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Definition: Migration from The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences

The process or act of movement by an individual or group from one country, region, or place to another, sometimes over long distances. Evidence of human migration has been found throughout history and prehistory. In the United States, for example, former slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation took part in the “Great Migration” from the south to the north. Migrations may be voluntary (e.g., in search of better living conditions, often from rural to urban areas) or involuntary (e.g., transportation of slaves or human trafficking). Migration is one of the driving forces of human evolution.


Migration

From Encyclopedia of Geography
Human migration involves the movement of a person (a migrant) between two places for a certain period of time. It is often considered a permanent relocation, as compared with temporary spatial mobility, which includes all kinds of movement by people, such as commuting, circulating, visiting, shopping, and temporarily working away from home. This entry first details the most significant forms of migration according to their differing patterns and geographical scale. Next, migration decision making and the ever-changing dynamic processes of migrant behavior are examined. Last, the entry reviews some major constructs that migration scholars have presented as theoretical explanations of this constantly changing livelihood strategy of human mobility. Internal migration within national political boundaries has always been the largest kind of population redistribution enumerated since demographic statistics have been collected and compared at global scales. Its character is often…
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Full text Article MIGRATION

From International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family
Migration is a difficult concept to define because it includes people who move for different reasons across different spaces. A migrant can be a person who moves to another city or town within a nation; a refugee who crosses an international border to escape religious or political persecution; a…
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From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
A change in permanent residence, often of a year or more in duration, migration involves a geographical move that crosses a political boundary. It is common to distinguish two basic forms by whether the move involves the crossing of an international boundary from one country to another, that is…
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From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
The study of migration has been and continues to be an important area of innovation in anthropological theory. It is an area of research which by its nature focuses on change and which has frequently challenged preconceived notions of society and culture . Some have argued that the study of…
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Full text Article MIGRATION

From Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity & Culture
The word ‘migration’ is derived from the Latin word migratio , which means to move, to wander. It pertains to individual mobility. Migration is purposive and instrumental. Migration may take place within the boundaries of a state (internal migration) or across state boundaries (external or…
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From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
The migration of people on a huge scale between societies was an important feature of the second half of the twentieth century. There were major migrations from countries within the less developed European periphery and parts of the Third World into northern Europe during the 1960s; from Latin…
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From A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics
The movement of individuals or groups of people from one area to another. Migration can occur trans-nationally (i.e. across national borders) as well as nationally (within a national border, e.g. urbanisation). Migration affects the distribution of languages and the history of linguistic groups. It…
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From The Columbia Encyclopedia
of people, geographical movements of individuals or groups for the purpose of permanently resettling. Migrations have occurred throughout history and have played an important part in the peopling of all the areas of the earth. Primitive migrations were usually in search of food, but could also…
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From SAGE Key Concepts Series: Key Concepts in International Relations
CORE QUESTIONS ADDRESSED What are the different types of migration? How can migration be conceptualized theoretically? How is international migration related to world politics and what are the institutions regulating international migration on the global scale? DEFINITIONS Migration generally refers…
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From Key Concepts in Race and Ethnicity
Migration as a process has always been a feature of human societies, in all their variety, but it acquires a qualitatively novel status in modernity following the configuration of populations according to nation-states. Even though common motivations behind migration may be identified, alongside…
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From Routledge Dictionary of Economics
Movement of population, labour or capital between countries or between regions. The most studied form of migration has been the international migration of labour, especially the large westward migrations of the nineteenth century to the USA. As part of the process of economic development of a…
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