What Drives Human Migration?
Why do people migrate? This is a simple and a difficult question. On the one hand, it seems reasonable to assume that most people migrate hoping to find better conditions or opportunities, such as jobs, higher wages, safety or freedom of expression. This is the implicit assumption underlying the ‘push-pull’ models taught at secondary school as well as neo-classical migration theories. Most migrants have good reasons to move. However, this does not really help us to understand the complexity and drivers of real life migration.