Migration and Development, lecture 1
Migration is about personal stories:
- Search for a better place
- Forced from/to a place
- Social environment, integration, self-realization
It has regional implications
- Economic implications
- Social impacts
- Political implications
Move/relocation:
- Residential mobility
- Migration (theoretical definition): move involving major change in Daily Activity Space (DAS)
(work, education etc.)
Internal
International
Major concepts: Development:
- Individual level
- Local and regional economic development
- National and Global development
The Mobility Transition: myth or reality?
Social representations of mobility:
- The ‘need to be mobile’
- Mobility = modernity
- Conveyed by neoliberal thought
The mobility transition demographic transition: society going through different stages (beginning
from a high birth rate and death rate, ending at a very low birth rate and low death rate).
“Reading history sideways was a form of historical geography that substituted variations across space
for variations across time, thereby converting spatial heterogeneity into homogeneous
development.”
“Reading history sideways, of course, required a system for ordering contemporary societies along
the trajectory of development. We should not be surprised that ethnocentrism led the people of
northwest Europe to believe that they were at the pinnacle of development”.
‘Classic’ demographic transition theory:
- Only marginal references
- Migration to cities as an agent of social change
- Little political interest for migration
Main claim mobility transition:
Modernization of societies affects patterns of mobility.
Hypothesis:
,There are definite, patterned regularities in the growth of personal mobility through space-time
Definition mobility:
There is no realistic alternative to treating all territorial mobility as a single continuum, extending
form the shortest, most routine of iterated motions to the most adventurous intercontinental
journey (p. 226).
Definition migration:
Any permanent or semipermanent change of residence (…) a spatial transfer from one social unit or
neighbourhood to another, which strains or rupture previous social bounds (p. 255-6).
3 crucial statements:
1. A transition from a relatively sessile condition of severely limited physical and social mobility
toward much higher rates of such movement always occurs as a community experiences the
process of modernization
2. For any specific community the course of the mobility transition closely parallels that of the
demographic transition and that of other transitional sequences not yet adequately
described
3. Such evidence as we have indicates an irreversible progression of stages
, Lecture 2: Ancient immobility
Paleomigrations
Migration of whole species.
Europe has always been the reception of migration waves.
Ancient humans were thus far from being immobile, but were they migrants in the modern sense?
UN definition of a migrant:
‘a person who is moving or has moved across an international border or within a State away from
his/her habitual place of residence’.
Global migrations (16th – 19th century)
Statement 1:
‘A transition from a relatively sessile condition of severely limited physical and social mobility toward
much higher rates of such movement always occurs as a community experiences the process of
modernization’.
1970s: the revolt of the early modernists:
- Debunk archaic portrait of pre-industrial Europe
- Stop treating migration as exceptional (e.g. refugees) and reconsider workers and soldiers
Lucassen and Lucassen protested against the statement of Zelinsky.
In the 16th and 17th century, the migration rate in The Netherlands was higher than in the 18 th and
19th century. This is contrary to the migration rate in Europe overall.
Lucassen and Lucassen:
- They mentioned labour migration where Zelinsky didn’t even mentioned it.
- Without migration to cities, there wouldn’t have been cities because the natural decrease is
higher than the natural increase. 90% of the people who come to the city, do not remain.
Summary:
- Only 50% increase of migration rates after 1800, much less than predicted by Zelinsky
- No ‘one story fits all countries’, so beware of developmental determinism and a-historical
theories
- Migrations to cities before the Industrial Revolution were underestimated by Zelinsky (and
even by the Lucassen brothers because they exclude temporary migration)
Preindustrial migration systems
Migration system:
‘Migration systems were rooted in extant demographic regimes and family formation systems.’
‘Migration itself is conceived as a socially constructed, self-perpetuating system that includes home
and destination – a responsive system that expands, contracts, and changes according to
circumstance.’
In preindustrial Europe, there were a lot temporary migration systems (ca. 1800):
, - Migrations from mountains
- Migrations to Paris and London
- Migrations to the North Sea
- Migration to the Mediterranean coast
- Etc.
Seasonal migration was really important in Europe.
The ‘European System’ (before 19th century):
- Late marriage (25+) and high celibacy (10%+) in western Europe
- Early and universal marriage in eastern Europe
Life-cycle service:
‘European boys and girls entered service (working in household, farms etc.) just as their reproductive
period began, in their early to mid ‘teens, delaying marriage for as much as a decade, or not marrying
at all’.
Summary:
- Seasonal labour, ‘urban-rural’ and ‘rural – rural’ migrations, all ignored by Zelinsky, were very
important already
- ‘Within-community’ local migrations, especially life-cycle service, was massive in North-West
Europe, and was omitted by the Lucassen brothers
- The answer depends a lot on the definition of migration
Recent trends – global stocks
The number of international migrants and registered refugees, as a percentage of world population
has remained stable from 1960 till 2017. What has changed, is the composition of migration. Europe
was making the most of the cross continental moves but not anymore (75% to 20%).
So, you can say that the type of migrants is changing. That’s why Europeans say that there is more
migration, but that’s because they are not the one anymore who migrate the most.
Those who move the most, are the ones who are in the middle (not very poor, not very rich).
Many people wish to migrate (especially in Africa), much fewer people plan to migrate and much
fewer people than that prepare to migrate.
Internal migration:
Most countries have a decreasing/stable internal migration intensity.
- 12 countries have a decreasing intensity
- 10 countries have a stable intensity
- 1 country has a raising intensity
Potential explanations:
- Demography
- Family
- Technology
- Labour market
- Housing market
- Sociocultural values
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