How many theories of migration are there

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Similarly, though rural population in the less developed parts of the world is more mobile than its counterpart in the urban areas, migration in the economically developed countries is more likely to be urban to rural than in the opposite direction. One of the most important contributions of geography in the field of migration analysis is with respect to the relationship between distance and migration.

A clear and persistent inverse relationship between the two has been established in several studies Woods, In other words, migration is directly proportional to the product of their population size and inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating them. The model was initially proposed by the exponents of social physics in the nineteenth century, and was later revived in the middle of the twentieth century Johnston et al, The index of migration between two centres according to this model can be expressed as follows:.

Finally, K is a constant. Besides in the area of migration analysis, the model has been used to account for a wide variety of flow patterns in human geography like telephone traffic, passenger movements, commodity flows etc. It was W. Reilley who had first applied the law of gravitation in to the retail trade of a city centre Srivastava, John Q. In , G. Zipf, an economist, used this empirical generalization in his principle of least effort in human behaviour while explaining the movement of people between two centres.

Later, using the basic principles of gravity model, Stewart and Warnz developed the concept of population potential. Population potential of an urban centre is the potential exerted on it by a series of centres in the region. Thus population potential exerted on point i equals the sum of the ratios of the population of points j to k-1, to the distance between point i and all the points j to k The concept of population potential depicts the average access to population and as such summarizes very simply the changing gravity of a population distribution Woods, Gravity model later attracted severe criticism.

Doubts have been raised regarding the validity of population size as a potential force for attraction. Use of simple linear distance, rather than distance measured in terms of transport routes and facilities, frequency of movement and cost of transport, is another weak point of the model. It has, therefore, been suggested that the model is too simple to account for a complex phenomenon like migration. According to P. These modifications relate to the introduction of some weights to the population size and use of distance in social and economic, rather than geometric, terms.

Stouffer introduced one such modification in Stouffer, an American sociologist, introduced one such modification in the gravity model. Instead, the observed decline in the volume of migration is due to an increase in the number of intervening opportunities with increasing distance.

Stouffer modified his theory of migration and intervening opportunities in the mids and added the concept of competing migrants in his model. His modified theory of mobility was published in The revised model proposes that during a given time interval, the number of migrants from city 1 to city 2 is the direct function of the number of opportunities in city 2, and an inverse function of the number of opportunities intervening between city 1 and city 2, and the number of other migrants for the opportunities in city 2.

Thus, the revised formulation would read as under Galle and Taeuber, :. It may be realized here that the volume of migration from one city to another is the function of as much the attraction of one city as the repulsion from the other. The final formulation may be expressed as under:.

Likewise, the measure of number of opportunities in city 2 X 1 is defined as the total in-migrants in city 2, whereas the measure of intervening opportunities between city 1 and city 2 X 2 is defined as the total number of in-migrants in a circle centred mid-way between city 1 and city 2, and having a diameter equal to the distance between the two cities. And, finally, the measure of competing migrants X c is defined as the total number of out-migrants from a circle centred on city 2 with the distance between the two cities as its radius.

Everett Lee proposed another comprehensive theory of migration in He begins his formulations with factors, which lead to spatial mobility of population in any area.

According to Lee, each place possesses a set of positive and negative factors. While positive factors are the circumstances that act to hold people within it, or attract people from other areas, negative factors tend to repel them Lee, In addition to these, there are factors, which remain neutral, and to which people are essentially indifferent. While some of these factors affect most of the people in the area, others tend to have differential effects.

Migration in any area is the net result of the interplay between these factors. Theories of migration are important because they can help us understand population movements within their wider political and economic contexts. For example, if outmigration from Third World nations is shown to be a result of economic problems caused by the global economy, then such migration could be managed with better international economic agreements instead of restrictive immigration acts.

Indeed, rather than slowing Mexican in-migration to the United States, termination of the bracero program actually increased the amount of illegal immigration because it exacerbated Mexican poverty. Ernest Ravenstein is widely regarded as the earliest migration theorist. Ravenstein, an English geographer, used census data from England and Wales to develop his "Laws of Migration" He concluded that migration was governed by a "push-pull" process; that is, unfavorable conditions in one place oppressive laws, heavy taxation, etc.

Ravenstein's laws stated that the primary cause for migration was better external economic opportunities; the volume of migration decreases as distance increases; migration occurs in stages instead of one long move; population movements are bilateral; and migration differentials e.

Many theorists have followed in Ravenstein's footsteps, and the dominant theories in contemporary scholarship are more or less variations of his conclusions. Everett Lee reformulated Ravenstein's theory to give more emphasis to internal or push factors. Lee also outlined the impact that intervening obstacles have on the migration process.