Most people who migrate never leave their own country
Migration conjures images of border crossings, but the dominant form worldwide is internal: people moving from village to city, or out to the suburbs, within a single nation. Global studies still mostly count international movers, partly because those journeys are easier to track across borders than shifts inside one.
To count as migration, a move must involve an intention to settle, whether permanently or for a while. Nomads following seasonal routes are usually excluded, as are tourists, pilgrims and commuters. Migration can be selective, taking only part of a population, or sweeping, as in the Völkerwanderung of late antiquity when whole ethnic groups relocated. Scholars also list four broad forms: invasion, conquest, colonisation and emigration or immigration.
Labels depend on why someone leaves. A migrant in the traditional sense changes country for reasons such as work or healthcare. The UN refugee agency defines refugees as people forced out by violence or persecution, who often leave in haste without documents. Asylum seekers formally ask a host country for protection, and if approved become refugees. People uprooted by disaster or unrest who stay in their homeland are called internally displaced.
The flows are not simply poor to rich. In 2013, 38 percent of international migrants had moved between developing countries, and 23 percent between wealthy OECD nations. Almost half of all migrants are women, one of the largest shifts in the past half-century, and new research argues their reasons are more varied than the old assumption that they merely accompany men. Rankings by share of population look entirely different from rankings by absolute numbers, favouring much smaller countries.
Tracking all this takes several institutions. The World Bank issued editions of its Migration and Remittances Factbook in 2008, 2011 and 2016, and the International Organization for Migration has produced ten World Migration Reports since 1999. Research links migration with greater human capital for individuals and households, and some studies call it the most direct route out of poverty. Once people have moved, the networks they build make a second move easier.
Source: Human migration
