard labor in hostile climates with masters who saw them as subhuman.

  • The slave trade had a devastating impact on Africa, as well. People lived in fear of capture and depopulation became prevalent.

  • Luckily, slavery hasn’t existed in the same legal way in the U.S. for over 150 years, but slavery still takes place illegally all around the world.

Human trafficking: Defined by the United Nations as “the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or receipt of persons by improper means (such as force, abduction, fraud, or coercion)”

• Victims are often illegally sold into forced labor, domestic servitude, and sexual exploitation.

• Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery, and according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, millions of people are trafficked around the world each year, including within the United States.

• Traffickers prey on vulnerable people, such as homeless and runaway youths, poor immigrants, and people who have suffered physical and psychological trauma.

• They often smuggle their captives across international borders because victims find it more difficult to seek help in a foreign country.

• Nearly every country in the world is affected by human trafficking, either as a country of origin, a country of transit, or a destination country for victims.

The Gray Area

• Despite the terms’ clear definitions, it can at times be difficult to distinguish between voluntary and forced migration.

  • At what point does someone have “no choice” but to leave? Is that limit different for different people?

5.3 Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons

Challenging Obstacles

Obtaining Refugee Status

• Today, refugees can seek asylum in any of the 145 countries that have ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention.

  • The document was created by the United Nations to address the many people displaced by World War II.

  • Originally, the UN defined refugees as people who leave their home countries out of fear of persecution. In 1967, it expanded its definition to include people escaping any conflict or disaster.

• Official refugee status must be granted by the country providing asylum or by an international agency.

• Obtaining refugee status can be a long and difficult process. This is especially true when applicants have little documentation to prove their situation complies with the official definition of a refugee.

  • Factors such as illiteracy, severe trauma, and memory loss can make it difficult for refugees to tell a convincing story.

• Once an asylum seeker is approved for refugee status, the host country is expected to provide civil rights, the right to work, and access to social services.

• Refugee counts have reached a record high in recent years, and less refugees are able to return home.

Repatriate: To return to one’s home country

Top Refugee Countries of Origin

• A large portion of the refugees in the world come from just a few different countries.

  • In 2017, for instance, more than a fifth of the world’s 25.4 million refugees were Palestinians, and two-thirds of the remainder were from Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, or Somalia.

• These countries and their people have been ravaged by war, violence, and persecution.

The Hidden Crisis of IDPs

• News stories about boats full of refugees making dangerous sea crossings or caravans traveling long distances on foot draw attention to the plight of refugees.

• The stories of IDPs do not always receive the same coverage, because they are usually overshadowed by coverage of what they are fleeing.

  • Despite there being more IDPs than refugees, the refugee crisis is much better known by the general public.

• IDPs remain within their country’s borders for a number of reasons.

  • Some choose to stay close to the homes they were forced to leave, hoping the factors that pushed them out will improve.

  • Others don’t have the money or the physical means to make a long journey.

  • Still others might be trapped in the area by the violence or conflict they’re attempting to flee in the first place.

• While refugees rely on the protection of a foreign government for their safety, IDPs remain under the laws—and therefore the protection—of their own government.

  • Sometimes, however, the government is involved in the conflict the IDPs are attempting to flee and is unable or unwilling to provide protection.

  • In addition, armed conflict or an unfriendly government often make it difficult for aid organizations to reach IDPs.

• All of this makes IDPs a particularly vulnerable group.

Climate’s Role

• Changes in environmental conditions—floods, drought, volcanic eruptions—have always spurred migrations.

• But as climate change intensifies these effects, a new category of migrant has emerged: climate refugees.

  • Scientists predict that in the coming years, many people living in coastal areas will be forced to move due to rising sea levels.

• Increasing temperatures are already diminishing agricultural production in some areas, while rising sea levels are taking some farmland out of production.

• Though the term “climate refugee” seems to imply international movement, more than half of the people fleeing natural disasters each year become internally displaced persons.

• Climate change creates new patterns of displacement.

  • Places that people wouldn’t typically flee to are now becoming hot spots of immigration, typically because happens to be the most accessible for climate refugees.

5.4 Migration and Policy

Historical U.S. Migrations

• U.S. policy and government action have influenced a number of important migrations in American history.

  • One of the earliest and most infamous examples of this influence was the Trail of Tears, the forced internal migration of approximately 100,000 native Americans.

• Numerous voluntary migrations have also taken place throughout U.S history.

• Internal migrations happen more frequently than international migrations, due to the friction of distance.

Interregional migration: Movement from one region of the country to another

Intraregional migration: Movement within one region of the country

• In each example, consider how U.S. policy played a role, what unintended effects may have resulted, and whether the goal behind the policy was achieved.

The Great Migration

• The Great Migration was a voluntary internal migration that occurred during the 20th century in the United States.

• Between 1916 and 1970, more than 6 million African Americans moved from the South to industrialized cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and West.

  • When it began, 90 percent of African Americans lived in the South.

  • By the 1970s, 47 percent of African Americans lived in the North, Midwest, and West.

