Human migration

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to:navigation, search
Ambox outdated serious.svg
 This article may need to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information, and remove this template when finished. Please see the talk page for more information.
Question book-new.svg
 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)
Net migration rates for 2008: positive (blue), negative (orange), stable (green), and no data (gray).
mitochondrial DNA-based chart of large human migrations. (Numbers are millennia before present)

Human migration is physical movement by humans from one area to another, sometimes over long distances or in large groups. The movement of populations in modern times has continued under the form of both voluntary migration within one's region, country, or beyond, and involuntary migration (which includes the slave trade, Human traffic in human beings and ethnic cleansing). People who migrate are called migrants or more specifically, emigrants, immigrants, or settlers, depending on historical setting, circumstances and perspective.

The pressures of human migrations, whether as outright conquest or by slow cultural infiltration and resettlement, have affected the grand epochs in history and in land (for example, the Decline of the Roman Empire); under the form of colonization, migration has transformed the world (such as the prehistoric and historic settlements of Australia and the Americas). Population genetics studied in traditionally settled modern populations have opened a window into the historical patterns of migrations, a technique pioneered by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza.

Forced migration has been a means of social control under authoritarian regimes yet free initiative migration is a powerful factor in social adjustment and the growth of urban populations.

In December 2003, The Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) was launched with the support of Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan and several countries, with an independent 19-member Commission, a threefold mandate and a finite life-span ending December 2005. Its report, based on regional consultation meetings with stakeholders and scientific reports from leading international migration experts, was published and presented to Kofi Annan on 5 October 2005.[1]

Different types of migration include:

Contents

[edit] Pre-modern migrations

Main articles: Early human migrations and Historical migration
2nd to 5th century Migration Period

Historical migration of human populations begins with the movement of Homo erectus out of Africa across Eurasia about a million years ago. Homo sapiens appear to have occupied all of Africa about 150,000 years ago, moved out of Africa 70,000 years ago, and had spread across Australia, Asia and Europe by 40,000 years BCE. Migration to the Americas took place 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, and by 2,000 years ago, most of the Pacific Islands were colonized. Later population movements notably include the Neolithic Revolution, Indo-European expansion, and the Early Medieval Great Migrations including Turkic expansion.

Early humans migrated due to many factors such as changing climate and landscape and inadequate food supply. The evidence indicates that the ancestors of the Austronesian peoples spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago. Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it is from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to the entire region encompassed by the Austronesian languages. It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years ago.[2] Indo-Aryan migration to and within Northern India is presumed to have taken place in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase in India (ca. 1700 to 1300 BC). From 180 BC, a series of invasions from Central Asia followed, including those led by the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians and Kushans in the north-western Indian subcontinent.[3][4][5]

From about 750 BC, the Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions. In Europe two waves of migrations dominate demographic distributions, that of the Celtic people, and the later Migration Period from the east. Other examples are small movements like ancient Scots moving from Hibernia to Caledonia and Magyars into Pannonia (modern-day Hungary). Turkic peoples spread across most of Central Asia into Europe and the Middle East between the 6th and 11th centuries. Recent research suggests that Madagascar was uninhabited until Austronesian seafarers from Indonesia arrived during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. Subsequent migrations from both the Pacific and Africa further consolidated this original mixture, and Malagasy people emerged.[6]

One common hypothesis of the Bantu expansion

Before the expansion of the Bantu languages and their speakers, the southern half of Africa is believed to have been populated by Pygmies and Khoisan speaking people, today occupying the arid regions around the Kalahari Desert and the forest of Central Africa. By about 1000 AD Bantu migration had reached modern day Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Banu Hilal and Banu Ma'qil were a collection of Arab Bedouin tribes from the Arabian Peninsula who migrated westwards via Egypt between the 11th and 13th centuries. Their migration strongly contributed to the arabization and islamization of the western Maghreb, which was until then dominated by Berber tribes. Ostsiedlung was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germans. The 13th century was the time of the great Mongol and Turkic migrations across Eurasia.[7]

Between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Vietnamese expanded southward in a process known as nam tiến (southward expansion).[8] Manchuria was separated from China proper by the Inner Willow Palisade, which restricted the movement of the Han Chinese into Manchuria during the Qing Dynasty, as the area was off-limits to the Han until the Qing started colonizing the area with them later on in the dynasty's rule.[9]

