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The Cultural Landscape Chapter 3: Migration
Migration
Humans have spread across Earth over the past 7,000 years.
This diffusion of human settlement from a small portion of Earth’s land area to most of it resulted from migration.
Geographers document from where people migrate and to where they migrate.
Diffusion was defined in Chapter 1 as a process by which a characteristic spreads from one area to another, and relocation diffusion was the spread of a character through the bodily movement of people from one place to another.
The subject of this chapter is a specific type of relocation diffusion called migration, which is a permanent move to a new location.
The flow of migration always involves two-way connections.
Emigration is migration from a location; immigration is migration to a location.
The difference between the number of immigrants and the number of emigrants is the net migration.
If the # of immigrants exceeds the # of emigrants, the net migration is positive, and the region has net in-migration. If the # of emigrants exceeds the # of immigrants, the net migration is negative, and the region has net out-migration.
Migration is a form of mobility, which is a more general term covering all types of movements from one place to another.
These types of short-term, repetitive, or cyclical movements that recur on a regular basis, such as daily, monthly, or annually, are called circulation.
Geographers are especially interested in why people migrate even though migration occurs much less frequently than other forms of mobility because it produces profound changes for individuals and entire cultures.
The changing scale generated by modern Transportation Systems, especially Motor Vehicles in airplanes, makes relocation diffusion more feasible than in the past when people had to rely on walking, animal power, or slow ships.
If people can participate in the globalization of culture and economy regardless of the place of residence, why do they still migrate in large numbers?
The answer is that place is still important to an individual's cultural identity and economic prospects.
Migration of people with similar cultural values creates pockets of local diversity.
Although migration is a form of relocation diffusion, reasons for migrating can be gained from expansion diffusion.
KEY ISSUE 1 - Why Do People Migrate?
Reasons for Migrating
Most people migrate for economic reasons.
Cultural and environmental factors also induce migration, although not as frequently as economic factors.
People decide to migrate because of push factors and pull factors.
A push factor induces people to move out of their present location, whereas a pull factor induces people to move into a new location.
We can identify three major kinds of push and pull factors: economic, cultural, and environmental.
Economic Push and Pull Factors
Most people migrate for economic reasons.
People think about emigrating from places that have few job opportunities, and they immigrate to places where jobs seem to be available.
The United States and Canada have been especially prominent destinations for economic migrants.
Cultural Push and Pull Factors
Cultural factors can be especially compelling push factors, forcing people to emigrate from a country.
Millions of people were shipped to other countries as slaves or as prisoners, especially from Africa to the Western Hemisphere, during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
According to the United Nations, refugees are people who have been forced to migrate from their homes and cannot return for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion.
Political conditions can also operate as pull factors.
People may be attracted to democratic countries that encourage individual choice in education, career, and place of residence.
With the election of democratic governments in Eastern Europe during the 1990s, Western Europe's political pull disappeared as a migration factor.
Environmental Push and Pull Factors
People also migrated for environmental reasons, pulled towards physically attractive regions, and pushed from hazardous ones.
Attractive environments for migrants include mountains, seasides, and warm climates.
Migrants are also pushed from their homes by adverse physical conditions.
Many people are forced to move by water-related disasters because they live in a vulnerable areas, such as a floodplain.
The floodplain of a river is the area subject to flooding during a specific number of years, based on historical trends.
A lack of water pushes others from their land.
The capacity of the Sahel to sustain human life—never very high—has declined recently because of population growth and several years of unusually low rainfall.
Intervening Obstacles
Where migrants go is not always their desired destination.
The reason is that they may be blocked by an intervening obstacle, which is an environmental or cultural feature that hinders migration.
In the past, intervening obstacles were primarily environmental.
Bodies of water have long been important intervening obstacles.
Before the invention of modern transportation, such as railroads and motor vehicles, people migrated across land masses by horse or on foot.
Such migration was frequently difficult because of hostile features in the physical environment, such as mountains and deserts.
Transportation improvements that have promoted globalization, such as motor vehicles and airplanes, have diminished the importance of environmental features as intervening obstacles.
Distance of Migration
Ravenstein's theories made two main points about the distance that migrants travel to their new homes:
Most migrants relocate a short distance and remain within the same country.
Long-distance migrants to other countries had four major centers of economic activity.
