Lee’s model:
- Migrants sharing a common origin and destination form
a migration stream.
- For every migration stream a counterstream (reverse
flow) usually occurs.
- There are intervening obstacles and opportunities
between points of origin and destination.
- Push factors include adverse climatic conditions, natural
disasters, low income, poor employment opportunities,
housing shortages, social upheaval, and intolerance.
- Pull factors include amenities, attractive environment,
high wages, job prospects, improved housing, high
standard of living, and tolerance.
- Voluntary migration = individual/household has a free
choice about whether to move or not.
- Forced migration = little or no choice but to move (may
be due to human or environmental factors).
Causes of migration (Peterson):
Primitive migration = nomadic pastoralism and shifting
cultivation practised by world’s most traditional
societies.
Forced migration, e.g. abduction & transport of Africans
to the Americas as slaves.
, Impelled migration = takes place under perceived threat
(human/physical), but an element of choice remains.
Free migration and mass migration = both involve
freedom of choice, with mass migration simply being of
greater magnitude (e.g. historical movement of
Europeans to North America).
Recent approaches:
1) Todaro model (cost-benefit) migrants’ perceptions of
urban life are realistic, being based on an accurate flow
of information from earlier migrants. They are aware of
potential short-term hardships, but weighing up the
odds the likelihood is that their economic standing will
improve in the long term.
2) Stark (‘new economics of migration) replaces the
individual in Todaro’s model with a household as the
unit of analysis. Migration is seen by families as a form
of economic diversification whereby costs and rewards
are shared, so is a type of risk spreading.
3) Marxist (structuralist) theory labour migration is
inevitable in the transition to capitalism. It is the only
option for survival after alienation from the land. Draws
attention to advantages of migrant labour for capitalist
production, with capitalism thus controlling it.
4) Structuration theory incorporates both individual
motives for migration and the structural factors in which
- Migrants sharing a common origin and destination form
a migration stream.
- For every migration stream a counterstream (reverse
flow) usually occurs.
- There are intervening obstacles and opportunities
between points of origin and destination.
- Push factors include adverse climatic conditions, natural
disasters, low income, poor employment opportunities,
housing shortages, social upheaval, and intolerance.
- Pull factors include amenities, attractive environment,
high wages, job prospects, improved housing, high
standard of living, and tolerance.
- Voluntary migration = individual/household has a free
choice about whether to move or not.
- Forced migration = little or no choice but to move (may
be due to human or environmental factors).
Causes of migration (Peterson):
Primitive migration = nomadic pastoralism and shifting
cultivation practised by world’s most traditional
societies.
Forced migration, e.g. abduction & transport of Africans
to the Americas as slaves.
, Impelled migration = takes place under perceived threat
(human/physical), but an element of choice remains.
Free migration and mass migration = both involve
freedom of choice, with mass migration simply being of
greater magnitude (e.g. historical movement of
Europeans to North America).
Recent approaches:
1) Todaro model (cost-benefit) migrants’ perceptions of
urban life are realistic, being based on an accurate flow
of information from earlier migrants. They are aware of
potential short-term hardships, but weighing up the
odds the likelihood is that their economic standing will
improve in the long term.
2) Stark (‘new economics of migration) replaces the
individual in Todaro’s model with a household as the
unit of analysis. Migration is seen by families as a form
of economic diversification whereby costs and rewards
are shared, so is a type of risk spreading.
3) Marxist (structuralist) theory labour migration is
inevitable in the transition to capitalism. It is the only
option for survival after alienation from the land. Draws
attention to advantages of migrant labour for capitalist
production, with capitalism thus controlling it.
4) Structuration theory incorporates both individual
motives for migration and the structural factors in which
