The Benefits And Negative Effects Of Migration For Countries

Migration is a problematic term to describe since it involves persons who travel through different spaces for multiple reasons. A migrant may be a person who travels within a nation to another city or town; a refugee who crosses a foreign border to avoid religious or political persecution. A migrant can also refer to a job seeker who moves for better economic opportunity to another country; a forcefully relocated slave; or a person displaced by war or natural disaster. However, several migration scholars have contributed to the concept of migration, considering migration scholars examine how host communities perceive and respond to immigration by studying migrant reception through surveys, which may include emotions surrounding the resettlement and support of migrants, multiculturalism and integration considerations, and attitudes towards government policies.

Human migration typically refers to people’s migration from one geographical location to another with the intent to live either permanently or temporarily. However, Baas and Yeoh (2019) assert that migration can be about not traveling at all in certain instances. King (2012) identifies migration as a phenomenon of space and time, identified by distance and time thresholds, while other scholars characterise migration as a phenomenon covering specific social, political, and economic issues (Maharaj, 2006). These descriptions make it easy to conclude that migration is still a controversial term and has many meanings depending on how the concept is interpreted or extended to unique contexts or conditions. Furthermore, migration can be classified as internal or external. The internal factors relate to the personal characteristics of migrants and potential migrants, while the external factors include social, economic, and political factors (Oyebamiji and Adeyoke, 2019).

Migration occurs as a result of push and pull factors. Push factors are characterised as reasons people leave an area, which can be voluntary or involuntary, while pull factors are characterised as reasons people are attracted to a particular geographical location (Baas and Yeoh, 2019). People may be pushed towards a particular geographical location due to crop failure due to infertile land or farming practices. Several scholars believe migration is an outcome of drought; however, drought will not necessarily cause migration. However, the lack of resources during drought events will cause people to migrate; war or political instability is also a push factor. The propensity of a government collapses either because of conflict or rampant competition between various political parties. Pull factors can be categorised as better employment opportunities, caused by the lack of employment opportunities in the current country or being paid a better salary than what one earns in the country of origin. Migration may also be necessary to experience a politically stable country to ensure a life without war or conflict. Better climate conditions and more thought island is another pull factor as they will be fewer crop failures and natural disasters.

Migration is seen as both an optimistic and damaging process, considering that it has adverse and beneficial effects on both sending and receiving countries—negative impacts of migration on sending countries, including brain drain and breaking up the family units. Brain drain results in the loss of talented individuals from the nation because when talented and outstanding individuals leave the country, others can surely replace their position but not their talent. Brain drain involves large scale migration of highly educated, skilled, and talented people from poor developing countries to highly affluent developed countries (). This results in the country suffering indirectly as not enough skilled individuals are left in the origin country to ensure work is completed efficiently, causing lower productivity rates and lower economic growth.

The consequence of migration on families, including the migrants and the ones left behind, is an issue overlooked by many scholars despite migration involving split families attract significant attention (Oyebamiji and Asuelime, 2018). Migrants usually leave their family members behind in the birth country because it is expensive for the entire family to move or because of strict immigration policies and uncertain conditions in the country, they migrate to. Although migrants send money back home to ensure their families’ survival, migration disrupts family life that could adversely affect their well-being and the household itself. Sending countries benefit from remittances as it is a form of foreign exchange and increases the currency value in the world monetary market. It provides families with a source of income, thus increasing per capita income. Sending countries also benefit from migration because unemployment is reduced, and migrants enhance their life prospects by migrating to any destination, searching for better opportunities. Returning migrants are also of value, considering they bring new skills and international contracts back to the country of origin.

Negative impacts of migration on receiving counties include increased populations, which put pressure on public services, increases unemployment rates, and the possibility of hate crimes (). Migration causes population increases, which puts pressure on education as only a limited amount of people can be enrolled at a school, which also puts pressure on educational funding. Migrants may reduce access to social housing for natives, further increasing by local authorities’ selling off housing stock. Population increases will also result in more facilities such as roads, houses, which will have adverse effects on the environment if developments occur unsustainably. Population increases create more competition for employment, making it tougher to find a job, and employers can hire employees for a lower wage since there are more applications than jobs available. This can also increase the occurrence of hate crimes as natives can react in the form of xenophobic attacks as migrants may receive the job they have applied for, which has been a severe issue in recent years. Therefore, many countries may be hesitant to accept migrants. Migration is beneficial to receiving countries as it helps improve people’s social lives as they learn about new cultures, customs, and languages, allowing the country to become diversified, which helps to improve brotherhood among people of the world. Migration can also bring new skills and ideas, which allows the country to prosper and develop.