Migration

Also called: Place of origin and place of destination · Topic: World Population: Distribution, Density, Growth and Migration · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 2 "The World Population: Distribution, Density and Growth"

Meaning

Migration is the movement of people from one place to another: from a place of origin (the place they leave, whose population falls) to a place of destination (the place they reach, whose population rises).

• NCERT calls it "a spontaneous effort to achieve a better balance between population and resources". Spontaneous means people decide for themselves; nobody plans it for them.
• It matters because it is one of the three components of population change, along with births and deaths. It is the only one that changes the population of two places at once.

Explanation

How it works: push, pull and what lies between

• Cause: people mainly migrate for a better economic and social life.
• Some places have too many people for the jobs and land available.

• People move to places with more opportunity.

• Push factors make the place of origin less attractive and drive people out:

• unemployment
• poor living conditions
• political turmoil (unrest, conflict)
• unpleasant climate
• natural disasters (floods, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes)
• epidemics

• socio-economic backwardness

• Pull factors make the place of destination more attractive and draw people in:

• better jobs and higher wages
• better living conditions
• peace and stability
• pleasant climate
• security of life and property

• better medical and educational facilities

• Example: Kerala and the Gulf

• Push: Kerala has high literacy but few jobs for educated youth.
• Pull: the oil-rich Gulf countries need workers and pay higher wages.
• Result: a steady flow of migrants to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, and large remittances (money migrants send home) flowing back.

Types of migration

Basis	Types	Example
Duration	Permanent (settles for good)	Indian professionals who settle in the USA
	Temporary (stays for a fixed period)	Contract workers in the Gulf
	Seasonal (moves with the season, then returns)	Farm labourers going to Punjab for the harvest; transhumance (herders take their animals up to high pastures in summer and bring them down in winter), e.g. Gaddis and Bakarwals
Direction	Rural-rural	Women moving after marriage; farm labour moving between villages
	Rural-urban	Villagers moving to Mumbai, Delhi or Kolkata for jobs
	Urban-urban	Small town to big city, or city to city
	Urban-rural	Retired people returning to native villages
Boundary crossed	Internal (inside a country) and international (across a national border)	Bihar to Punjab; Kerala to the UAE

• Emigration means moving out of a place. The person is an emigrant.
• Immigration means moving into a new place. The person is an immigrant.
• One person is both at the same time. It depends on which country you look from. Memory aid: E = Exit, I = In.
• Forced migration: people have to leave because of conflict, persecution or disaster. It is push without pull. It produces refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).
• Climate migration: movement caused by changes in climate.
• Slow-onset: sea-level rise, drought, desertification, salt water entering farmland.
• Sudden-onset: floods, cyclones, storms.
• Chain: warming, erratic rain and rising seas → water shortage, crop failure, flooded coasts → lost livelihoods → people move, mostly inside their own country.

Theories of migration

• Ravenstein's "Laws of Migration" (E.G. Ravenstein, 1885), based on British census data:
• Most migrants move short distances. The number of migrants falls as distance rises.
• Stepwise migration: people move in stages, from a village to a nearby town and then to a bigger city.
• Every stream has a counter-stream: each flow creates a smaller return flow the other way.
• Females dominate short-distance moves, males dominate long-distance moves. In India, women move short distances mostly because of marriage.
• Long-distance migrants usually head for big centres of trade and industry.
• Town people migrate less than rural people.

• Economic motives are the main cause.

• Everett Lee's theory (1966), often called the push-pull model. Every move involves four things: 1. Factors at the origin (pluses and minuses) 2. Factors at the destination (pluses and minuses) 3. Intervening obstacles: barriers between the two places, such as distance, travel cost, visa rules, borders and language 4. Personal factors: age, education, family and personality

• So a strong push or pull alone is not enough. The obstacles in between decide whether a person actually moves.

Scale of migration today

• International migrant stock means everyone living in a country other than the one they were born in. It counts people at one point in time, not the number who moved that year.
• IOM World Migration Report 2024 (IOM = International Organization for Migration):
• About 281 million international migrants in 2020, about 3.6 per cent of the world's people.
• So about 96 per cent live in their country of birth. Most migration is internal.

• India is the largest country of origin, with about 18 million emigrants.

• Remittances: India is the world's top recipient, at about US$129 billion in 2024 [3].

• Remittances to low- and middle-income countries were expected to reach US$685 billion in 2024. That is more than FDI (foreign direct investment) and ODA (official development assistance, or foreign aid) combined [3].

• Forced displacement (end of 2025): about 117.8 million people worldwide, the first fall in a decade but still close to record levels [2].

• About 73.5 million were displaced inside their own countries, and about 42.7 million were refugees [2].
• 73 per cent of refugees live in low- and middle-income countries, and 67 per cent live in neighbouring countries [2].

