Causes of Migration (Edexcel A Level Geography)

• Most migrants move for work; known as economic migrants
• Others move to re-join family members, as part of the diaspora growth
• Post-colonial migrant flows to the UK when former colonies became part of the Commonwealth
  • After the second World War, many countries had labour shortages and needed to rebuild their economies
  • The 1948 British Nationality Act, gave people from UK colonies, the right to live and work in Britain
  • Job vacancies in the UK offered an opportunity to people in Caribbean countries, who were also struggling economically post-war
  • Many of those who came, became manual workers, drivers, cleaners, and nurses in the newly-established NHS and known as the Windrush Generation
• International migrants are not always the poorest, as money is needed to make a journey (even human trafficking has costs to the migrant)
• There are other causes of migration, including displacement of refugees due to conflict and poverty in countries of origin

Types of Migrants

	Definition	Internal	External
Voluntary	The individual or household has a free choice about whether to move or not	Rural to urban for jobs	West Indians to the UK
		Urban to rural retirement	British doctors to the USA
Forced	Occurs when the individual or household has little or no choice but to move	British inner city slum   clearance	African slaves to America -   Atlantic slave trade
		Amerindians into rainforest reserves	War - 8.1 million refugees were recorded leaving Ukraine in 2022
Impelled or Political	This may be due to environmental or human factors	Natural disasters – Mt   Pinatubo, Philippines	Muslims and Hindu in India

• Forced migration still occurs today - Syrian refugee crisis, Ukrainians forced to flee from Russian invasion etc.
• Counter-migration, in which governments detain migrants who enter or attempt to enter their countries illegally and return the migrants to their home countries
• Impelled migration as a result of natural disasters has unexpected consequences
  • Many Montserratians fled to the United States when Plymouth was destroyed in 1995 and were given ‘temporary protected’ immigration status
  • The U.S. government told Montserratian refugees to leave in 2005 - not because the volcanic crisis was over or because the housing crisis caused by the eruption was solved
  • Rather, the U.S. government expected the volcanic crisis to last at least 10 more years; so, the Montserratians no longer qualified as ‘temporary’ refugees

• There are five economic theories for migration:

Five Economic Theories of Migration

Theory	Explanation	Example
Neoclassical economic theory	Wage differences pull or push people from low-wage regions to higher-wage regions	Internal migration in developing regions such as rural India to cities such as Mumbai
Dual labour market theory	Developed countries 'pull' migrant workers to fill low-skilled jobs, as local population unwilling to do this work	Fruit and vegetable harvesting in the UK, attracts EU workers
World systems theory	Trade between countries is favourable to one above the other, encouraging migration along these trade routes	Former colonies remain dependent on colonial superpower - UK and India
Relative deprivation theory	People feel they have less in comparison to someone else (usually wealth), and therefore, feel deprived. Successful migrants act as examples to the source community encouraging migration	North/South migration in the UK, where people in the north of England feel deprived in relation to the south and migrate southwards
New economics of labour migration (NELM)	The theory views migration as an economic strategy of a household and suggests that the family's economic situation would change as the family member sends remittances back. The family's act together to spread the cost and all benefits eventually	Male construction workers from India migrating to Dubai and sending remittances home to families

• In many nation states, the movement of labour is unrestricted and is based on the notion that humans are an economic resource for businesses to exploit
• It is considered an efficient way of allocating resources e.g. regional movements in the UK
• Flows of migrants are focused on core economic development regions, at varying levels from local, national and international
• In order to achieve maximum economic output, businesses argue that people should be allowed to move freely to available jobs, therefore, migration is considered an effective method of achieving this
• This is the basis of free movement of labour and allows workers to seek work in another country, without requiring any visa
• This principle also applies to some global regions such as the European Union (EU) but not at a global level - China restricts all movement of its workers, both internally and internationally
• However, free movement creates winners and losers:

Advantages and Disadvantages of Free Movement of Labour

Advantages	Disadvantages
Business profits increase due to a fall in wages - businesses have a choice of who to employ	Increased competition for jobs and many people have multiple jobs in order to survive
Highly skilled workers are in demand and command higher wages	Businesses lose profits when having to pay higher wages to skilled employees
Trickle down wealth from core regions to the peripheries - branch offices and factories	Changing economic activity and loss of income or unemployment
People have a choice of where to work and live	Loss of talent - 'brain drain'

Barriers to freedom of movement - China's hukou records

• As of 2020, 60.6% of the total Chinese population lived in urban areas, a dramatic increase from 17.92% in 1978
• When the Communist Party in China came to power in 1949, under Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao)
• One of its goals was to create economic stability between the country’s large rural farming population (periphery) and its growing urban areas (core)
• One problem China saw, was the potentially large influx of rural workers to the cities looking for higher paying jobs
• To avoid protests, strikes and slum development such as those in Latin America and Indian cities, the Chinese government implemented the Huji system in 1958
• This was to serve three main functions:
  • Control of internal migration
  • Management of social protection
  • Preservation of social stability
• The plan was to implement a classification system to keep record of all Chinese people as either a rural or urban citizen. The government then tied all social benefits (healthcare, education, social security, working rights, etc.) to a person’s local government
• The system is called “huji” but it’s commonly known by the name of the records “Hukou.” The Hukou System was implemented in 1958 and is still in place today
• The Hukou System effectively limits the amount of rural-urban migration. People from rural China would be far less likely to move to urban areas if it means giving up their healthcare, education and social security
• People from urban areas were given preferential treatment
• They got better social benefits; since their local governments had more resources
• They had access to higher paying jobs and rural workers were limited in the urban marketplace 
• Because the people from urban areas were more likely to have an education, they were also considered more likely to protest  
• The preferential treatment was considered a way of calming the risk of any major uprising against the Communist Party

Impact on rural regions

• Whilst urban citizens enjoy a supply of labour opportunities and comfortable benefits for their families
• Rural people struggle as farming in rural China is very difficult
• The terrain is mountainous and the land lacks sufficient nutrients for farming
• Access to clean water is scarce and there is often extreme draught
• There is little economic infrastructure and a lack of access to modern farming equipment
• As China’s economic power grew, the cities grew, and jobs become more available, the trade-offs for rural farmers to move to the city became more attractive
• In recent years, the rate of Chinese rural-urban migration is the largest in the history of the world
• More than 250 million Chinese people are estimated to migrate to the cities each year (that’s 2/3 of the population of the US)
• The Chinese population remained primarily rural all the way up to 2012. During that year, China’s urban population officially grew larger than the rural population

Floating population – 240 million people as of 2020

• Non-hukou migrant without local residency rights are also called the 'floating population'
  • Often it is the parents moving to the cities, leaving their young children to be raised by grandparents
  • These children are the forgotten casualties of China’s economic boom

  • These migrants have no access to healthcare, workers' rights etc. in urban areas

Reform

• Whilst the Hukou System has been successful, it is widely disliked 
• The Communist Party created an organized caste system with Hukou where the people from rural areas were systematically discriminated against
• In 2014, reform was finally addressed by the government with the removal the rural and urban system of Hukou
• All Chinese people will now simply be called residents, but, all social benefits are still tied to a resident’s hometown
• There is a process to transfer residency, but it is extremely limited in the major cities 
• However, it will be easier for people from rural areas to move to other rural towns and smaller cities

Impact

• The socio-economic impacts of 50+ years of “rural” and “urban” classification are incalculable
• Generations were conditioned to believe they were second-rate citizens and received second-rate treatment
• Even with restrictions somewhat relaxed, it will take help and a number of years for the damage to be repaired
• This is an acceptable condition for China, as they have successfully avoided squatter settlements and public protests around their major cities 

• Today, there are still over 250 million people in rural areas living on less than $2/day