Internal Migration
International migration is the permanent movement from one country to another, whereas internal migration is a permanent movement within the same country.
International migrants are much less numerous than internal migrants.
Most people find migration within a country less traumatic than international migration because they find familiar language, foods, broadcast, literature, music, and other social customs after they move.
Internal migration can be divided into two types:
Interregional migration is movement from one region of a country to another.
Intraregional migration is a movement within one region.
International Migration
International migration is further divided into two types: forced and voluntary.
Voluntary migration implies that the migrant has chosen to move for economic Improvement.
Forced migration means that the migrant has been compelled to me by cultural factors.
Geographer Wilbur Zelinsky identified a migration transition, which consists of changes in society comparable to those in the demographic transition.
According to the migration transition, international migration is primarily a phenomenon of countries in stage 2 of the demographic transition, whereas internal migration is more important in stages 3 and 4.
A country in stage 1 of the demographic transition (high CBR and CDR and low and NIR) is characterized by high daily or seasonal mobility in search of food rather than permanent migration to a new location.
A country in stage 2 (high NIR because of rapidly declining CDR) is at the point where international migration becomes especially important, as does interregional migration from one country’s rural areas to its cities.
Countries in stages 3 and 4 (moderating NIR because of rapidly declining CBR) are the principal destinations of the international migrants leaving stage 2 countries in search of economic opportunities.
Characteristics of Migrants
Ravenstein noted distinctive gender and family-status patterns in his migration theories:
Most long-distance migrants are male.
Most long-distance migrants are adult individuals rather than families with children.
Gender of Migrants
Ravenstein theorized that males were more likely than females to migrate long distances to other countries because searching for work was the main reason for international migration and males were much more likely than females to be employed.
Mexicans who come to the United States with authorized immigration documents—currently the largest group of U.S. immigrants—show similar gender changes.
The increased female migration to the United States partly reflects the changing role of women in Mexican society.
Family Status of Migrants
Ravenstein also believed that most long-distance migrants were young adults seeking work, rather than children or elderly people.
About 40 percent of immigrants are young adults between the ages of 25 and 39, compared to about 23 percent of the entire U.S. population.
Immigrants are less likely to be elderly people; only 5 percent of immigrants are over age 65, compared to 12 percent of the entire U.S. population.
However, an increasing percentage of U.S. immigrants are children—16 percent of immigrants are under age 15, compared to 21 percent of the total U.S. population.
Recent immigrants to the United States have attended school for fewer years and are less likely to have high school diplomas than are U.S. citizens.
KEY ISSUE 2 - Where Are Migrants Distributed?
Global Migration Patterns
On a global scale, Asia, Latin America, and Africa have net out-migration, and North America, Europe, and Oceania have net in-migration.
The three largest flows of migrants are to Europe from Asia into North America from Asia and Latin America.
The global pattern reflects the importance of migration from LDCs to MBCs.
Migrants from countries with relatively low incomes with high natural increase rates head for relatively wealthy countries, where job prospects are brighter.
The United States has more foreign-born residents than any other country, approximately 40 million as of 2010, and growing annually by around 1 million.
US Immigration Patterns
The United States plays a special role in the study of international migration.
The world's third most populous countries are inhabited overwhelmingly by direct descendants of immigrants.
About 75 million people migrated to the United States between 1820 and 2010, including 40 million who were alive in 2010.
The United States has had three main eras of immigration.
The first era was the initial settlement of colonies.
The second era began in the mid-nineteenth century and culminated in the early 20th century.
The third era began in the 1970s and continues today.
The three arrows have drawn migrants from different regions.
Although the origins of very, the reason for migrating have remained essentially the same.
Rapid population growth has limited prospects for economic advancement at home.
Europeans left when their countries entered stage 2 of the demographic transition in the 19th century, and Latin Americans and Asians began to leave in large numbers in recent years after their countries entered stage 2.
Colonial Immigration from England and Africa
Immigration to the American colonies and the newly-independent United States came from two principal sources, Europe and Africa.
Most of the Africans were forced to migrate to the United States as slaves, whereas most Europeans were voluntary migrants—although harsh economic conditions and persecution in Europe blurred the distinction between force and voluntary migration for many Europeans.
About 1 million Europeans migrated to the American colonies prior to independence, and another million from the late 1700s until 1840.
