Migrating people

Human migration is movement (physical or psychological) by humans from one district to another, sometimes over long distances or in large groups. (www.wikipedia.com)

Why do people migrate - there are a number of different reasons why people migrate from one place to another. The need to escape from persecution through war and ethnic cleansing, extreme poverty and hunger, slavery and displacement or financial gain.

Migrant Mother 1936, Dorothea Lange




"Nipomo, Calif. March 1936.
Migrant agricultural worker's family.
Seven hungry children and their
mother,aged 32. The father
is a native Californian."


Click on link below to read the article by Dorothea Lange about her encounter with the migrant mother.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/migrantmother.htm








Net migration rates for 2008: positive (blue), negative (orange), stable (green), and no data (gray)



BBC News Article -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/world/04/migration/html/migration_boom.stm

As part of our series on global migration, BBC News Online looks at the numbers of people migrating, where they are going and some of the implications of migration. Over the past 15 years, the number of people crossing borders in search of a better life has been rising steadily. At the start of the 21st Century, one in every 35 people is an international migrant. If they all lived in the same place, it would be the world's fifth-largest country.

'Is it possible to find a dwelling, a place within the world, while moving across it? We are fixated with property claims and the possibility of embedding ourselves and of finding our identity in our surroundings. But if identity itself is fluid, the identity of place as much as that of ourselves, is it not natural to be in a constant state of movement rather than standing still? In a world of global exchange, perhaps we are all of us moving'. Dean/ Millar 2005:149) Society draws a circle. Those inside conform, and those at the edge either change or step outside to join those who don’t fit in. From the inside it can be difficult to see those on the outside, often hidden away. Invisible, yet co-existing in the same space. In this chapter I shall attempt to uncover this distinction. To identify those who choose to live outside the constraints of society, to uncover the spaces they identify as their own, and to break down the cultural myths associated with gypsies, travellers and nomadic/alternative lifestyles. Is the dominant ideology of our society shared by such people and to what extent do they consider themselves outside of the circle? The history of various groups hitherto known to wander from space to space. The folklore and traditions of days gone by, long forgotten to many but continued by some.