Migration: types, causes, patterns & impacts

Every Namibian family knows the story of someone who left the village for Windhoek, or crossed the border to work in South Africa. In this AS lesson we learn to see that movement like a geographer. We define migration and sort it into types — voluntary or forced, internal or international — and name the two groups it creates, refugees and economic migrants. We uncover the constraints, obstacles and barriers that stand in a migrant's way, then explain the push and pull factors that cause people to move, using Lee's migration model to tie origin, obstacles and destination together. We study the processes of step and chain migration and the patterns of who moves, by age, gender, family structure and economic status. Then we follow one real international migration stream as our case study — the century-long cross-border labour migration to South Africa's mines — before weighing the geographical implications for the source areas that lose people and the destination areas that gain them, from remittances and ageing villages to overcrowded, fast-growing Windhoek.