9 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF MIGRATION - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The causes and consequences of migration are all those reasons that lead people to move from their original place of residence to a different place and everything that this move generates both in the individual and in the community.

Human migration is the activity by means of which a person changes their place of residence by moving to another city, region or country. Its human mode is just one type of migration. Well, it also occurs in many animal species, which move around the planet to escape a certain climate or in search of food.

In the human case, migration is caused by other motivations. Human beings are constantly looking for survival and stability. That is why at certain times in their lives they find it necessary to move or move from their place of residence.

Many of these movements are due to personal needs, but other times they are the consequence of a social or political environment that prevents a person from staying in a country.

Human migration can be seen as a single process seen from two points of view: immigration and emigration. Immigration is the process by which an individual or group arrives in a country other than their place of origin to establish their residence. Emigration refers to leaving the place of origin to settle somewhere else.

In addition to the various economic, political and social causes, migrations change societies, which lose their citizens and also those who receive them, generating different reactions and consequences.

Causes of migration

1- Wars

Allied landing in Normandy. Source:

Many people claim that wars are the engine of humanity. This argument is completely debatable. What does exist is a consensus that wars are the engine of migration.

When there is an armed conflict, the civilian population is left in the middle, so it is forced to flee the territory.

This phenomenon has been reproduced for millennia and today it has been consolidated with the spread of nation states throughout the globe.

2- Political conflicts

Even if there is no war in a certain area, it is quite possible that the country is subject to a dictatorial regime and systematically persecutes its opponents or a certain social or ethnic group.

The simplest example is that of a dictatorship that relies on an ideology and that persecutes those who hold a contrary.

However, it can also be extrapolated to those regimes that persecute a social group, such as Romania during the genocide perpetrated by the Hutus against the Tutsis.

For people who suffer this type of persecution, there are two categorizations recognized by the member states of the United Nations (UN): refugee and asylee.

Refugees often flee conflict and move en masse to distant or border states with the intention of personally safeguarding themselves.

In contrast, asylees tend to go to other countries for reasons of political persecution and cases tend to be more individualized and less collective (Vaivasuata, 2016).

3- Economic poverty

Political motives are not the only ones that force a person to move from their original territory of residence.

When a certain country or region suffers an acute economic crisis that raises inflation and does not allow the population to maintain purchasing power, waves of migration of people from different social levels to other countries are generated.

For example, after the Second World War there was a massive immigration of citizens from various European countries to different destinations on the American continent. At present, this type of migration occurs mainly in countries affected by the crisis.

4- Lack of opportunities

There are more and more people who can have access to quality education. Many of them are trained to practice a specific trade or profession.

However, if in the country of origin or study they do not find a job according to their latent needs that corresponds to the activity for which they were previously trained, it is quite common for them to decide to undertake new horizons.

In this way, many people can look for work in countries where the market does request professionals in their area and, in this way, be able to carry out the work for which they were previously trained

5- Academic and family reasons

Not all the reasons for a migration to take place are caused by personal or family difficulties. Many are the cases of people who decide to move to another city or country because they got the opportunity to study a course or profession in an institution.

In this case, migration is an encouragement for the person, because it is being caused by their own will to academic improvement.

It is also possible that migration is due to family causes. In this world where globalization has taken sides in all areas of social life, the families that are scattered throughout the world number in the hundreds of millions. Migration will always be, in these cases, a factor of union or disunity.

Consequences of migration

1- Psychological and mental effects

Before taking societies into account, it is imperative to know what the common consequences that migrants may share may be.

Although each process is different, human beings are forced to leave their comfort zone and migrate. That is why, on a psychological level, it is quite likely that damage will be generated. These can be mild or strong.

Depending on the character of the person who emigrates, the process can be more or less tortuous. Here also influence the conditions in which the person emigrated.

If she did it under good conditions and only with the intention of improving, it is likely that the remoteness of her land and the people who live in it and with whom she made contact on a daily basis is not so strong.

However, there are people very accustomed to habits, so it is difficult that after so many years they can get used to a different country, which may have a very different cultural framework from their own and that if they are not willing to accept it, there will be no way of having a peaceful emigration from the mental plane.

New technologies allow to be connected with people from anywhere on the globe, which reduces the emotional distance between people regardless of the physical distance.

An emigration can cause depression, anguish, panic attacks, anxiety, eating disorders or many other circumstantial situations that are a consequence of the migratory process and that are reinforced if it is abrupt.

2- Aging of the population and increased productivity in the place of origin

The country of origin is the most affected when a migration process takes place. Generally, the population that emigrates is the youngest, because it is the one with the least ties to the country and the one with the most physical strength and emotional vigor to start a new life in a different place.

As a result of this, the population in the place of origin tends to age. However, for the migrant's country of origin, not everything turns out to be negative.

Even if the population ages, productivity will increase because many jobs left by emigrants will be left unoccupied. Thus, problems such as unemployment or even, if they occur, overpopulation could be reduced.

3- Economic growth of the host place

Despite the fact that nationalism is a widespread characteristic among diverse cultures that inhabit the planet, historically the arrival of a population to another territory has provided the economic growth of this area.

Immigrants often fill jobs that locals do not want, allowing the flow of the economy to continue steadily.

4- Enrichment or cultural threat at the place of arrival

Depending on the point of view from which it is decided to appreciate the arrival of immigrants, the cultural baggage they possess can be seen as an enrichment to their own culture or as a threat to it. Xenophobia, that is, the rejection of foreigners is widespread in many societies.

However, in receiving countries, it is common to think that people with different cultures adapt to the culture of their own country. Others, on the contrary, think that they feed with their culture that of the host country to end up modifying it.

Seen from this perspective, for many it is the triumph of integration while for others it has been determined as a threat to the traditional values ​​and principles of a given people.

In any case, there are innumerable examples of countries that have welcomed very dissimilar population groups and that have adapted to it, incorporating their cultural elements into the daily work of the host place.

References

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3. Color ABC (April 3, 2009). The consequences of migration. ABC. Recovered from abc.com.py.
4. The National. (October 12, 2015). Characteristics and consequences of the migration process in Venezuela. The National. Recovered from el-nacional.com.
5. JLeanez (July 11, 2013) Venezuela: Learn about the differences between Asylum and Refuge. The Radio of the South. Recovered from laradiodelsur.com.ve.
6. Mercado-Mondragón, J. (2008). The cultural consequences of migration and identity change in a Tzotzil community, Zinacantán, Chiapas, Mexico. Agriculture, society and development, 5 (1), 19-38. Recovered from scielo.org.mx.
7. (2016, March 4). Difference between refugee and asylee. Difference between. Recovered from differenceentre.info.