Most African Americans are descended from Africans forced to migrate to the Western Hemisphere as slaves.
During the eighteenth century, about 400,000 Africans were shipped as slaves to the 13 colonies that later formed the United States, primarily by the British.
Nineteenth-Century Immigration from Europe
In the 500-plus years since Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain to the Western Hemisphere, about 65 million Europeans have migrated to other continents.
For 440 million of them, the destination was the United States.
Among European countries, Germany has sent the largest number of immigrants to the United States, 7.2 million.
Note that frequent boundary changes in Europe make precise national counts possible.
Migration from Europe to the United States peaked at several points during the 19th century.
1840s and 1850s. Annual immigration John from 20000 to more than 200,000. reports of all US immigrants during those two decades came from Ireland and Germany. Desperate economic push factors compelled the Irish and Germans to cross the Atlantic. Germans emigrated to escape from political unrest.
1870s. Emigration from Western Europe resumed following a temporary decline during the US Civil War.
1880s. Immigration increased to 1/2 million per year. Increasing numbers of Scandinavians, especially Swedes and Norwegians, joined Western Europeans in migrating to the United States. The Industrial Revolution had diffused to Scandinavia, triggering a rapid population increase.
1900-1914. Nearly a million people a year immigrated to the United States. 2/3 of all immigrants during this time came from Southern and Eastern Europe, especially Italy, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. The shift in the primary source of immigrants coincided with the diffusion of the Industrial Revolution to Southern and Eastern Europe, along with rapid population growth.
Recent Immigration from Less Developed Regions
Immigration to the United States dropped sharply in the 1930s and 1940s during the Great Depression and World War II.
The number of immigrants steadily increased beginning in the 1950s, And then surged to historically high levels during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
More than 3/4 of the recent US. immigrants have originated in two regions.
Asia. The three leading sources of US immigrants from Asia are China, India, and the Philippines.
Latin America. Nearly one-half million emigrate to the United States annually from Latin America, more than twice as many as during the entire 19th century.
Officially, Mexico past Germany in 2006 as the country that sent to the United States the most immigrants ever.
Although the pattern of immigration to the United States has changed from predominantly European to Asian and Latin American, the reason for immigration remains the same.
People are pushed by poor conditions at home and lured by Economic Opportunity and social advancement in the United States.
The motives for immigrating to the country may be similar, but the United States has changed over time.
The United States is no longer a spiritually settled, economically booty country with a large supply of unclaimed land.
In 1912, New Mexico and Arizona were admitted as the 47th and 48th states.
Thus, for the first time in its history, all of the contiguous territories of the country were a “united” state.
This symbolic closing of the frontier coincided with the end of the peak period of immigration from Europe to the United States.
Impact of Immigration on the United States
The US population has been built up through a combination of emigration from Africa and England primarily during the 18th century, from Europe primarily during the 19th century, and from Latin America and Asia primarily during the 20th century.
In the 21st century, the impact of immigration varies around the country.
Legacy of European Migration
The era of massive European migration to the United States ended with the start of World War 1 in 1914 because the war involved the most important source countries, such as Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia, as well as the United States.
The level of European immigration has steadily declined since that time.
EUROPE’S DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION
Rapid population growth in Europe fueled emigration, especially during the 19th century.
Application of new technology spawned by the Industrial Revolution—in areas such as public health, medicine, and food—produced a rapid decline in the CDR and pushed much of Europe into Stage 2 of the demographic transition (high NIR).
Most European countries are now in stage 4 of the demographic transition (very low or negative NIR) and have economies capable of meeting the needs of their people.
DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CULTURE
The emigration of 65 million Europeans has profoundly changed the world's culture.
As do all migrants, Europeans brought their cultural heritage to their new homes.
European art, music, literature, philosophy, and ethics have diffused throughout the world.
Regions that were sparsely inhabited prior to European immigration, such as North America and Australia, have become closely integrated into Europe's cultural traditions.
Distinctive European political structures and economic systems have also diffused to these regions.
Unauthorized Immigration to the United States
The number of people allowed to immigrate into the United States is at a historically high level, yet the number who wish to come is even higher.
Many who cannot legally enter the United States immigrate illegally.
Those who do so are entering without proper documents are called unauthorized (or undocumented) immigrants.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that there were 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, and around 500,000 arrived that year without documentation.
