🚫 Push factors
Unemployment and low wages, war and conflict, poverty, natural disasters such as floods or drought, discrimination, and poor access to education or healthcare.
Globalisation and Inequality » Migration and Its Impact on Societies
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Cambridge spec: 3.3.1
- What immigration and emigration mean
- Why people move: push and pull factors
- How migration changes cultural diversity and the economy, in both sending and receiving societies
- Why migrants are sometimes viewed negatively
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Unlock This CourseMoving from one society to another
People have always moved to find safety, work or a better life. Today, travel and communication make it easier than ever. In this lesson we look at how this movement affects the societies people leave and the societies they join. In Globalisation and Identity you met cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Here we ask what migration itself does to societies.
Key terms:
- Migration: the movement of people from one place to another to live, often across a national border.
- Immigration: people coming into a country to live there.
- Emigration: people leaving a country to live somewhere else.
- Push factor: something that makes people want to leave a place.
- Pull factor: something that attracts people to a place.
- Remittances: money that migrants send back to family in their home country.
- Labour shortage: not enough workers to fill jobs in an industry or country.
- Brain drain: when many skilled and educated people leave a country, so it loses their skills.
One journey is both. A woman who leaves Kenya to work in Canada is an emigrant from Kenya and an immigrant to Canada. The country she leaves is the sending society. The country she joins is the receiving society.
Push and pull factors
Each suitcase tells a story of push factors like war or low wages and pull factors like jobs and safety
Sociologists explain migration using push and pull factors. People are often pushed by problems at home and pulled by opportunities elsewhere. Most decisions involve both.
🌟 Pull factors
Jobs and higher wages, safety, better schools and hospitals, family or friends already living there, and a chance for children to have better life chances.
For example, a young engineer might be pushed by a lack of jobs at home and pulled by a firm in another country that offers a good salary. A family may be pushed out by conflict and pulled by the safety of a neighbouring country. Pull factors also work through networks: people often move to a place where relatives or people from their community already live.
Increasing cultural diversity
Migration makes receiving societies more culturally diverse, which you can taste on a street like this
When people move, they bring their languages, foods, religions, music and customs with them. Over time, the receiving society becomes more culturally diverse. You can often see this in everyday life:
- restaurants and shops selling food from many countries
- festivals from different religions and cultures celebrated in the same city
- several languages heard in schools and workplaces
- new styles of music and art that blend influences
Many people see this as a benefit. It can make society more interesting and help people learn from one another. However, living alongside different customs can also lead to misunderstanding or tension if groups do not mix. Some migrants also feel pressure to fit in, or worry about losing their own culture.
Economic consequences
Migration has economic effects on both the society that people leave and the one they join.
🏠 Receiving societies
Benefits: migrants fill labour shortages, for example in healthcare, farming and construction. They pay taxes, start businesses and bring skills. This can help the economy grow.
Possible costs: more demand for housing, schools and health services. Some people fear competition for jobs or lower wages in some types of work.
🌍 Sending societies
Benefits: remittances can be a major source of income for families and for the country. Migrants may return home with new skills and savings.
Possible costs: brain drain, when doctors, nurses or teachers leave. Villages may lose young workers and be left with mostly older people and children.
Remittances are used for everyday needs such as food and rent, and for school fees or building a home. In some countries, remittances are a very large part of what families live on.
Negative perceptions of migrants
Not everyone welcomes migrants. Some members of the receiving society hold negative perceptions of them. Common claims are that migrants take jobs, use too many public services, or do not want to fit in. Sociologists say such views are often based on stereotypes and are not always supported by evidence.
- Scapegoating: blaming a group for problems they did not cause, such as unemployment or a shortage of homes.
- The media: news stories that focus on the problems of migration can make people more fearful, and can spread stereotypes.
- Discrimination: negative views can lead to unfair treatment, for example in finding a job or a home (see Life Chances, Ethnicity and Intersectionality).
These views can harm migrants. They may feel unwelcome, may be treated unfairly, and may find it harder to join in with society.
Worked example
Question: Explain one economic consequence of migration for a sending society.
Answer: One consequence is that migrants send remittances back to their families (1). This money pays for food, housing and school fees, so families have a higher standard of living (1).
Common mistakes
Mixing up immigration (coming in) and emigration (leaving). Treating push and pull factors as the same thing: push is about the place people leave, pull is about the place they go to. Writing only about benefits, or only about problems, when a question asks for both sides. Saying all people in a receiving society dislike migrants.
Exam-style question
(a) Define the term emigration. [2 marks]
(b) Give two examples of push factors. [2 marks]
(c) Explain three effects of migration on societies. [6 marks]
Model answer
(a) People leaving their own country (1) to live in another country (1).
(b) Any two from: unemployment or low wages, war and conflict, poverty, natural disasters, discrimination (1 each).
(c) First, migration increases cultural diversity in the receiving society, because migrants bring their languages, food and festivals (1). Second, migrants can fill labour shortages in jobs such as healthcare, which helps the economy of the receiving society (1). Third, migrants send remittances home, which helps families in the sending society, although the country may also suffer brain drain if skilled workers leave (1). Each point developed with a reason earns the further marks (3).
Exam tip
For "explain three" questions, give three separate effects and add a reason to each. Say whether you are writing about the sending or the receiving society, so the examiner can see which one you mean.