Where it occurs

• India: internal migration
• Rural-urban moves to Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata.
• Interstate labour from Bihar to Punjab, including seasonal harvest work.

• Transhumance by Gaddis and Bakarwals in the Himalaya.

• India: international migration

• Kerala → the Gulf (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman).
• Largest overseas Indian populations (MEA, January 2025): USA (~5.69 million), UAE (~3.90 million), Malaysia (~2.94 million), Saudi Arabia (~2.75 million), Sri Lanka (~1.61 million) [6]. These figures include NRIs (Indian citizens living abroad) and PIOs/OCIs (people of Indian origin with foreign citizenship).

• The old diasporas in Malaysia and Sri Lanka come from indentured and plantation labour of the colonial era.

• World corridors (a corridor is a busy route between one origin and one destination):

• Mexico → USA: the world's largest corridor.
• India → UAE and the rest of the Gulf.

• Syria → Turkey: mostly refugees from the Syrian civil war.

• Destinations:

• The USA is the largest single destination.

• The GCC countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman) have the highest share of migrants in their populations. In the UAE and Qatar, most residents are migrants.

• Forced displacement: Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Myanmar (the Rohingya).

• Sudan: 14.3 million displaced since April 2023, of whom 11.6 million are inside the country. This is the largest internal displacement crisis ever recorded [4].

• South Asia (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan): monsoon floods and cyclones cause many of the world's new disaster displacements each year.

• Climate migration hotspots:

• Pacific atoll nations (an atoll is a ring of coral islands only a few metres above the sea): Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands.
• Bangladesh delta (Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna): people move to Dhaka and towards India.
• Sundarbans (West Bengal): islands such as Ghoramara are shrinking.

Don't confuse with

• Emigration vs immigration: emigration is leaving a place (Exit), and immigration is entering one (In). A Kerala worker in the UAE is an emigrant from India and an immigrant in the UAE.
• Refugee vs IDP: a refugee has crossed an international border and is covered by the 1951 Convention. An IDP (internally displaced person) stays inside their own country, remains under their own government's protection and is not covered by the Convention.
• Push factor vs pull factor: push works at the origin, pull at the destination. Medical and educational facilities are a pull factor, not a push factor.
• "Climate refugee" vs climate migrant: "climate refugee" has no legal status, because the 1951 Convention covers only persecution, not environmental causes. The correct terms are "climate migrant" or "environmentally displaced person".

Prelims Hooks

• NCERT trap: unemployment, epidemics, political turmoil and natural disasters are push factors. Medical and educational facilities are a pull factor.
• Ravenstein (1885): most migrants move short distances; migration happens in steps; every stream has a counter-stream; women dominate short-distance moves. Everett Lee (1966): intervening obstacles.
• Transhumance is a type of seasonal migration (Gaddis, Bakarwals).
• International migrants: about 281 million (2020), about 3.6 per cent of the world's people (IOM WMR 2024). India is the largest country of origin.
• Top remittance receivers, 2024: India (~US$129 bn) > Mexico > China > Philippines > Pakistan [3].
• Groundswell (2021): up to 216 million internal climate migrants by 2050. Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to have the most (86 million) [5].

Mains Points

• Causes and effects of migration in India (GS-I)
• Causes: rural distress, the jobs gap between regions and better urban services drive rural-urban and interstate migration.
• At the origin: remittances and less pressure on land, but also brain drain (loss of skilled people) and feminisation of agriculture (women left to run farms after men migrate).

• At the destination: cheap labour and growth, but also slums, pressure on services and conflict between locals and migrants.

• Remittances and Gulf dependence (GS-I/GS-III)

• India receives about US$129 billion (2024), more than its FDI inflows [3]. This supports family spending and the balance of payments, especially in Kerala.

• Risks: oil-price shocks, the kafala system (sponsorship rules that tie a worker to one employer), and evacuations during COVID-19 and conflicts in West Asia.

• Forced and climate migration (GS-III)

• Hosting refugees falls mostly on poor neighbouring countries [2]. India has signed neither the 1951 Convention nor the 1967 Protocol and has no national refugee law, so it treats Rohingya, Chakma and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees case by case under laws such as the Foreigners Act, 1946.
• Up to 40 million internal climate migrants are projected for South Asia by 2050 [5]. Quick, joint climate action could cut climate migration by up to 80 per cent [5].
• Responses: adaptation plans, managed relocation, social protection that workers can carry when they move (e.g. One Nation One Ration Card), and closing the legal gap for "climate refugees".

Related concepts

• Immigration
• Emigration
• Push and pull factors
• International migrant stock
• Refugee
• Internally displaced person
• Climate migration

Read more

• Migration: types, push and pull, and the displaced