Migration In Australia During The 20th Century

Migration is a basic and necessary human element. Throughout history it has played a vital role in human evolution. Migratory tendencies have brought together all the continents around the world helping to establish the modern world as we know it today. During the “Short” 20th Century we see a period that witnessed many mass migrations at the hands of several different factors. In this essay I will further discuss these factors and provide evidence. Also I will touch on some of the effects that migration has and how globalization goes hand in hand with migration.
Migration, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is defined as moving from one country, place, or locality to another. Migrating usually refers not to an individual or family

From this map a correlation between events such as war, religious oppression, and economic hardships. Starting with number 1 and 2 we see migration to the United States and Australia from Eastern Europe and Britain. This was of course due to World War One, “Great War”, which lasted from 28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918. Large amounts of people began to flee their countries so that they wouldn’t become a victim of war. Approximatly 12 million people were displaced in the aftermath of The Great War. Looking at numbers 4 and 11 we see migration in the time of two more substaintial wars, World War Two and the Cold War. This furthers the notion that war has a massive effect on migration patterns. Another thing to take note of is that war causes mostly all immigration rather than just migration within in the countries’ borders. People and families take drastic measures to make sure they don’t get caught up in armed conflict. They risk their entire lively hood and up and move to an entirely different

Mexico in the 1950’s was a struggling country due to government corruption, violence and an extremely uneven distrupution of wealth. The United States on the other hand had just came out on the victorious end of the Second World War. Citizens of Mexico realizing how prosperous the US could be for them took advantage and crossed the border both legally and illegally. To approximate the number of immigrants from Mexico in the 1950’s would be very foolish for obvious reasons. In 8 and 9 we see movement to the UK, Spain, France and Italy. These migrants coming from the West Indies and North Africa. Europe in the 1950s had a big problem with a labor shortage. This being partially due to the large numbers of loss of life in WWII. Migration from the West Indies and North Africa provided the opportunity to solve the labor crisis and at a cheap expense.
The 20th Century migration flow map above has a weakness in that it only shows immigration for the first two-thirds of the century. Also referencing back to the definition of migration the map show no migration that occurred within one countries borders. It is strictly focused on that of international