• Strong push factors moved African Americans away from the south: Racial prejudice, discrimination, violence and murder, segregation and Jim Crow laws.

  • The main pull factor was economic opportunity, in the form of factory and mill jobs.

• Work opportunities opened up when the United States entered World War I and millions of men enlisted.

Quotas: Limit on the number of immigrants allowed into the country each year

• This slowed the flow of Europeans into northern cities, leaving many jobs open in urban factories.

• News of economic opportunities from growing African-American communities in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore spread among families and friends in southern communities.

  • This caused migration waves to flow steadily from the South.

Kinship links: Networks of relatives and friends

• This move was expensive so many migrants made in stages, stopping to work and gather more money for the next step along the way.

  • Both intervening opportunities and obstacles would pause a migrants journey for months or years.

Somali Migration

• Internal migrations still happen today in the United States. One contemporary example involves a refugee group from Somalia in East Africa.

• Somali refugees have been resettling in the United States since 1990. There are resettlement locations for this group within a number of large cities.

  • After making the first large migration to the US, many Somalians make a second move to other US towns or cities where Somali communities are growing.

• As Somali communities in the United States continue to grow, chain migration plays a stronger role.

  • The increase in Somalis living in a given location causes more kinship links to form.

  • Growing networks of Somali relatives and friends attract even more Somalis to the community.

Hmong Migration

• Another example of internal migration as a secondary migration occurred after Hmong refugees from Laos began moving to the United States in 1975.

• The Hmong had fought alongside U.S. soldiers in Laos during the Vietnam conflict.

  • When the conflict ended, the new Laos government threatened Hmong soldiers and families who had sided with the United States.

• In two decades, more than 200,000 Hmong refugees fled to Thailand and awaited resettlement for up to ten years.

• Most moved to the US, and were widely dispersed.

  • Many made internal secondary migrations to more populated Hmong communities in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

• In light of the many refugees fleeing the Vietnam conflict, it became apparent that American policy was too restrictive in its admission of refugees.

  • The U.S. government quickly enacted the 1975 Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, which allowed 300,000 refugees from Southeast Asia into the country.

What Drives Policy?

• Governments use immigration policy to achieve several purposes.

  • The main goal behind the creation of most immigration policy is to meet labor market needs.

  • A secondary aim is to maintain current levels of immigration.

• Policies are also commonly structured to attract skilled workers, promote the well-being of immigrants and their integration into society, and address illegal immigration.

  • Illegal immigration has recently become an exceedingly complex issue to tackle.

  • Related challenges such as age and gender discrimination, exploitation, and abuse of immigrants are difficult to uncover and address effectively.

• Government policies intended to limit immigration have sometimes focused on the number of immigrants from a certain country or region.

  • These limits may have as much to do with xenophobia as they do with the good of the country.

  • In contrast, loosening quotas on immigrants from specific countries increases population diversity in the host country.

• Contemporary and historical examples of factors that have driven government immigration policy include gender or age, asylum regulations, and other immigration-related legislation.

Risks for Female Immigrants

• Gender and age play a role in the types of opportunities and risks that immigrants face.

• Female immigrants face different opportunities and risks than their male counterparts.

  • This is true even though the numbers of female and male immigrants are about equal.

• If women are moving from a region with restrictive laws or traditions, their new home might offer more access to education, jobs, and status.

• In general, female immigrants are more vulnerable to and targeted for violence, human trafficking, and sexual discrimination than males.

Asylum in the European Union

• The European Union’s early-21st century refugee crisis was worsened by a policy requiring asylum seekers to remain in the first EU country they entered and stay there to apply for asylum.

  • Immigrants who traveled to other EU countries risked being deported back to the first EU country they entered.

• The policy posed a great strain on border countries along the Mediterranean which had to bear most of illegal immigration.

• During one period of overflow, asylum seekers crosses borders and headed for countries with more robust economies.

  • These countries temporarily ignored the regulation and accepted many asylum applications.

US Restrictions

• The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first U.S. policy to broadly restrict immigration.

  • Passed in 1882, it was meant to suspend Chinese immigration for a period of 10 years.

  • Its ongoing renewal by Congress kept the suspension constant for more than 60 years.

  • By 1924, the act was expanded to include nearly all Asian groups. This greatly reduced the number of immigrants from the entire continent for decades.

  • The act was finally repealed in 1943, but quotas enacted in the 1920s continued to severely limit the number of immigrants from non-western societies allowed into the United States.

• In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the U.S. government developed stricter border protection and immigration requirements.

  • Tougher border patrols and immigration laws in the United States pushed immigrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border, many of whom fled violence in Central America, to fall victim to smugglers and human traffickers.

  • Afraid to seek help from U.S. authorities for fear of deportation, victims endured situations of forced labor or prostitution.

• More recently, U.S. immigration policies have stirred debate about tougher restrictions that may infringe on the human rights of immigrants.

  • A 2017 policy meant to keep terrorists out of the country restricted entrance of foreign nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries and was criticized as being a “Muslim ban.”

  • Legislation known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that protected immigrants who had entered the United States illegally as children was revoked in 2017.