People are in the United States without authorization primarily because they wish to work but do not have permission to do so from the government.
Crossing the US-Mexican border illegally has not been difficult.
The border is 3,141 KM long and runs mostly through sparsely inhabited regions.
Guards heavily patrol border crossings in urban areas such as El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California, or along highways, but rural areas are guarded by only a handful of agents.
Americans are divided concerning whether an authorized migration helps or hurts the country.
Destination of Immigrants within the United States
Recent immigrants are not distributed uniformly through the United States.
Individual states attract immigrants from different countries.
Proximity clearly influences some decisions, such as Mexicans prefer California or Texas and humans prefer Florida.
Immigrants cluster in communities where people from the same country previously settled.
Chain migration is the migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migrated there.
Job prospects affect the states to which immigrants head.
The South and West have attracted a large percentage of immigrants because the Regents have had a more rapid growth of jobs.
In recent years, though, many immigrants—especially Mexicans—have migrated to the Midwest to take industrial jobs, such as meatpacking and related food processing.
KEY ISSUE 3 - Why Do Migrants Face Obstacles?
Immigration Policies of Host Countries
Countries to which immigrants wish to migrate have adopted two policies to control the arrival of foreigners seeking work.
The United States uses a quota system to limit the number of foreign citizens who can migrate permanently to the country and obtain work.
Other major recipients of immigrants, especially in Western Europe and the Middle East, permit guest workers to work temporarily but not stay permanently.
U.S. Quota Laws
The era of unrestricted immigration to the United States ended when Congress passed the Quota Act in 1921 in the National Origins Act in 1924.
These laws established quotas, or maximum limits on the number of people who could immigrate to the United States from each country during a one-year period.
According to the quota, for each country that has native-born persons already living in the United States, 2% of their number (based on the 1910 census) could immigrate each year.
Quota laws were designed to ensure that most immigrants to the United States continued to be Europeans.
Although Asians never accounted for more than 5% of immigrants during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Americans were, nevertheless, alarmed at the prospect of millions of Asians flooding into the country, especially to the States along the Pacific coast.
Following the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, quotas for individual countries were eliminated in 1968 and replaced with hemisphere quotas.
The annual number of US immigrants was restricted to 170,000 from the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 from the Western Hemisphere.
In 1978, the hemisphere quotas were replaced by a global quota of 290,000, including a maximum of 20,000 per country.
The current has a global quota of 620,000, with no more than 7% from one country, but numerous qualifications and exceptions can alter the limit considerably.
Because the number of applicants for admission to the United States far exceeds the quotas, Congress has set preferences.
About 3/4 of the immigrants are admitted to reunify families, primarily spouses or unmarried children of people already living in the United States.
The typical wait for a spouse to gain entry is currently about 5 years.
The quota does not apply to refugees, who are admitted if they are judged, genuine refugees.
Also admitted without limit are spouses, children, and parents of US citizens.
Asians have made especially good use of the priorities set by the US quota laws.
Many well-educated Asians enter the United States with a preference for skilled workers.
Once admitted, they can bring any relatives under the family reunification provisions of the quota.
Eventually, these immigrants can bring in a wider range of other relatives from Asia, a process of chain migration.
Some of today's immigrants to the United States and Canada are poor people pushed from their homes by economic desperation, but most are young, well-educated people lured to economically growing countries.
Other countries charge that by giving preference to skilled workers, immigration policies in the United States and Europe contribute to a brain drain, which is a large-scale immigration by talented people.
Scientists, researchers, doctors, and other professionals migrate to countries where they can make better use of their abilities.
Temporary Migration for Work
People unable to migrate permanently to a new country for employment opportunities may be allowed to migrate temporarily.
Prominent forms of temporary work migrants include guest workers in Europe in the Middle East and historically, time-contract workers in Asia.
Citizens of poor countries to obtain jobs in Western Europe or in the Middle East are known as guest workers.
In Europe, guest workers are protected by minimum-wage laws, labor union contracts, and other support programs.
Guest workers serve a useful role in Western Europe because they take low-status and low-skilled jobs that local residents won’t accept.
By letting their people work elsewhere, poor countries reduce their own unemployment problems.
Guest workers also help their native countries by sending a large percentage of their earnings back home to their families.
