Emigration is a process whereby natives of a certain country leave their country to settle in another country. Immigration is the same as emigration, where emigrants settle in your native land. There are many reasons why people choose to emigrate. The factors that motivates migration can be categorised into two: pull factors and push factors. Pull factors are incentives that attract migrants to other countries. Among these are: job opportunities, cheap purchase of land, better pay, better scchools, political and economic freedom just to mention but a few. The push factors are: famine and drought, war, political instability, cultural and tribal conflicts, lack of employment opportunities and increased poverty rates among others. More often, most emigrants return to their homelands only after they have earned enough money from the other countries.
Effects of emigration and immigration
Emigration has variuos effects on different levels and elements of a country. Both positive and negative effects are evident and clear on a country’s well being. The effects boil down to the family units of a country. In this essay I shall emphasise more on how emigration and immigration affects the family units.
Immigrants residing in their new country begin creation of a new family life which is influenced by both past cultural customs and beliefs and the new ways of the unfamiliar country. Such families must intergrate and assimilate the new ways of life in the country. By doing this, the families tend to give up their home culture and adopt to the new and dominant culture of their new habitat. These forces the immigrant families to forget their traditions and acquire the new ways of living in the new country.
Young immigrants, mainly women may incorporate western values so as to represent independence or freedom from some traditional roles. Women who are considered to be mothers of a new generation are expected to raise children who will understand and appreciate their traditional cultural values as they adjust into the new setting . However, this is usually not the case as the women are not closely monitored and do not receive reinforcement of cultural roles from the extended community. Their offsprings therefore grow up without really understanding their roots.
Overpopulation is another result of emigration. More often people will emigrate to more industrialised countries and start new families . This results to increase in population in the urban centres, which leads to urbanization. Industries crop up in the urban centres and hence creation of job opportunities. This improves the lives of families, because industries need labour and the families provide for the cheap labour. However, the downside is that the costs of living escalate increasingly and many families find that life is miserable in urban centres, because little money is kept aside for savings. This is due to high inflation rates as a result of increase in population.
Overpopulation results from influx of people to urban areas, decrease in death rate as a result of medical research to fight diseases and lack of family planning mechanisms. This is a disadvantage since many people nowadays tend to migrate to migrate to urban centres in search of jobs only to congest the towns.
Migration has an effect on the social, cultural, economical and political structure of a country. Migrations have an effect on family life in terms of the structure of the family. Attributes of the family structure like social roles, decision making and family types, women’s contribution to the economy and savings change with migration. This is of great importance in creating social integrity and achieving a healthy social life in the society.
New immigrants are often assissted by other family members especially in cases where immigrants have limited financial resources. If immediate extended families are not available, other family networks are formed whivh mainly constitute of unrelated individuals. They view each other as family and usually assist each other in times of difficult. Immigrants will also marry and intermarry. This is usually aimed at creating strong kingship ties. When they create this ties, they are assured that they can get assisstance when need be, in times of difficulty. This creates a sense of belonging and will ensure that in case of any emergency, they will have somwhere to run to. Family businesses serve to give economic support for the families and employment opportunities for the immigrants.
Developing countries like african countries face brain drain. Their elite population emigrate to developed countries in search of greener pastures. This affects the family since the emigrant is detached from the family. The developing countries will lose out because the manpower is transferred to other countries, which would be efficiently tapped into the economy. The good thing is that the emigrants return to their homeland after working in other countries and coupled with the experience that they have they can change the lives of their natives.
Developed countries on the other hand benefit from immigration because they get cheap and available labour. These are usually low wage jobs that immigrants fill up, but when the money is transferred to their native land, it is usually substantial to help uplift the lifestyles of the family members back at home. But immigration has very little effect on jobs and wage avaiability for native workers. Immigrants usually send back remittances back to their native lands. This money improves the economy of the immigrants original home country and also improves the lives of their family members back at home. The economic benefit of sending immigrants to other countries is usually remittances.
Migrations between countries are an advantage to the people of developing countries, because they learn new ideas from immigrants from developed countries. They implement these ideas into income generating schemes that they rely on, to eke out a living. New technological ideas are nurtured and transferred from the native developed countries to the under- developed countries. This improves the business environments in countries. Migration also builds close ties and links between countries to that result in business partners in the long term. This is achieved by maintaining good relations among dignitaries representing the different countries.
In conclusion emigration and immigration has both the advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include learning of new cultures, job oppportunities, education and others. Some of the disadvantages include overcrowding, high costs of living in urban centres, sprouting of slums due to living costs and many more. Families are affected by this migrations because the family ties become lose and traditional values and cultures are lost, this is due to westernization. Native families also benefit from remittances that are sent back from other destinations by their family members. Migration also tends to build networks and relations with diverse people from different countries. Countries establish close links between each other and can even become business partners by exchange goods and services. This can be realized through importation and exportation of goods. Emigration and immigration also helps in buiding economies. This is realized through creation of jobs, finding business ventures and exploring mineral resources that can be used to generate energy. As a result migration is seen as a healthy way of interacting and learning from new people and should be encouraged because the merits outweigh the demerits.