GED Social Studies Human Migration and Population Summary

Emigration is leaving your home country. Immigration is coming into a new country. The same person is an emigrant from the old country and an immigrant to the new one.

Wrong choices

• Visiting another country on vacation: A short visit is travel, not migration.
• Moving into a new country to live there: Moving into a new country is immigration. Emigration is the leaving.
• Moving to a different neighborhood in the same city: Moving within a city is not leaving your country.

Push factors are problems that cause people to leave, such as war, persecution, natural disasters, or lack of jobs. Pull factors attract people to a new place, such as jobs, freedom, safety, or family.

Wrong choices

• Reasons that draw people to a new place, such as good jobs: Reasons that draw people to a new place are pull factors.
• Reasons people choose to stay where they are: Push factors are about why people leave, not why they stay.
• Laws that make moving illegal: Push factors are conditions that drive people out, not laws against moving.

Cultural diffusion is the spread of ideas, foods, music, language, and customs from one group to another. Trade, travel, migration, and media all help cultures spread.

Wrong choices

• Diaspora: A diaspora is a group of people scattered from their homeland, not the spread of a food.
• Urbanization: Urbanization is the growth of cities.
• Assimilation: Assimilation is when a person or group takes on the culture of a new society. Pizza spreading worldwide is a custom moving between cultures.

During the Great Migration, factory jobs in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and New York pulled people north and west. Segregation, Jim Crow laws, violence, and few opportunities pushed them out of the South.

Wrong choices

• Colder weather in the North: Colder weather was not a reason people moved north.
• Jim Crow laws in the South: Jim Crow laws pushed people out of the South, so they were a push factor, not a pull factor.
• Farm jobs in the South: Farm jobs in the South were in the place people were leaving.

Assimilation happens when immigrants and their families gradually adopt the language and customs of their new country. It often happens over generations.

Wrong choices

• Segregation: Segregation is the forced separation of groups.
• Cultural diffusion: Cultural diffusion is a custom spreading from one culture to others. This example is about a family adopting a new culture.
• Emigration: Emigration is leaving a country. The example is about what happened after arrival.

Compare the first and last rows: about 40% in 1900 and about 81% in 2010. Since 40 x 2 = 80, the urban share roughly doubled. This long shift from farms and small towns to cities is called urbanization.

Wrong choices

• Most Americans lived in rural areas in 1950: In 1950, about 64% lived in urban areas, so most people were urban, not rural.
• The rural share grew faster than the urban share: The urban share grew, so the rural share shrank.
• The urban share went down between 1950 and 2010: The urban share went up, from about 64% to about 81%.

A diaspora is a group of people who have spread out from their original homeland to many other places, while keeping a connection to it. The Irish, African, and Jewish diasporas are well-known examples.

Wrong choices

• Urban sprawl: Urban sprawl is the spreading of cities into nearby land.
• Assimilation: Assimilation is about adopting a new culture. The passage stresses how the communities spread across many countries.
• A cultural region: A cultural region is one connected area. These communities are spread across many countries.