Most guest workers in Europe come from North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia.
Distinctive migration routes have emerged among the exporting and importing countries.
Distinguishing Between Economic Migrants and Refugees
It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between migrants seeking economic opportunities and refugees fleeing from government persecution.
The distinction between economic migrants and refugees is important because the United States, Canada, and Western European countries treat the two groups differently.
Economic migrants are generally not admitted unless they possess special skills or have a close relative already there, and even then they must compete with similar applicants from other countries.
However, refugees receive special priority admission to other countries.
Cuba, Haiti, and Vietnam have each set around 25,000 immigrants a year to the United States in recent decades.
Distinguishing between economic migrants and refugees has been especially difficult for people trying to get to the United States from these three countries.
Emigrants from Cuba. The US government regarded immigrants from Cuba as political refugees after the 1959 Revolution that brought the communist government of Fidel Castro to power. Under Castro's leadership, the Cuban government took control of privately owned Banks, factories, and farms, and political opponents of the government or jailed. The US government closed its embassy and prevented companies from buying and selling in Cuba.
In the Years immediately following the revolution, more than 600,000 Cubans were emitted to the United States. The largest number settled in Southern Florida, where they became prominent in the region's economy and politics.
Emigrants from Haiti. Shortly after the 1980 Mariel boatlift from Cuba, several thousand Haitians also sailed in small vessels for the United States. Claiming that they had migrated for economic advancement rather than political Asylum, US immigration officials would not let the Haitians aboard the boats stay in the United States.
Under the dictatorship of Francis (Papa Doc) Duvalier (1956-1971) and his son Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier (1971-1986), the Haitian government persecuted its political opponents at least as harshly as did the Cuban government. But the US government drew a distinction between the governments of the two neighboring Caribbean countries because Castro was allied with the Soviet Union and the Duvailers were not. The Haitians brought a lawsuit against the US government, arguing that if the Cubans were admitted, they should be too. The government settled the case by agreeing to admit some Haitians.
After a 1991 coup that replaced Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, with military leaders, thousands of Haitians fled their country in small boats. Although political persecution has subsided, many Haitians still try to migrate to the United States, reinforcing the view that economic factors may always have been important in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.
Emigrants from Vietnam. The Vietnam War ended in 1975 when Communist-controlled North Vietnam captured South Vietnam’s capital city of Saigon (since renamed Ho Chi Minh City). The United States, which had supported the government of South Vietnam, evacuated from Saigon several thousand people who had been closely identified with the American position during the war and who were, therefore, vulnerable to persecution after the Communist victory. Thousands of other pro-US South Vietnamese who are not politically prominent enough to give space on an American evacuation helicopter tried to leave by boat.
The second surge of Vietnamese boat people came in the late 1980s. As memories of the Vietnam War faded, officials in other countries no longer considered Vietnam boat people as refugees. Most of the boat people were now judged economic migrants, so they were placed in detention camps monitored by the. United Nations until they could be sent back to Vietnam. Vietnam remains a major source of immigrants to the United States, but the pull of economic opportunity is a greater incentive than the push of political persecution.
Cultural Challenges Faced While Living in Other Countries
For many immigrants, admission to another country does not end the challenges.
Citizens of the host country may dislike the newcomers' cultural differences.
More significantly, politicians exploit immigrants as scapegoats for local economic problems.
U.S. Attitudes Toward Immigrants
Americans have always regarded new arrivals with suspicion but tempered their dislike during the 19th century because immigrants help to settle the frontier and extend US control across the continent.
By the early 20th century, most Americans saw the frontier was closed and thought that therefore entry into the country should be closed as well.
Opposition to immigration also intensified into the 20th century when the majority of immigrants no longer came from northern and western Europe.
Italians, Russians, Poles, and other Southern and Eastern Europeans who poured into the United States after 1900 faced much more hostility than did British, German, and Irish immigrants a half-century later.
Most recently, hostile citizens in California and other states have voted to deny unauthorized immigrants access to most public services, such as schools, day-care centers, and health clinics.
The laws have been difficult to enforce and have dubious constitutionality, but their enactment reflects the unwillingness on the part of many Americans to help out needy immigrants.
Attitudes Toward Guest Workers
In Europe, many guest workers suffer from poor social conditions.
