EPH2021 Introduction + Lecture 1 (30/8/21)
Population study - a study of the numbers and kinds of people in an area and their changes
● Seeking explanation for the patterns of a variation in a population and causes of changes
● Projecting future changes and analyzing future consequences
Demography - the statistical analysis of population data
Sources of data
● Historical sources
● Genealogies
● Cemetery data
● Church records
● Military records
● Censuses
● Population registers
Topics of study
● Population size and distribution
● Mortality and morbidity
● Fertility and contraception
● +Immigration/emigration rates
● Population composition - age, gender, race, ethnicity
● Population characteristics - education, economic status, marital and family status, living patterns
Demographic transition - a decrease of death rates followed by a period of a strong decrease in birth rates
● People used to need to have a lot of children because not all of them would survive, and you needed them
to provide for you
● This demographic transition was a result of the epidemiological transition
Epidemiological transition - dominance infections diseases —> dominance chronic diseases
● Longer life not necessarily healthier life - because we live longer, more people get (chronic) diseases
,Example: Netherlands change in demography
● Life expectancy increase from 40 to 80+
● Increase because of:
● Better hygiene (epidemics/pandemics)
● Better nutrition (quality & famine)
● To lesser extent: interventions like antibiotics & vaccines
Determinants
● Exogenous
● Physical environment
● Lifestyle
● Social surrounding
● Endogenous or personal traits
● Hereditary
● Gained (somatic/psychic)
Health inequalities
Health inequalities can be attributed to socio-economic inequalities/background (known for ages)
Socio-economic status
● Level of education
● Occupational class
● Income level
Differs between:
● Gender
● City - countryside
● Indigenous and immigrants
Trends
From the cradle to the grave
● Children from low SES
● More often lower birth weight
● More often premature
● More often congenital anomalies
Death rates higher from conception onwards
● Stillbirths
● Neonatal mortality
● Infant mortality
Future trends world
● In 2100 stabilizing world population
● 97% of future population growth occurs in Africa and Asia
● In poor regions
● Birth rates in Europe below replacement level
● Ageing populations
● Migration (war, famine and climate) —> within Europe and to Europe
, ● Rapid urbanization
Lecture 3 - Migration in the EU, past and current developments and
relevance for EPH (2/9/21)
What is migration?
● Migration is a movement of people from one administrative territory to another
● External migration = different country, internal = within same country (eg province)
● Migration is primarily driven by search for better opportunities (work/health/education/lifestyle) and preferred
lifestyle elsewhere
Key historic points
● The era of colonialism starting in the 16th century
● Industrialization (leading to urbanization) from the 18th century
● Moving for rural to city better work/life opportunities
● World wars and after: transformation of Western Europe from a region of colonizers and emigrants into a
region of immigration
● Decolonization led to the end of large-scale European emigration and to the departure of European settlers
from Africa and Asia
● Recruitment-based and spontaneous migration to Europe
● Since the 1960s, the Mediterranean, in particular Turkey and Morocco become predominant sources of
migrant workers in Western and Southern Europe
● After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, countries in central and Eastern Europe become main labor suppliers
to Western European economies
● Since the 2000s, immigration from Latin America and Asia to Europe gained ground
Migration terminology
The United Nations definitions (depends how long):
● An international migrant who changes his or her place of usual residence for at least one year is defined
as a long-term migrant.
● Migrant = broad term to describe movement
● A person who changes his or her place of usual residence for more than three months but less than one
year is considered to be a short term migrant.
The 1945 Refugee Convention a key international legal document signed by 149 states:
● Refugee is “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded
fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or
political opinion.”
● Specific type of migration which refers to forced change of residency
Why do people migrate?
Push and pull factors
● Social (education, family)
● Economic (employment opportunities, accessibility of products/housing)
● Political (discrimination, freedom, conflicts)
● Demographic (population size and structure / disease prevalence)
, ● Environmental reasons (exposure to hazards and access to resources: land fertility and habitability, floods
and natural disasters)
● Debate in the field about if anyone migrates solely because of climate
● More so that it exacerbates the already poor situation
● Environmental change will alter populations’ exposure to natural hazards, and migration is, in many
cases, the only response to this
● Migration in the face of global environment
- For example: 17 million people were displaced by natural hazards in 2009 and 42 million in 2010.
- The key message of the report: migration in the face of global environmental change may not be just part of
the ‘problem’ but can also be part of the solution. In particular, planned and facilitated approaches to human
migration can ease people out of situations and vulnerability.
Potential explanation
- Change in the cultural and ethnic background of migrant groups
- Post-WWII change in global migration movements in which South-North migration has strongly increased
- The increased visibility of different migrant groups
Migration myths
‘Poverty and misery are the root causes of migration’
- Migration costs money
- A certain level of socioeconomic development combined with global inequality of development opportunities,
seems to be the most important cause of migration
‘Migration provokes brain drain’
- The situation is more nuanced
- Not all migrants are highly skilled
- Many governments consider skilled labour to be an export product for the purpose of generation remittances
E.g. nurses in Philippines