The Age of Exploration and European Colonialism led to an accelerated pace of migration since Early Modern times. In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered American ports.[10] In the 19th century over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas.[11] The local populations or tribes, such as the Aboriginal people in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Japan[12] and the United States, were usually far overwhelmed numerically by the settlers. More recent examples are the movement of ethnic Chinese into Tibet and Xinjiang[13], ethnic Javanese into Western New Guinea and Kalimantan[14] (see Transmigration program), Brazilians into Amazonia[15], Israelis into the West Bank and Gaza, ethnic Arabs into Iraqi Kurdistan, and ethnic Russians into Siberia and Central Asia.[16]

[edit] Modern migrations

[edit] Industrialization

While the pace of migration had accelerated since the 18th century already (including the involuntary slave trade), it would increase further in the 19th century. Manning distinguishes three major types of migration: labor migration, refugee migrations, and urbanization. Millions of agricultural workers left the countryside and moved to the cities causing unprecedented levels of urbanization. This phenomenon began in Britain in the late 18th century and spread around the world and continues to this day in many areas.

Industrialization encouraged migration wherever it appeared. The increasingly global economy globalized the labor market. The Atlantic slave trade diminished sharply after 1820, which gave rise to self-bound contract labor migration from Europe and Asia to plantations. Overpopulation[citation needed], open agricultural frontiers, and rising industrial centers attracted voluntary migrants. Moreover, migration was significantly made easier by improved transportation techniques.

Transnational labor migration reached a peak of three million migrants per year in the early twentieth century. Italy, Norway, Ireland and the Quongdong region of China were regions with especially high emigration rates during these years. These large migration flows influenced the process of nation state formation in many ways. Immigration restrictions have been developed, as well as diaspora cultures and myths that reflect the importance of migration to the foundation of certain nations, like the American melting pot. The transnational labor migration fell to a lower level from 1930s to the 1960s and then rebounded.

The United States experienced considerable internal migration related to industrialization, including its African American population. From 1910–1970, approximately 7 million African Americans migrated from the rural Southern United States, where blacks faced both poor economic opportunities and considerable political and social prejudice, to the industrial cities of the Northeast, Midwest and West where relatively well paid jobs were available.[17] This phenomenon came to be known in the United States as its own Great Migration.

The twentieth century experienced also an increase in migratory flows caused by war and politics. Muslims moved from the Balkan to Turkey, while Christians moved the other way, during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. 400,000 Jews moved to Palestine in the early twentieth century. The Russian Civil War caused some 3 million Russians, Poles and Germans to migrate out of the Soviet Union. World War II and decolonization also caused migrations.[18][19]

[edit] World War II

See World War II evacuation and expulsion and Population transfer in the Soviet Union for World War II forced migrations.

The Jewish communities across Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East were formed from voluntary and involuntary migrants. After the Holocaust (1938 to 1945), there was increased migration to the British Mandate of Palestine, which became the modern state of Israel as a result of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.

Provisions of the Potsdam Agreement from 1945 signed by victorious Western Allies and the Soviet Union led to one of the largest European migrations, and the largest in the 20th century. It involved the migration and resettlement of close to or over 20 million people. The largest affected group were 16.5 million Germans expelled from Eastern Europe westwards. The second largest group were Poles, millions of whom were expelled westwards from eastern Kresy region and resettled in the so-called Recovered Territories (see Allies decide Polish border in the article on the Oder-Neisse line). Hundreds of thousands of Poles, Ukrainians (Operation Vistula), Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and some Belarusians, were expelled eastwards from Europe to the Soviet Union. Finally, many of the several hundred thousand Jews remaining in Eastern Europe after the Holocaust migrated outside Europe to Israel and the United States.

[edit] India

Main article: Partition of India
Rural Sikhs in a long ox-cart train heading towards India. Margaret Bourke-White, 1947. The migration was a "massive exercise in human misery," wrote Bourke-White.

In 1947, upon the Partition of India, large populations moved from India to Pakistan and vice versa, depending on their religious beliefs. The partition was promulgated in the Indian Independence Act 1947 as a result of the dissolution of the British Indian Empire. The partition displaced up to 12.5 million people in the former British Indian Empire, with estimates of loss of life varying from several hundred thousand to a million.[20]Muslim residents of the former British India migrated to Pakistan, whilst Hindu and Sikh residents of Pakistan moved in the opposite direction.