  • With its repeal, the program stopped accepting applications for work visas and for protection against deportation. Those who remained in the United States under DACA were expected to lose legal status within the next few years.

  • In 2018, a “zero-tolerance” immigration policy in the United States led to children being separated from their parents and held in shelters scattered across the country.

  • The policy required that adults illegally crossing the U.S.–Mexico border be criminally prosecuted.

  • Because it is illegal to send children to jail with their parents, families who were caught crossing the border were split up, with parents being sent to one facility and children to another.

• Restrictive immigration policies affect migration patterns.

• As well as the immediate effects of deporting immigrants or turning them away at borders, policies like these can impact international migration flows.

  • People who are planning to leave their home country but are not welcome in the country of their choice because of restrictive policies might decide to settle somewhere else, or not to move at all.

5.5 Effects of Migration

Economic Consequences

• While a move drastically changes the life of a person, a single migrant moving has little effect on either location.

• Migration pathways and chain migration can push the number of migrants high enough for impacts to be felt in one or both locations, however.

Destination Countries

• Remember: People tend to move from less economically developed countries to more developed.

• Receiving countries gain immigrants as a source of labor.

  • They are typically more willing than native-born citizens to accept less desirable (lower paying, harder, or even dangerous labor) jobs.

  • This is true of migrants in general but especially those who moved illegally.

• Immigrants who are educated or skilled are often willing to work for less pay than native citizens.

• Qualified immigrants can reduce the skill gap in a country’s workforce.

Skill gap: A shortage of people trained in a particular industry

• The rate of immigrant entrepreneurship is high in core countries.

  • Immigrants often open small businesses in commercial districts with high vacancy rates, revitalizing previously empty areas.

• Migration can also fuel population growth.

  • Countries in stage 4 and 5 experience a decline in birth rates. Migration can help mitigate this and keep the country’s population growing despite falling births.

• Immigrants can also affect population composition of the locations they enter.

  • The majority of immigrants are working age, so their arrival lowers the dependency ratios of the destination.

• Immigrants who move to rural areas can offset urbanization.

• Immigration has economic down-sides as well.

  • A large influx of immigrants willing to work for lower wages may take job opportunities for native citizens.

  • Industries can become too dependent on immigrant labor and suffer if immigration slows or policies restrict it.

• Immigrants often send remittance, meaning a significant portion of their income is not going back into the country’s economy but into another economy.

Remittances: Money earned by an emigrant abroad and sent back to his or her home country

• Receiving countries also may expend resources for their immigrants, such as language lessons, assimilation classes, translators, and employment assistance.

Countries of Origin

• The countries that immigrants leave are affected just as much.

  • The country of origin might see a decrease in unemployment as working-age immigrants leave and open jobs for those who stay.

• There is less strain on resources as population decreases.

• Immigrants who return home often do so with newly-learned skills.

• Remittances help those in the country of origin greatly.

• There are detrimental effects as well.

  • Emigrants are primarily working-age young adults, and no matter their skill-level, this loss can slow the country of origin’s economy.

Brain drain: The loss of trained or educated people to the lure of work in another—often richer—country

Cultural and Social Consequences

• Countries of destination and origin are affected culturally and socially by migration as well.

  • These effects are often intertwined with the economic consequences.

Destination Countries

• Immigrants bring aspects of their culture with them: Music, literature, fashion, religion, language, etc.

• Many immigrants establish shops or restaurants and further spread their cultural goods and services.

  • These businesses are often opened to meet the needs of immigrant communities, but they may end up becoming popular with native citizens as well.

• As cultural goods and services appeal more to native citizens, the original concept may be altered or a new, inspired concept may be created to appeal to natives more.

Relocation diffusion: The spread of culture traits through the movement of people

• Cultural costs to the destination country are harder to quantify, as they are rarely concrete.

  • Most times, they are only perceived as costs to a portion of the receiving society.

• Some people believe immigrants change society too much. They feel their own traditions are jeopardized by the presence of immigrants.

  • These attitudes can lead to prejudice against immigrants.

• Some countries have policies in place to protect against change.

  • For example, in the Netherlands you must speak Dutch to become a citizen.

  • The topic can lead to conflict over pro- or anit-immigrant beliefs.

• Because of the challenges of migration, immigrants tend to cluster, created segregated ethnic enclaves like Little Havana or Chinatown.

  • While these neighborhoods can help immigrants retain their culture, it can also prevent them from fully acclimating.

• Many immigrants, as well as the children of immigrants born in the destination country, tend to lose some cultural identity.

Countries of Origin

• Immigration’s social benefits for the source country are connected to economic benefits.

  • Remittances can improve quality of life for families in the country of origin.

• Migration can have a disrupting effect on the social structure of a location of origin.

  • Certain areas have lost so many working-age people that labor has become stretched thin.

  • This encourages even more people to leave in search of better prospects.

• Older parents may not be able to see their children for long periods or time, or ever, if the child never comes home.

• Depletion of young men in particular can lead to many unmarried young women in certain regions.

• The effect on the dependency ratio is the opposite of receiving countries: As working-age people, leave children and the elderly are left behind with few to support them.