Migration Theory

1. Ravenstein

Ravenstein put forward what have been termed the Laws of Migration, in the 1880s, based on observation of patterns in Great Britain, supplemented by data from the United States:

• most migrants travel short distances;
• migration proceeds step by step;
• longer distance migrants prefer to go to great centres of commerce or industry;
• each stream of migration produces a counter-stream;
• urban dwellers are less migratory than people in rural areas;
• females are more migratory than males in internal migration, but males are more common in international migration;
• large towns owe more of their growth to migration than natural increase;
• the volume of migration increases with the development of industry and commerce and as transport improves;
• most migration is from the agricultural areas to centres of commerce and industry;
• the main causes of migration are economic.

2. Stouffer

Stouffer suggested that the level of movement between two places is dependent on the number of intervening opportunities between them. Intervening opportunities are the nature and number of possible alternative migration destinations which may exist between place A (migration origin) and place B (migration destination). An essential feature of this model is that the nature of places, rather than distance, is more important in determining where migrants go. People will move from place A to place B based on the real, or the perceived, opportunity at place B (e.g. work). According to Stouffer, therefore, the number of people moving over a given distance is directly proportional to the number of opportunities at that distance, and inversely proportional to the number of intervening opportunities.

3. Lee

Lee tried to explain the factors affecting migration in terms of the positive and negative characteristics of both the origin and destination. Migrants must expect to receive some added advantage in moving from one place to another. Also, potential movements from an origin ( such as a rural area) to a final destination (such as a city) are likely to be influenced by obstacles at either source or destination, or en route. Such obstacles might include family pressures, mis-information, national policy, travel costs, lack of capital, illiteracy, military service and language. Lee was a sociologist and realised that the same feature might be perceived differently by different individuals - some might welcome the opportunity to live in a large city, with all the facilities it might offer, whereas others might find it cramped and depressing.

4. Zelinsky

Zelinsky suggested that there might be a transition to patterns of migration just as there is for demographic change. In his model there are five stages:

(i) in a pre-industrial society there is little residential migration and limited movement between areas;

(ii) an early transitional stage of considerable rural-urban migration and the colonization of new lands, with the associated growth of longer distance migration (often in the form of emigration);

(iii) in the third stage, rural - urban migration continues and there is a rapid rise in migration between cities;

(iv) rural - urban migration may continue but at a markedly reduced rate; residential migration remains high, but in the form of migration in and between cities rather than emigration. There may be some immigration of unskilled workers, and highly trained professional workers may be exchanged between countries as a result of the operations of multi-national companies;

(v) Advanced societies will have almost exclusively inter- or intra- urban migration although new technology will reduce the need for migration and there will be less need for some types of circulation such as long-distance journeys-to-work. Mobility between and within countries may be affected by state legislation.