Question

How is migration a determinant factor of population change?

Answer 1

Hint: Humans have been migrating for thousands of years in search of better livelihoods, greater opportunities and improved security. Specially as a consequence of both the rapidly growing world population and the global advancement of transportation and information technologies, there has been an increase in human migration. Today, there are an estimated 230 million international migrants in the world and this number is expected to double by 2050.

Complete answer: Human migration includes all movements of people and occurs at local to global scales. At any given time, the human population can change in three ways— through fertility, mortality and migration. However, what makes human migration so crucial is that migration flows can cause rapid and unexpected changes in population size and density beyond those typically resulting from fertility and mortality. In-migration is the process of people moving into a new area to live there permanently and causes an increase in the population of the area while out-migration is the process of people moving out of an area to another area permanently and this results in a decrease in the population of the area.

Note: Migration is motivated by several factors which are classified under the following groups—macro, meso and micro. As far as macro factors are concerned, the political, demographic, socio-economic and environmental situations are the major drivers towards migration and are generally out of an individual’s control. Meso factors include communication technology, land grabbing and Diaspora links and lastly, micro factors of migration are education, religion, marital status and personal attitude to migration.