Migration

By migration, we simply mean shifting or travel of people from one country or

several countries or a region to one or more countries or regions. Such movement of
people may comprise a large number Of the era small group.
Evolution-
the industrial revolution of the mid-eighteen century resulted into the
establishment of factories and industrial townships in England and Europe. A
capitalist economic system emerged. This led to urbanization and large scale
migration of rural population into the urban areas. New cities, towns and trading
posts came into being.
Second, large scale out migration took place during the period leading to the
interwar era and continuing into the time after the Second World War. Colonialism
was at its peak during this time and establishment of colonial capitalism became a
new reality. On the one hand, there were waves of migrants who left the shores of
Europe for better life prospects in the US, Canada or Australia primarily due to
poverty, economic crisis or unemployment, on the other, within the colonies, like
the case of India, where the establishment of rail network, development of ports,
indigenous manufacturing and trade saw the shifting of rural populace into urban
areas. Colonialism, especially British colonialism also carried out a sort of
forced migration

Third, the post Second World War era saw the migration of people from Europe,
especially Britain into Australia and New Zealand as economic devastation resulted
into temporary destruction of manufacturing and large scale unemployment. The world
also witnessed during his time the largest ever flight of people from one place to
another-the partition of India.

Globalization is driven by intensive and extensive use of ICT. The development of

high technology has not kept pace with supply of manpower in the advanced
countries. Thus there is a constant demand for ICT personnel in the "Silicon
Valley" of the US for developing hardware and software for companies engaged in ICT
and knowledge industry. This has witnessed a large number of Indians and other
Asians specializing in ICT and related fields taking up jobs or university
enrolment in the US and eventually settling down there.
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◦ It becomes a national issue when the economy, culture, demography or
politics of the land chosen by the migrants become affected. A typical case is that
of the state of Assam in the North-East of India which is alleged to have been
infiltrated by illegal immigrants from Bangladesh due mainly to an existent porous
bor der. The response of the Indian government is to form a National Register for
Citizens (first formed in 1951, recently revived and updated) to distinguish
between genuine citizens and migrants.
◦
◦ From a geographer's perspective, migration is a form of spatial
interaction in so far as it involves mobility from one place to another. Mobility
incurs cost of transporting oneself and one's belongings to the place of choice.
Apart from having monetary costs, migration also implies separation from friends
and family or one's cultural surroundings and adjusting to an unknown, uncertain
environment.
◦
◦ According to Chirico, "although migration may have benefits for both
host countries and migrants, it is also implicated in human security issues in a
number of inter-related ways" (Chirico, 2014). Economic, political and social
insecurities push migrants out of their home-lands. Migrants in the forms of
refugees continue to suffer indignities in host countries remaining unemployed or
underemployed and subjected to discriminations and ill adjusted.
FEATURES OF MIGRATION

◦ An important, enduring and persistent feature related to migration is

the form it assumes. Refugees as migrants due to their large number and high
visibility have dominated public per-ception. There is of course, discrimination
when it comes to allowing low skilled or unskilled people into the country as their
job market always happens to be saturated in a host country. Whereas, those with
skills, education and expertise are accommodated through visa regime.This inability
of the developed nations in freely allowing the lower end workers has spawned an
illegal business of getting people inside a country without proper documents. The
coveted lands for such undocumented entry are the US, Canada, Britain and the
western Europe and Australia.
◦
◦ Refugees need not always be people fleeing their countries. Internal
displacement resulting into internal migration of people in their own country is
another feature of migration (Chirico,2014). Internally displaced person (IDP) is
another category of migrants. Such people live outside their homes, but in their
own homelands primarily due to civil wars, human rights violation by the state or
persecution by the dominant political, ethnic or religious groups.This can be due
to ethnic cleansing as in the case of Bosnia-Herzogovina where in the 1990s the
Christian Serbs and Croats carried out a systematic genocide of predominantly
Muslim population with the aim of integrating Bosnia-Herzogovina with the Christian
Serbia and Croatia, thereby killing and displacing thousands.
◦
◦ Climate Refugees or Environmental Migrants- It is estimated that there
are more than 20 million people are affected by ecological disasters and climatic
changes. Climate refugees of "environmental migrants" as they are also known are
have been compelled to leave their homes and the regions of their stay due to
sudden ecological disasters or long-term changes in the local environment. People
are forced to leave behind their dwellings and possessions and flee as life cannot
be sustained in their home regions anymore. Long periods of droughts, continuous
deficit rainfall (e.g., failure of monsoon in many parts of India), rise in the sea
level, natural disasters like tsunami, cyclones, earthquakes or man made disasters
like water pollution and deforestation may result into famine, diseases or deaths.
There exists certain world bodies like The International organisation for Migration
(IOM) consisting of 146 member states that monitors environmental disasters that
are imminent, assists in migration management with a humane and orderly approach.
The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) is pressing for a global multilateral
agreement for addressing the issues legal protection and rights of the Climate
refuges or "Climate Exiles" the term they would prefer to use.
◦
◦ Virtual Migration- The term "Virtual Migration" was first used by
Indian author A. Aneesh in his 2006 book, Virtual Migration - the Progamming of
Globalization. It marks an interesting contribution to in the study of a category
of people whose physicality becomes immaterial and who are present in a constructed
world of virtual platform. This concerns itself with those people who are part of
India's (for that matter any country's) knowledge economy and service sector. These
migrants are not politically per-secuted, deprived refugees who reach the shores of
alien lands for relief, but they are women and men engaged in the application of
software in ticketing, transcribing medical bills and legal notes, promoting
products, manning the call centers, formally known as Business Process Outsourcing
(BPO) catering to a variety of needs, queries and complaints from people who are
not even citizens of India and companies that are located thousands of miles away.

Impact of Migration-

Migration has become a controversial and contentious issue depending on which side
of the fence one is. There are politicians of the right wing and scholars who take
a jaundiced eyed perspective on the matter. But many other social scientists and
activists have tried to take a balanced view on the matter.

People migrate to countries which are already inhabited by people belonging to

local races and ethnic groups. Migrants not only invite negative attitude and
attention from them as they feel threatened their jobs being snatched away by the
migrants. Moreover, it is not easy for migrants of different religions and
practicing varied customs to completely assimilate into the society of the host
country or conform to its political notion of secularism by shunning religious
symbols and markers like the hijab of migrant Muslim women or the turban of sikh
men. Over a long period of time this takes the form of racism and xenophobia, and
leads to ghettoization of the migrant community. The threat of aliens migrants or
refugees being allowed into the countries to stay and freely work and practice
their religion by liberal politicians has resulted into racial profiling and racial
abuse of the migrants and an upsurge in right wing, conservative politics and
revival of racist neo-nazi or neo-fascist groups.

major issue concerning the positive aspects of migration is that of Remittances

sent back home by the migrants and also refugees who are able get gainfully
employed. Today, there are more than $200 million migrants in the world who are
supporting and equal number of people dependent on them in their native countries.
This act of sending remittances back home by migrants, has given rise to agencies
that manage and organize the transfer of funds through internet banking, but for a
fee.