Migration and causes of Migration

             Give meaning of migration and show its reasons.

                                                  OR

              What is migration? Discuss he causes of migration.

Meaning of migration:

          Migration means to move from one place to another. It means to leave one place and settle at another place. This is the ordinary meaning of the word but the scientific definition of the word can be given in the following manner.

Definition : Migration refers to movement of a person from one place to another place, away from native place either within or outside the country for job, occupation, business or in search of better standard of living, on a permanent basis.

The causes of Migration:

          Migration is a personal phenomenon. The following causes can be presented for migration.

Economic Causes:

The main reason for migration is economic. Economic reasons are :

(1) To earn more income:

          A person migrates with a hope to get more income. He wants to improve the quality of life through more income. Usually, we see the people migrating from rural areas to urban areas. Migretion for higher income is an economic cause for migration. For example, many families have migrated to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada etc.

(2) The decision of migretion – a strategy of the family:

         In the context of our country, the decision of migration is a strategy of the family. Many tribal, farm workers move where they find employment. In such a decision, whole family participates.

(3) Transfer:

        When a person is transferred from one place to another distant place, he is forced to move to that place.

(4) To Attain Better Quality Education:

        When educational opportunities are limited in any particular place and a person has hunger for better education, he migrates to distant place which, in due course becomes permanent in nature.

(5) To get Modern Health Services:

         When a person cannot acquire required health services in his own native, he is forced to migrate to a better place for acquiring those services.

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 Social Causes:

     Along with economic factors, social factors also play an important role in migraton which are:

• Marriage: After marriage when a woman leaves her native and migrates to live in a distant place with her husband it is known as social migrtion.
• To get respite (away) from Social Rituals: A society in a village is traditional and orthodox to a great extent, while urban society has liberal thinking and modern life style. The youth of the villages get attracted to such a lifestyle and like to settle in urban areas to escape from the rigidity and rituals of rural areas.

 Natural Calamities or Environmental Factors:

      The places which are affected frequently by natural calamities like famine, earth quake, volcanoes, etc. see large scale migrtion of the people in search of safety.

  Man-made causes:

              Communal riots, wars etc. are Man-made disasters, which force people to migrate from their homes.

  The causes related to the process of development:

           Due to the constructions dams, people have to migrate. For example, in Gujarat, due to the construction of Sardar Sarovar Project, thousands of people had migrated.