Chapter 3: Migration
3.8 Glossary
Asylum seeker – those who leave the sovereign territory of one country in order to achieve refugee status in another, based upon claims of danger because of race, religion, nationality, or other pertinent identifiers.
Brain drain – the collective loss of skills, education, training, and wealth that occurs when highly-skilled and educated people move away from a country (usually away from a relatively poor country).
Brain gain – the collective gain of skills, education, training, and wealth that occurs when highly-skilled and educated people move into another country (usually to a relatively wealthier country).
Brain waste – a phenomenon in which international migrants with high levels of education and/or training often are not eligible to work in their area of training due to regulations or certification requirements, resulting in a “wasted” potential in certain groups.
Diaspora – a group of people sharing a common historical and ethnic connection to a territory, but who no longer live in that territory or country. Some members of a diaspora may have been removed from the traditional homeland for multiple generations but still identify with it as a “homeland.”
Ecumene – human inhabited areas of Earth
Emigrant – an individual who moves away from one country into another for a prolonged period. The definition of “prolonged” varies by country and is defined by the World Bank as minimum of one year.
Forced migration – a type of movement in which individuals or groups are coerced into moving by an external set of forces, most notably environmental, economic, social, or political factors.
Globalization – all those processes, technologies, and systems that result in greater connections, communication, and movement among increasingly distant people and places on Earth.
Guest worker – someone without legal permanent status who has been granted permission to reside in a country’s territory in order to work for a specific set of time on a particular kind of work.
Highly skilled migration – patterns movement by those with skills that are in high demand on the global market. Examples include nurses, doctors, IT specialists, actors/artists, and athletes who tend to enjoy greater levels of movement across borders than others.
Highly skilled migration – patterns movement by those with skills that are in high demand on the global market. Examples include nurses, doctors, IT specialists, actors/artists, and athletes who tend to enjoy greater levels of movement across borders than others.
Immigrant – an individual who moves for a prolonged period to another country. The definition of “prolonged” varies by country. In 2016 there were 246 million immigrants in the world.
Internally Displaced People (IDP) – those who have moved or been forced to move from a homeland for the same reasons as refugees but have not crossed an international boundary and do not have refugee status.
Laws of migration – generalizations about international migration as detailed by nineteenth-century demographers
Migration – a permanent move to a new location
Net migration – the difference between the number of immigrants and the number of emigrants in any given year
Points system – a national immigration policy that seeks to attract people with a specific set of skills, experience, and job training to satisfy unmet demand among those currently in the country. Regardless of origin country, anyone with the prescribed set of skills, linguistic ability, and education may apply to migrate to that country if they have acquired enough points to do so. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and England all have a points system.
Pull Factor – those forces that encourage people to move into a particular place
Push Factor – those forces that encourage people to move away from a particular place
Refugee – an individual who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable, or unwilling, to avail themselves of the protection of that country. An individual who has been granted “refugee” status is afforded a certain set of rights and privileges, most notably, the right not to be forcibly returned to the country of origin.
Remittances – money sent “home” by international migrants. Remittances represent the largest single source of external funding in many developing countries. The global figure for 2016 was US$600 billion.
Return migration – a return of a migrant to the country or place of origin
Transnationalism – exchanges and interactions across borders that are a regular and sustained part of migrants’ realities and activities that transcend a purely “national” space.
Undocumented migrants – those inside of a country without proper authorization or proof of residence.
Visa – the legal permission granted by a receiving country to those seeking to enter. Examples include tourist, temporary work, and student visas. A visa is different from a passport.
This process of migration can create two groups of people:
- Immigrants: those who are moving into a new region or country
- Emigrants: those who are moving out of their home regions or countries
We differ between internal migration which describes the movement within one country. Here we have
- interregional migration (the permanent movement from one region of a country to another region such as from California to Virginia) and
- intraregional migration (the permanent movement within a single region of a country such as the move from downtown DC to Loudoun County, VA.
The other type of migration is called international migration ( he movement from one country to another).
- Voluntary migration (based on individual choice).
- Forced migration (an individual must leave against his or her will).
Today’s migrants made the decision to leave their home countries for a variety of economic, political, environmental or religious reasons, to name a few. This creates the following groupings of migrants:
Source: Screen shot by Barbara Crain
Australia’s Points Indicator for Skilled Migrant
Click the image to use this points indicator to estimate if you will qualify as a skilled migrant under Australia’s points system.
- Guest workers: migrants who move to a country legally for a specific job and/or specific length of time. These guest workers often send part of their paychecks back to support family members in their home countries, known as remittances.
- Asylum seekers: migrants who move to a country to escape political, religious, ethnic, or gender persecution in their home countries.
- Refugees: asylum seekers who have satisfactorily proved their claims of persecution in court, and received legal protection against deportation in return.
- Internally displaced persons (IDPs): people who need to leave their home for safety reasons but did not cross an international border.
- Undocumented migrants: migrants who move to a country without proof of residency.
- Return migrants: migrants who return to their home country due to discrimination, lack of opportunities, or other reasons abroad.
- Highly skilled migrants: migrants with in-demand skill sets (e.g. computer programming) who may be given priority when their applications are reviewed by countries with a points system for immigration (e.g. Canada, Australia).
- Circular migration can be divided into several categories:
- daily movement. (moves within a local area, such as home to work)
- seasonal migration (most familiar movements between high-income and low-income countries but also retirees moving from northern areas to southern areas and vice versa)
- non-seasonal low-wage labor, and the
- movement of professionals, academics, and transnational entrepreneurs. Of these, seasonal migration is the most familiar between high-income and low-income countries.