A guest worker is typically a young man who arrives alone in a city.
He has low money for food, housing, or entertainment because his primary objective is to send home as much money as possible.
He is likely to use any surplus money for a railway ticket home for the weekend.
Far from his family and friends, the guest worker can lead a lonely life.
His isolation may be heightened by unfamiliarity with the host country’s language and distinctive cultural activities.
Most guest workers and their host countries regard the arrangement as temporary.
In reality, however, many guest workers remain indefinitely, especially if they are joined by other family members.
Many Western Europeans just like the guest workers and oppose government programs to improve their living conditions.
Political parties that support restrictions on immigration of games support in France, Germany, and other European countries, and attacks by local citizens on immigrants have increased.
The severe global recession of the early 21st century has sharply reduced the number of guest workers and economic migrants.
With high unemployment and limited job opportunities in the principal destination countries, potential migrants have much less incentive to risk the uncertainties and expenses of international migration.
KEY ISSUE 4 - Why Do People Migrate Within a Country?
Migration Between Regions of a Country
In the past, people migrated from one region of a country to another in search of better farmland.
Lack of farmland pushed many people from the more densely settled region of the country and lured them to the frontier, where land was abundant.
Today, the principal type of interregional migration is from rural areas to urban areas.
Most jobs, especially in services, are cultured in urban areas.
Migration Between Regions Within the United States
An especially prominent example of large-scale internal migration is the opening of the American West.
200 years ago, the United States consisted of a collection of settlements concentrated on the Atlantic coast.
Through mass interregional migration, the interior of the continent was settled and developed.
The US Census Bureau computes a country's population center at the time of each census.
The changing location of the population center graphically demonstrates the march of the American people across the North American Continent over the past 200 years.
Colonial Settlement. When the first US census was taken in 1790, the population center was located in the Chesapeake Bay, near Charleston, Maryland.
This location reflects the fact that virtually all colonial-era settlements were near the Atlantic Coast
Few colonists ventured far from coastal locations because they depended on shipping links with Europe to receive products and export raw materials.
Settlement in the interior was also hindered by an intervening obstacle, the Appalachian Mountains.
Early Settlement in the Interior. Transportation improvements, especially the buildings of canals, helped to open the interior in the early 1800s.
Most important was the Erie Canal, which enabled people to travel inexpensively by boat between New York City and the Great Lakes.
Encouraged by the opportunity to obtain a large amount of land at a low price, people moved into forested river valleys between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River.
They cut down the trees and used the wood to build homes, barns, and fences.
Migration to California. The population center shifted more rapidly during the mid-nineteenth century, reaching Greensburg, Indiana, in 1890, a 400-mile westward movement in 50 years.
Rather than continuing to expand agriculture into the next available Westward land, mid-nineteenth-century pioneers kept going all the way to California.
The principal pull to California was the Gold Rush beginning in the late 1840s.
Mid-nineteenth Century Pioneers also passed over the Great Plains because of the physical environment.
The region's dry climate, lack of trees, and tough grassland sod convinced early explorers such as Zebulon Pike that the region was unfit for farming, and maps at the time labeled the Great Plains as the Great American Desert.
Settlement of the Great Plains. The westward movement of the US population centers slowed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In 1940, the center of the population was still in Indiana, only 150 miles west of its 1890 position.
The rate slowed, in part, because large-scale migration to the East Coast from Europe offset some of the migration from the East Coast to the US West.
Also, immigrants began to fill in the area between the 98th Meridian and California that earlier generations had bypassed.
Advancements in agricultural technology enabled people to cultivate in the Great Plains.
Farmers used barbed wire to reduce dependence on wood fencing, the steel plow to cur the thick sod, and windmills and well-drilling equipment to pump more water.
The expansion of the railroads encouraged the settlement of the Great Plains.
The federal government gave large land grants to the railroad companies, which financed the construction of their lines by selling portions to farmers.
The extensive rail network then permitted settlers to transport their products to the large concentrations of customers in East Coast cities.
Recent Growth of the South. The population center resumed a more vigorous migration during the late 20th century, moving 250 miles further west between 1940 and 2000, across Illinois to central Missouri.
The population Center also moved Southward by 75 miles between 1940 and 2000.
The population center drifted Southward because of net migration into southern states, especially during the last two decades of the 20th century.
