9 PROBLEMS CAUSED BY MIGRATION - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

Among the problems caused by migration we find low wages and job instability, isolation, outbreaks of racism and discrimination, deficits in health and education or the appearance of mafias.

Migration is the voluntary or forced action that an individual performs when moving from his place of origin to carry out a new life permanently or temporarily in another part of the world and thus obtain changes in his life.

Since the beginning of humanity, human mobility has existed and responds to the need of the human being to make an imagined future come true. The highest percentage of the world's migrants do so for economic reasons, seeking a better way of life for their family.

Two periods in history have been identified in which mass migrations have occurred.

The first is counted from the year 1820 until the beginning of World War I. The reason for this was mainly the Industrial Revolution, where humanity knew means of transport that allowed them to move from one place to another quickly and safely.

The second period is established from 1950 to the beginning of the XXI century. After World War II, thousands of Europeans migrated to American countries.

Subsequently, the development of wars such as in the Baltic countries (1991-2001), the invasion of Iraq (2001-2003), violence in countries of sub-Saharan Africa and currently the war in Syria, have caused unprecedented mass migrations.

Main problems caused by migration in the countries

1- Low wages and instability

Voluntary migration has led to lower wages and an unstable working life in the world.

The experience of migrants begins with obtaining the legality of their stay in the country of destination, which usually lasts a long time. While this is happening, migrants perform jobs that are paid irregularly.

Companies hire migrants because they recognize in these people the opportunity to have cheap labor.

Previously, governments argued that they collaborate with them in their insertion into society, but what happens in practice is that these illegal hiring favor the exploitation of workers.

Instability and labor abuse affect the working life not only of migrants but of all citizens of the destination country.

2- Isolation

A migratory process leads an individual to create social networks with other people from his country or at least who speak the same language.

When in the country of origin there is no insertion process for migrants, naturally they create communities that in most cases end in the formation of ghettos.

Similarly, there are cases in which, although governments develop insertion programs for migrants, there is naturally cohesion among them and a refusal to be part of the culture of the new country of residence.

3- Racism and discrimination

The arrival of migrants to a country produces in some cases a negative response from its residents.

If this process is not consciously developed, managing to create and strengthen social networks that include each other, a discriminatory look towards them is generated at a cultural level.

In many cases, residents of the destination country develop a perception of the decrease in their job opportunities with the arrival of people from another country and express a feeling of racism.

4- Health deficit

Mobility to a new country brings, for some migrants, improved access to a quality health system. This is the case when migration occurs from a third world country to a developed or developing one.

However, the process of regularization of documents can generate for migrants a temporary lack of protection of their right to health.

At times, when obtaining residency is extended in time, people who come to the new country seeking to build a new life may have their body's well-being affected for external reasons.

That is, limited access to public health services, or internal reasons, because they increase their anxiety levels.

5- Deficit in education

A forced migration of a family generally brings with it the temporary or permanent interruption of children and adolescents.

Upon arriving in a new country, young migrants who have the possibility of entering the educational system find themselves with a different training program that in many cases they are unable to adopt.

Those who do not have the possibility of returning to study must work to help their families by permanently leaving their formal education.

6- Dependence and loss of freedom

Leaving family and friends in the country of origin and trying to insert oneself in a productive world of which the laws are unknown are factors that generate an almost absolute dependence on the new employers.

The new situation produces in many migrants a state of low self-esteem that separates them from their true capacities and talents and thus turns them into workers with high economic and emotional dependency as well as the loss of freedom, in many cases.

7- Illegality and mafias

Voluntary and forced migration, which extends the possibility of legalizing the status of residence, makes people seeking a new life more vulnerable.

The illusion or desire to demonstrate to others that they have been successful in their process makes them easy victims for the mafias that take advantage of migrants' ignorance of the laws, their naivety and the urgency to satisfy their basic needs.

8- Loss of the concept of nation

Migration processes in the world have not only broken geographical borders, it has also occurred with political, social, economic and cultural limits.

When arriving in a new country the feelings for the place of origin increase initially, but with the passage of time, the notion of nation is lost, with the feeling of not being from anywhere in the world or being a citizen of the world.

The loss of the concept of nation ends up breaking its ties with the countries of origin, which, as they are not replaced by strong ties with communities in the destination country, creating a process of maladjustment.

References

1. Lee, ES (1966). A theory of migration. Demography, 3 (1), pp: 47-57.
2. Hatton, TJ, & Williamson, JG (2005). Global migration and the world economy. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp: 175-184
3. O'Connell Davidson, J. (2013). Troubling freedom: Migration, debt, and modern slavery. Migration studies, 1 (2), pp: 123-134
4. Castles, S., & Davidson, A. (2000). Citizenship and migration: Globalization and the politics of belonging. Psychology Press. pp: 23-45
5. Harris, JR, & Todaro, MP (1970). Migration, unemployment and development: a two-sector analysis. The American economic review, 60 (1), pp: 126-142.