Migration

• Migration is the permanent movement of people from one place to another.
• It is something that can happen both over long and short distances.
• The place that people leave is called the origin and the place they move to is the destination.
• When people move from one country to another it is known as international migration.
• Some people will move by choice - voluntary.
• Others will have to move - forced migration.
• Forced migration includes refugees and asylum seekers.

The decision to migrate is influenced by two groups of factors:

• Conditions at the origin that encourage people to leave are called push factors (negative)
• Conditions at the destination that encourage people to move there are pull factors (positive).

Most international migrants face a series of difficult decisions when they decide to migrate. Moving from one country to another is never easy and any migrant needs to weigh up the push and pull factors that will cause them to move. Often there will be a number of barriers that could get in the way to their migration:

• Today international migrants usually need several documents to move to another country, such as passports, visas and work permits.
• There are normally strict legal restrictions on migrants moving to another country.
• Many countries have constructed barriers such as fences and patrol their borders to stop people entering illegally.

• International migrants may also have to endure physical challenges to get to the country where they want to live.
• Many refugees and asylum seekers have to climb over mountain ranges, walk through deserts or take risky sea journeys.

• Economic migrants are people who have taken a decision to move to a new country so that they will improve their standard of living.
• They might be aiming to get a new job or better pay for providing the same service.
• This is an example of voluntary migration.

• A refugee is someone who is trying to escape from a major event like a war, a natural disaster, disease or famine.
• The United Nations define a refugee as a ‘person who cannot return to his or her own country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political association or social grouping.’
• This is an example of a forced migration.
• Refugees are sometimes forced to live in very cramped and unsanitary conditions.
• Water can be scarce and people will need to rely on aid agencies for food, water, shelter and medicine.

• Asylum seekers are people who have travelled to and arrived in a different country who claim that if they are forced to return home they will face persecution, punishment, torture or death.
• They are seeking to be given the status of refugee and permission to stay.

Most migration is of ‘documented’ migrants, who have permission and the correct paperwork to remain in the destination country. Others, often ‘undocumented’ migrants attempt to get around the migration system by entering a country illegally.

This has led to some countries going to extreme lengths to protect their borders. Border patrol forces are employed to patrol along tall fences and border walls to control the number of illegal migrants who might want to gain access to a new country.

The UNHCR (The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) is the organisation that takes a lead in taking action to help protect refugees around the world.

In 2023, the UNHCR reported that in Europe there were over 12 million refugees and 1.3 million asylum seekers. However, globally there were 37 million refugees and over 6 million asylum seekers reported.

Since 2008 there has been a large increase in the number of people who have been attempting to migrate using a variety of routes across the Mediterranean sea.

During 2011 UNHCR recorded that over 60,000 people fled to Italy from North Africa, in 2022 the number has risen to 104,000.

The amount of migration in Europe has increased in recent years due to the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. As a result many millions of people have migrated across Europe.

In 2011, the Arab Spring protests in Syria escalated into a complicated armed conflict. By 2020, an estimated 500,000 people had died and around 11 million Syrians had left the country, becoming refugees.

Around 3 million of these refugees have remained in the neighbouring country of Turkey. The Turkish government has given more than $8 billion of aid to these refugees and has set up 22 camps near the border for them to live in.