Americans migrated to the South primarily for job opportunities and environmental conditions.
Americans commonly refer to the South as the “sunbelt” because of its more temperate climate and the Midwest as the “rustbelt” because of its dependency on declining manufacturing as well (as the ability of the climate to rust our cars relatively quickly).
The rapid growth of population and employment in the South has aggravated interregional antagonism.
Some people in the Northeast and Midwest believe that southern states have stolen industries from them.
In reality, some industries have relocated from the Northeast and Midwest, but most of the South's industrial growth comes from newly established companies.
Interregional migration has slowed considerably in the United States into the 21st century; net migration between each pair of regions is now close to zero.
Regional differences in employment prospects have become less dramatic.
With most new jobs in the service sector of the economy, jobs are expanding and contracting at similar rates around the country.
Migration Between Regions in Other Countries
As in the United States, long-distance interregional migration has been an important means of opening new regions for economic development in other large countries.
Incentives have been used to stimulate migration to other regions.
RUSSIA. Interregional migration was important in developing the former Soviet Union.
Soviet policy encouraged factory construction near raw materials rather than near existing population concentrations.
Not enough workers lived nearby to fill all the jobs at the mines, factories, and construction sites established in these remote, resource-rich regions.
To build up an adequate labor force, the Soviet government had to stimulate interregional migration.
Soviet officials were especially eager to develop Russia's Far North, which included much of Siberia because it is rich in natural resources—fossil fuels, minerals, and forests.
The Far North encompassed 45% of the Soviet Union's land area but contained less than 2% of its people.
The Soviet government forced people to migrate to the Far North to construct and operate steel mills, hydroelectric power stations, mines, and other enterprises.
In later years, the government encouraged, instead, voluntary migration to the Far North, including higher wages, more paid holidays, and early retirement.
The incentives failed to pull as many migrants to the far north as Soviet officials desired.
People were reluctant because of the region’s harsh climate and remoteness from population clusters.
Each year, as many as half of the people in the Far North migrated back to other regions of the country and had to be replaced by other immigrants, especially young males willing to work in the region for a short period.
The collapse of the Soviet Union ended policies that encouraged interregional migration.
In the transition to a market-based economy, Russian government officials no longer dictate optimal locations for factories.
BRAZIL. Another large country, Brazil, has encouraged interregional migration.
Most Brazilians live in a string of large cities near the Atlantic Coast.
Brazil’s tropical interior is very sparsely inhabited.
To increase the attractiveness of the interior, the government moved its capital in 1960 from Rio to a newly built city called Brasilia, situated 1000 km (600 miles) from the Atlantic Coast.
From above, Brasilia’s design resembles an airplane, with government buildings located at the center of the city and housing arranged along the “wings”.
Thousands of people have migrated to Brasilia in search of jobs.
Many of these workers could not afford housing in Brasilia and were living instead in hastily erected shacks on the outskirts of the city.
INDONESIA. Since 1969, the Indonesian government has paid for the migration of more than 5 million people, primarily from the island of Java, where nearly two-thirds of its people live, to less populated islands.
Under the government program, families receive a one-way air ticket, 2 hectares (5 acres) of land, materials to build a house, seeds, pesticides, and food—a year's worth of rice—to tide them over until the crops are ready.
EUROPE. The principal flow of interregional migration in Europe is from east and south to west and north.
This pattern reflects the relatively low incomes and bleak job prospects in eastern and southern Europe.
In the twentieth century, wealthy Western European countries received many immigrants from their former colonies in Africa and Asia.
The expansion of the European Union into Eastern Europe in the 21st century removed barriers for Bulgarians, Romanians, and residents of other former communist countries to migrate to Western Europe.
Interregional migration flows can also be found within individual European countries.
Italians migrated from the south, known as the Mezzpgoprno, to the north, and Britons migrate from the north to the south.
In both cases, economic conditions are stronger in the regions to which migrants are heading than in the regions where they originated.
The attractiveness of regions within Europe can change.
For centuries, Ireland and Scotland regions with net out-migration.
Improved economic conditions in the late 20th century induced a reversal of historic patterns, and both became regions of net in-migration.
The deep recession of the early 21st century discouraged further in-migration to Ireland and Scotland.
INDIA. A number of governments limit the ability of people to migrate from one region to another.
