Migration
ICSE Class 8 · Geography · Chapter 3
What this chapter covers
- Migration: meaning
- Types of migration: immigration and emigration
- Types of migration: rural-urban and urban-urban
- Great migrations in history
- Causes of migration
- Impact of migration on socio-economic structure
- Brain drain: meaning
- Causes of brain drain
- Positive and negative impacts of brain drain
Key points
- Migration is the movement of people to another place in order to live there for a long time or for good.
- Migration may be permanent or seasonal, and internal or international.
- Emigration is leaving one's own country; immigration is entering a new country to settle.
- Net migration is arrivals minus departures; it can make a place grow or shrink.
- Rural-urban migration is from villages to towns and cities; urban-urban migration is between towns and cities.
- Great migrations of the past include Europeans to the Americas, the forced migration of Africans, Indian indentured labourers overseas and the Partition of India in 1947.
- People migrate because of push factors at home and pull factors at the destination: economic, social, political and environmental.
- A refugee is forced to flee war, violence or persecution and cannot safely return.
- Migration brings remittances, workers and cultural mixing, but also empty villages, crowded cities and slums.
- Brain drain is the loss of skilled and educated people to other countries.
- Brain drain brings remittances and global links, but India loses talent, money spent on education and experts it needs.
Questions answered
What is migration? Why is a holiday trip to Goa not an example of migration?
Migration is the movement of people from one place to another with the aim of living there for a long time or for good. A holiday trip does not count as migration because the people return home after a few days and do not change the place where they normally live.
Differentiate between immigration and emigration with one example.
Emigration is leaving one's own country to settle in another; immigration is entering a new country to settle there. When a nurse moves from India to Canada, she emigrates from India and immigrates into Canada.
In one year, 650 people moved into a fictional town and 800 people moved out. Find the net migration and state its effect on the population.
Net migration = 650 - 800 = -150. It is negative, so migration reduced the town's population by 150.
Give one difference between rural-urban and urban-urban migration.
Rural-urban migration is from villages to towns or cities, usually by farm workers seeking jobs. Urban-urban migration is from one town or city to another, usually by educated people seeking better jobs, promotion or study.
What are push and pull factors? Give one example of each.
Push factors are conditions at the place of origin that make people want to leave, such as a drought. Pull factors are conditions at the destination that attract people, such as new jobs in a factory.
Name two great migrations from history and say where the migrants went.
Any two: Europeans to North and South America; Africans forced across the Atlantic to the Americas; Indian indentured labourers to Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana and South Africa; Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims across the new borders during the Partition of India in 1947.
Who is a refugee? Mention two problems refugees face.
A refugee is a person forced to leave their own country because of war, violence or fear of harm, who cannot safely return. Refugees often live in crowded camps and may lack food, water, schooling or the right to work.
State two positive and two negative impacts of migration on the place of origin.
Positive: remittances improve family incomes; returning migrants bring new skills. Negative: farms lose young workers; old people, women and children are left behind.