The Life of Migrants and the Global Impact of Migration

We, Homo sapiens, have been driven a sense of adventure and a need for comfort, food, and security since we first started roaming the planet. Our ancestral species, Homo erectus, likely left its ancestral home of Africa more than two million years ago. We've always been very good at adapting to our environments, too; driven by evolution, early humans managed to change physical shape to survive and thrive in new places.

Over time, we developed universal needs. Everyone needs and craves, on a foundational level, such things as health, sustenance, security, safety, rest, understanding, connection, love, creativity, and belonging. It seems like the drive to migrate, often to attain these basic human needs, was baked into us from the very outset.

The United Nations Migration Agency defines a migrant as anyone who "moves across an international border" or "from his or her habitual place of residence," and if you take that into account, it immediately becomes clear that the human drive to keep moving far precedes any definition or the existence of international borders.

An Overview of the Types of Migration

We often distinguish between legal and illegal migrants, but in geographical terms, there are many more types of migration. All exist within complex processes, and no migrant decides to risk a permanent move in a vacuum. Here's a look at the most common types of migration:

• Chain migration. This is the process by which large groups of people move from one location to another, for various reasons. Irish immigrants who moved to the United States en masse are a good example of this.
• Cyclical migration. Cyclical migrants retain ties to their previous home and move back and forth, often for economic reasons but also for cultural reasons.
• Economic migration. Often condemned as illegitimate in modern culture, economic migrants pack up in search of better opportunities — or simply to make ends meet and stay alive. It's what brought many early migrants to the US, and it's what continues to drive many. We all want a better life, for us and our kids.
• Environmental migration. Now in the news due to climate change, this is nothing new, either. A changing environment is almost certainly what forced our earliest ancestors to leave Africa.
• External migration can simply be defined as movement from one sovereign territory to another, for various reasons. The country you move to will consider you an "immigrant," while the one you're leaving classes you as an "emigrant."
• Forced migration can be defined as a situation where people have to move or face dire consequences, including death. War, persecution, and climate change are examples of motivators.
• Internal migration is migration within one country.

Global Migration: Important Statistics

Did you know?

At any given time, in the modern world, more than 65 million people are forcibly displaced every year. The numbers go down in times of peace and prosperity, and up in times of conflict and need. More than 21 million seek refuge in another country after fleeing war or persecution every tear, and 40 million are internally displaced — forced to move to a different part of the same country.

Most forcefully displaced people, also called refugees, are in Africa — they make up 39 percent of the world's refugees. Only 12 percent come to the Americas (including those who started off there), and just six percent come to Europe.

What Kinds of Issues Do Migrants Face?

The world is a big place, and people migrate for numerous different reasons. So-called "expats," who move voluntarily in search of exciting economic opportunities, face radically different issues than asylum seekers, who are forced to leave their homes behind to attempt to seek safety elsewhere.

It is almost impossible to make blanket statements about the kinds of issues migrants face across the world, but common ones include:

• Having to learn a new language to be able to communicate with the people around you.
• The challenge of finding a new community and sense of belonging, including friends, in a different culture.
• Bureaucratic challenges surrounding the right to live in a particular place and to find work opportunities there.
• Getting used to a new culture, including all its social expectations, and overcoming stigma and discrimination.
• Accessing health care and staying healthy; migrants are less likely than people who have not migrated to be in optimal health.
• Raising children as a migrant, in a new culture you do not understand.
• Finding adequate housing as a migrant.

With the exception of healthcare, which expats and other wealthy voluntary migrants generally access readily, these are issues all international migrants and many regional migrants must confront. That is true regardless of their reason for migrating, and despite their socioeconomic background.

An English migrant to Spain, who hopes to retire in a warm country, struggles as much with learning a new language and adapting to a new culture as an Afghani migrant to the United States, who fled in search of a life free from oppression. However, a lack of choice makes the struggles migrants face more pressing and difficult to deal with, and a lack of money and other resources only adds to the struggle.

Regardless, one thing is clear. Unless you are African, you definitely come from migrants (and you probably come from migrants even if you are) — you, too, are the result of the universal human drive for a better life. Migration — packing up in search of survival and comfort — is what Homo sapiens does best, and it's what will continue to keep us alive as the planet becomes a more hostile place. Let's admire our collective tenacity and sense of hope, rather than condemning it.