Emigration - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Emigration is the act of leaving one's country or region to settle

Settler

A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally people who take up residence on land and cultivate it, as opposed to nomads...

in another. It is the same as immigration

Immigration

Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...

but from the perspective of the country of origin. Human movement before the establishment of political boundaries or within one state is termed migration

Human migration

Human migration is physical movement by humans from one area to another, sometimes over long distances or in large groups. Historically this movement was nomadic, often causing significant conflict with the indigenous population and their displacement or cultural assimilation. Only a few nomadic...

. There are many reasons why people might choose to emigrate. Some are for reasons of religious, political or economic freedom

Economic freedom

Economic freedom is a term used in economic and policy debates. As with freedom generally, there are various definitions, but no universally accepted concept of economic freedom...

or escape. Others have personal reasons such as marriage. Some people living in rich nations with cold climates choose to move to warmer climates when they retire.

Many political or economic emigrants move together with their families toward new regions or new countries where they hope to find peace or job opportunities not available to them in their original location. Throughout history a large number of emigrants return to their homelands, often after they have earned sufficient money in the other country. Sometimes these emigrants move to countries with big cultural differences and will always feel as guests in their destinations, and preserve their original culture, traditions and language, sometimes transmitting them to their children. The conflict between the native and the newer culture may easily create social contrasts, generally resulting in an uncomfortable situation for the "foreigners", who have to understand legal and social systems sometimes new and strange to them. Often, communities of emigrants grow up in the destination areas.

Emigration had a profound influence on the world in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, when millions of poor families left Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

for the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, the rest of Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

and New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

.

Even though definitions may be vague and vary somewhat, emigration/immigration should not be confused with the phenomenon of involuntary migration, such as instances of population transfer

Population transfer

Population transfer is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion...

or ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....

Factors leading to emigration

Motives to migrate can be either incentives attracting people away, known as pull factors, or circumstances encouraging a person to leave, known as push factors, for example:

Push factors

Lack of employment or entrepreneurial opportunities
Lack of political or religious rights
Restrictions on practice of religion
Shortage of farmland; hard to start new farms
Oppressive legal/political conditions
Military draft, warfare
Famine or drought
Cultural fights with other cultural groups
Expulsion by armed force or coercion

Pull factors

Better opportunities for acquiring farms for self and children
Cheap purchase of farmland
Instant wealth (as in California Gold Rush
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...

)
More job opportunities
Higher pay
Prepaid travel (from relatives)
Better welfare programmes
Better schools
Join friends and relatives who have already moved
Build a new nation
Build religious community
Political freedom
Cultural richness

Emigration restrictions

Some countries restrict the ability of their citizens to emigrate to other countries. After 1668, the Qing

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

Emperor banned Han Chinese migration to Manchuria

Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...

. In 1681, the emperor ordered construction of the Willow Palisade

Willow Palisade

Willow Palisade was a system of ditches and embankments planted with willows intended to restrict movement into Manchuria, built by the Qing Dynasty during the later 17th century...

, a barrier beyond which the Chinese were prohibited from encroaching on Manchu and Mongol lands.

The Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

began such restrictions in 1918, with laws and borders tightening until even illegal emigration was nearly impossible by 1928. To strengthen this, they set up internal passport controls

Passport system in the Soviet Union

The Soviet passport is an identity document issued upon the laws of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for the citizen of the USSR. For the general purposes of identity certification Soviet passports contained such data as name, date of birth, sex, place of birth, nationality and citizenship...

and individual city Propiska

Propiska

Propiska was both a residence permit and migration recording tool in the Russian Empire before 1917 and from 1930s in the Soviet Union. It was documented in local police registers and certified with a stamp in internal passports....

("place of residence") permits, along with internal freedom of movement restrictions often called the 101st kilometre

101st kilometre

101st kilometre is a colloquial name for the law restricting freedom of movement in the Soviet Union.In the Soviet Union, the rights of an inmate released from the prison would typically still be restricted for a long period of time...

, which rules greatly restricted mobility within even small areas.

At the end of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

in 1945, the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

occupied several Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

an countries, together called the Eastern Bloc

Eastern bloc

The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

, with the majority of those living in the newly acquired areas aspiring to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave. Before 1950, over 15 million immigrants emigrated from Soviet-occupied eastern European countries to the west in the five years immediately following World War II

World War II

. By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Restrictions implemented in the Eastern Bloc stopped most East-West migration, with only 13.3 million migrations westward between 1950 and 1990. However, hundreds of thousands of East Germans annually emigrated to West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

through a "loophole" in the system that existed between East and West Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, where the four occupying World War II powers governed movement. The emigration resulted in massive "brain drain" from East Germany to West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

of younger educated professionals, such that nearly 20% of East Germany's population had migrated to West Germany by 1961. In 1961, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

, effectively closing the loophole. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, followed by the unification of Germany

Unification of Germany

The formal unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871 at the Versailles Palace's Hall of Mirrors in France. Princes of the German states gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm of Prussia as Emperor Wilhelm of the German...

and the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...

.

By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling international movement was also emulated by China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...

, and North Korea

North Korea

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

. North Korea still tightly restricts emigration, and contained the most strict emigration bans in the world even in the late 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, though some North Koreans illegally emigrate to China. Other countries with tight emigration restrictions at one time included Angola

Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...

, Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

, Mozambique

Mozambique

Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...

, Somalia

Somalia

Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

, Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

, Burma, Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia from 1975-1979)

Democratic Kampuchea

The Khmer Rouge period refers to the rule of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan and the Khmer Rouge Communist party over Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed as Democratic Kampuchea....

, Laos

Laos

Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...

, North Vietnam

North Vietnam

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...

, Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

, South Yemen and Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

Factors leading to emigration

Push factors

Pull factors

Emigration restrictions

See also