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Editorial for International Migration 56‐4

Document Cited in Related
Published date01 August 2018
Date01 August 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12492
AuthorHoward Duncan
Editorial for International Migration 56-4
One of the quests of academic researchers in the migration f‌ield has been to establish a theory of
migration, one that approaches a universality of application. The ambition of universality is familiar
to those in the natural sciences where universal explanations in the simplest possible terms have
long been sought. For natural scientists, physicists especially, the ideal was to be found in the
deductive simplicity of Euclid’s geometry which was rooted in a set of def‌initions, postulates, and
common notions that together gave rise to the conclusions or propositions, as he called them. Simi-
larly, Isaac Newton grounded his physics in a set of eight def‌initions and three laws of motion.
Einstein, too, sought a universal and simple account of all motion and forces, including at the level
of sub-atomic particles, in a unif‌ied f‌ield theory, a search that was unfulf‌illed by him but that con-
tinues today. The hope of discovering explanations of phenomena that appealed to the smallest
number of basic principles possible has become a common feature of much of scientif‌ic theory,
and the same seems to hold true of our aim to understand human migration.
The geographer and cartographer, Ernst Georg Ravenstein, born in Germany in 1834 and who
migrated to England in 1852, formulated a set of laws of migration in the late 1800s. They are
often reproduced as follows:
1 The majority of migrants move only a short distance in any one migration.
2 Migration proceeds step-by-step.
3 Each current of migration produces a counter current.
4 Females are more migratory than males within the county of their birth, but males more fre-
quently venture beyond that county boundary.
5 Most migrants are adults; families rarely migrate out of their county of birth.
6 Migrants moving long distances generally go by preference to the great centres of commerce
or industry.
7 The natives of towns are less migratory than those of rural areas.
8 Large towns grow more by migration than birth rate.
9 Migration increases as industries and commerce develop and transport improves.
10 The major direction of migration is from agricultural to industrial or commercial centres.
11 The major cause of migration is economic
Many of the push-pull explanations of migration with which we are so familiar are historically
grounded in these basic points of Ravenstein. The inf‌luence of Newton is evident in the Gravity
Model of migration that is so often used in econometric analyses, and the ambition for simplicity is
evident, too, in Stark and Bloom’s New Economics of Labour Migration (1985).
These sorts of theoretical approaches to migration are increasingly being complemented by
empirical studies of actual decision-making by migrants, studies that reveal an often messy and
complex process that the theorists among us will need to capture. The “migration environment”
within which migration decisions are made has become arguably more complex owing, for exam-
ple, to the technologies of globalization that have reduced the costs of migration, both f‌inancial and
social, led to more multiple migration patterns, provided greatly increased information to potential
migrants about destinations, rules and regulations governing regular migration, and offers of
Dr. Howard Duncan, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
doi: 10.1111/imig.12492
©2018 The Author
International Migration ©2018 IOM
International Migration Vol. 56 (4) 2018
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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