Migration

    Migration is the movement from one place to another. The Net Migration Rate, NMR for short, is the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country each year. There is immigration and emigration. Emigration is the excess of people who are leaving the country. When measuring this, it is written in a negative number. Immigration is the excess of people who are entering the country. This is written in a positive number. For example, Canada has 5.65 migrants per 1,000 population while Mexico has -3.11 migrants per 1,000 population. When people migrate, they want to leave their country and go somewhere else. Push forces are things that make the people want to leave the country. One way that you can remember this is by thinking that these things are physically pushing these citizens out of their country and making them not want to live their anymore. Some push forces are civil wars, environmental degradation, unemployment or underemployment, and religious or ethnic persecution. Pull forces are things that attract others to a country. You can think of these forces as physically pulling them into their country and having them stay there. Some pull forces are better economic opportunities, better health services, religious freedoms, and political freedoms. There is also a thing called the Total Fertility Rate, or TFR. The Total Fertility Rate is the average number of children born per woman. In order for a population to remain the same, the TFR must be at least 2.1. The higher the rate, the more the population increases. The lower the rate, the more the population decreases. In each country, there is a different TFR. For example, in the United States the TFR is about 2.6 while in Nigeria the average rate is about 5.38. In certain places around the world, the Total Fertility Rate is higher because parents tend to have more children in case one of their children die at a young age. A lot of children don’t live long enough to see their first birthday due to malnutrition or from a disease that they picked up and didn't have the right medication to cure themselves. It’s actually a really sad thing when you think about it because it’s like the parents are expecting at least one of their kids to die and to not live as long as they hope they would live.