G. Casey Cassidy
The term “international migration” encompasses many movements:voluntary emigration, work migration that has been legalized by work and residence permits and flight or expulsion forced by violence or life threatening situations. “Migration researchers differentiate push and pull factors as triggers of migratory movements.” (1) Push factors are considered living conditions at the place of origin which are perceived as threatening or intolerable which move or force people to leave their homes.
Pull
factors
emanate from receiving countries that have something to entice newcomers—for example, jobs, prosperity, security and freedom among other considerations.
“In defining the causes of migration and flight, structural push and pull factors from crisis developments in the regions of origin and from economic and social upheavals in the world economy and world society must be differentiated from acute push factors such as wars and civil wars, natural disasters, and political persecution.” (2) As a general rule, people do not migrate because of a single reason but a multitude of motives.
Rapid population growth promotes migration if the predominantly young work force cannot find jobs. Unemployment produces poverty and is a major factor in migratory movement. Impoverished living conditions, that is, the ability or inability to “eek out” a living often generates crime and violence.
Occasionally one of these factors will influence a decision to migrate but, more often than not, the movement results as a combination of these causes.
Other determinants may include environmental destruction to their homes by floods or drought, changes in world economic trends, regional national and ethnic conflicts, human rights violations, and an elimination or serious reduction in the availability of natural resources in their home country.