For example, Indians require a permit to migrate—or even to visit—the State of Assam in the northeastern part of the country.
The restrictions, which date from the British colonial era, are designed to protect the ethnic identity of the Assamese by limiting the number of outsiders to compete for jobs and purchase land.
Because Assam is situated on the border with Bangladesh, the restrictions also limit international migration.
Migration Within One Region
Interregional migration attracts considerable attention, but far more people move within the same region, which is intraregional migration.
Worldwide, the most prominent type of intraregional migration is from rural areas to urban areas.
In the United States, the principal intraregional migration is from cities to suburbs.
Migration from Rural to Urban Areas
Migration from rural (or nonmetropolitan) areas to Urban (or metropolitan) areas began in the 1800s in Europe and North America as part of the Industrial Revolution.
The percentage of people living in urban areas in the United States, for example, increased from 5% in 1800 to 50% in 1920.
Today, approximately three-fourths of the people in the United States and other MDCs live in urban areas.
In recent years, urbanization has diffused to LDCs, especially in Asia.
The number of Asians living in urban areas increased from 1 ½ billion in 1982 to 1 ¾ billion in 2007, and the number in rural areas declined from 1 ¾ billion to 1 ¼ billion.
Worldwide, more than 20 million people are estimated to migrate each year from rural to urban areas.
Like interregional migrants, most people who move from rural to urban areas see economic advancement.
They are pushed from rural areas by declining opportunities in agriculture and are pulled to the cities by the prospect of working in factories or in service industries.
Migration from Urban to Suburban Areas
Most intraregional migration in MDCs is from cities out to surrounding suburbs.
The population of most cities in MDCs declined during the second half of the 20th century, and suburbs grew rapidly.
Into the 21st century, nearly twice as many Americans migrate from central cities to suburbs each year than migrate from suburbs to central cities.
Comparable patterns are found in Canada, the United Kingdom, and other Western European countries.
The major reason for the large-scale migration to the suburbs is not related to employment, as is the case with other forms of migration.
For most people, migration to the suburbs does not coincide with changing jobs.
Instead, people are pulled by a suburban lifestyle.
Suburbs offer the opportunity to live in a detached house rather than an apartment, surrounded by a private yard where children can play safely.
A garage or driveway on the property guarantee space to park automobiles at no charge.
Suburban schools tend to be more modern, better equipped, and safer than those in cities.
Automobiles and trains enable people to live in suburbs yet have access to jobs, shops, and recreational facilities throughout the urban area.
As a result of suburbanization, the territory occupied by urban areas has rapidly expanded.
To accommodate suburban growth, farms on the periphery of urban areas are converted to housing developments, where new roads, sewers, and other services must be built.
Migration from Urban to Rural Areas
MDCs witnessed a new migration trend during the late 20th century.
For the first time, more people immigrated into rural areas than emigrated out of them.
Net migration from urban to rural areas is called counterurbanization.
Counterurbanization results in part from a very rapid expansion of suburbs.
The boundary between where suburbs and the countryside begins cannot be precisely defined.
Most counterurbanization represents a genuine migration from cities and suburbs to small towns and rural communities.
Like suburbanization, people move from urban to rural areas for lifestyle reasons.
Some are lured to rural areas by the prospect of swapping the frantic pace of urban life for the opportunity to live on a farm where they can own horses or grow vegetables.
Others moved to Farms but do not earn their living from agriculture; instead, they work in nearby factories, small-town shops, or other services.
In the United States, evidence of counterurbanization can be seen primarily in the Rocky Mountain States.
Rural countries and states such as Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming have experienced net in-migration.
With modern communications and transportation systems, no location in an MDC is truly isolated, either economically or socially.
Computers enable us to work anywhere and still have access to an international network.
Roughly the same number of people now migrated from urban to rural areas as from rural to urban areas.
Net in-migration into the Rocky Mountain States has been offset by out-migration from the Great Plains states, where the economy has been hurt by poor agricultural conditions.
Future migration trends in MDCs are unpredictable because future economic conditions are difficult to forecast.
Have these countries reached long-term equilibrium, in which approximately ¾ of the people live in urban areas and ¼ in rural areas?
Will counterurbanization resume in the future because people prefer to live in rural areas?
Is the decline of the rural economy reversible?