Migration and Its Types

Migration refers to the movement of people from their native place to another place. It helps in redistributing the population over time and space. When people move from one place to another, the place they have moved from is called the place of origin, and do you know what is the place where they move called?

The place where they move is called the place of destination. The place of origin shows a decrease in population whereas the place of destination always shows an increase in the population. But what do you think, why do people migrate?

Sometimes people migrate to get better job opportunities or housing facilities but sometimes, they need to migrate unwillingly because of natural calamities or wars. In some cases, people are forcibly expelled or taken away as prisoners. All these people who migrate in such conditions are usually unable or unwilling to move back to their native places, are called refugees. These refugees seek shelter and it is upto their place of destination to shelter them or not. The initial stage where the claim of these refugees has not been finally decided is called asylum seeker.

Case study:

According to the data compiled by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), two-thirds of all refugees in 2017 were accounted for by only five countries: Syria(6.3 million); Afghanistan(2.6 million); South Sudan(2.4 million); Myanmar(1.2 million) and Somalia(986-400). The total number of people who were forced to migrate rose from 42 million in 2007 to 68.5 million by the end of 2017.

What are the types of Migration?

Primarily, migration is divided into two categories:

1. Permanent Migration

When people migrate to another place over a long distance to live there for a long period, it is called a permanent migration. For example, a person has moved from Satna (Madhya Pradesh) to Gurugram (Haryana) for better job opportunities and he planned to settle there. This type of migration will be considered permanent migration.

2. Temporary migration:

When people migrate from one place to another but for a shorter period of time is called temporary migration. This is also called seasonal migration because after some time these people usually come back to their native places. Seasonal movement of pastoral people with their flock of animals to warmer pastures in winter and their return in summer is example of temporary migration.

Multiple-choice questions

1. The place people have moved from is called the ___________.
a. Place of destination
b. Source of destination
c. Source of origin
d. Place of origin

2. The place of destination shows __________.
a. Decrease in population
b. Stability in population
c. No change in population
d. Increase in population

3. As per data compiled in 2017, the number of refugees accounted by Syria was ________
a. 5.3 million
b. 4.2 million
c. 3.4 million
d. 6.3 million

Read More: Types of Migration: Internal, External, Intracontinental, and Other Migration