In modern India, estimates based on industry sectors mainly employing migrants suggest that there are around 100 million circular migrants in India. Caste, social networks and historical precedents play a powerful role in shaping patterns of migration. Migration for the poor is mainly circular, as despite moving temporarily to urban areas, they lack the social security which might keep them there more permanently. They are also keen to maintain a foothold in home areas during the agricultural season.

Research by the Overseas Development Institute identifies a rapid movement of labour from slower to faster growing parts of the economy. Migrants can often find themselves excluded by urban housing policies and migrant support initiatives are needed to give workers improved access to market information, certification of identity, housing and education.[21]

[edit] Theories

[edit] Ravenstein

Certain laws of social science have been proposed to describe human migration. The following was a standard list after Ravenstein's proposals during the time frame of 1834 to 1913. The laws are as follows:

  1. every migration flow generates a return or countermigration.
  2. the majority of migrants move a short distance.
  3. migrants who move longer distances tend to choose big-city destinations
  4. urban residents are less migratory than inhabitants of rural areas.
  5. families are less likely to make international moves than young adults.
  1. Migration stage by stage
  2. Urban Rural difference
  3. Migration and Technology
  4. Economic condition

[edit] Lee

Lee's Push-pull theory divides factors causing migrations into two groups of factors: Push and pull factors. Push and pull factors are those factors which either forcefully push people into migration or attract them to an area.[22]

Push Factors

Pull Factors

[edit] Climate cycles

The modern field of climate history suggests that the successive waves of Eurasian nomadic movement throughout history have had their origins in climatic cycles, which have expanded or contracted pastureland in Central Asia, especially Mongolia and the Altai. People were displaced from their home ground by other tribes trying to find land that could be grazed by essential flocks, each group pushing the next further to the south and west, into the highlands of Anatolia, the plains of Hungary, into Mesopotamia or southwards, into the rich pastures of China.

[edit] Other models

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The 90-page Report, along with supporting evidence, is available on the GCIM website gcim.org
  2. ^ Language trees support the express-train sequence of Austronesian expansion, Nature
  3. ^ The appearance of Indo-Aryan speakers, Encyclopædia Britannica
  4. ^ Trivedi, Bijal P (2001-05-14). [http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/05_01/Indo-European.shtml "Genetic evidence suggests European migrants may have influenced the origins of India's caste system"]. Genome News Network (J. Craig Venter Institute). http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/05_01/Indo-European.shtml. Retrieved 2005-01-27. 
  5. ^ Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations -- Bamshad et al. 11 (6): 994, Genome Research
  6. ^ Malagasy languages, Encyclopaedia Britannica
  7. ^ Migrations-&-World History
  8. ^ The Le Dynasty and Southward Expansion
  9. ^ From Ming to Qing
  10. ^ "The Colombian Mosaic in Colonial America" by James Axtell
  11. ^ David Eltis Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic slave trade
  12. ^ Report on a New Policy for the Ainu: A Critique
  13. ^ China given warning on Xinjiang
  14. ^ Ethnic violence continues to rage in Central Kalimantan
  15. ^ Scientists demand Brazil suspend Amazon colonization project
  16. ^ Robert Greenall, Russians left behind in Central Asia, BBC News, 23 November 2005.
  17. ^ Great Migration, accessed 12/7/2007
  18. ^ Patrick Manning, Migration in World History (2005) p 132-162.
  19. ^ Adam McKeown, 'Global migration, 1846-1940' in: Journal of Global History (June 2004).
  20. ^ Metcalf, Barbara; Metcalf, Thomas R. (2006), A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge Concise Histories), Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. xxxiii, 372, ISBN 0521682258.
  21. ^ "Support for migrant workers: the missing link in India's development?". Overseas Development Institute. September 2008. http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/specialist/natural-resource-perspectives/117-support-for-migrant-workers.pdf. 
  22. ^ Everett S. Lee (1966). "A Theory of Migration". University of Pennsylvania. http://www.jstor.org/pss/2060063. Retrieved February 13, 2010. 
  23. ^ Bauder, Harald. Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets. Oxford University Press, 1st edition, February 2006, English, 288 pages, ISBN-10: 0195180887, ISBN-13: 978-0195180886

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Literature

Books

Journals

Online Books

[edit] Documentary films

[edit] External links

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Human migration
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_migration"
Navigation
Interaction
Toolbox
Print/export
Languages