Conf. univ. dr. Gheorghe Săvoiu Universitatea din Piteşti
Abstract
Economical and social indicators are created and published for national and regional dimensions. Nowadays, statistical indicators are really unable to define adequately the stage of migration in the demographic science. In the following ideas there are a few quantitative information, that have been offered by Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. A new dynamic and systematic vision in defining the new migration objectives, methods and their implementation too will be necessary in the very next future, connecting different people in different religious ideals, income levels etc. Thus, the need for new connections between durable development and migration will became obviously in the description of contemporary demographic phenomena and especially in the European migration.
Almost a century ago, Emille Durkheim considered the social cohesion, which he synthetically called “solidarity,” a purely moral notion on which the human society leans upon and he noticed that at that time there was neither a unitary definition of the concept nor the possibility of directly measuring it.
Considering the economic field an ideal, it seems that we have come to lose sight of the necessity of relating to the people around us, to norms, to principles, to values, without which we cannot be aware of either our failures or our successes.
Since the human being cannot become fully complete under conditions of isolation, the development itself cannot be considered durable as long as we do not take into consideration all the human needs, including those of affiliation, friendship, affectivity, in a word all the social needs that many times lie at the basis of the relational needs. Social cohesion is nowadays an important part of durable development too. In the report Brundtland, entitled “Our common future,”
presented at the Conference of the United Nations from Rio de Janeiro in 1987, this notion was presented for the first time and it became afterwards a concept for the conciliation between economy and the surrounding environment. Durable development defined as long-term interaction of the economic, human, environmental or environment protection and technology system, must ensure the meeting of the present’s needs without compromising the future generations’
capacity of defining and fulfilling their own needs. An important component of the durable development remains the human development, also reflected in the specific demographical shifts. Among the three essential requirements of people, we can mention a life expectancy as long as possible, a real symmetry of knowledge and
information, as well as a practical guaranteed access to the necessary resources for a decent life.
As long as an economic and geographical space does not allow the accomplishment of these three minimum requirements, the external migration becomes the only viable individual solution, sometimes extended to the family level, household or ethnical or religious group. The elaboration of theories in this field, although a main problem of the past century, tends to become the central demographical fear in the 21st century too, as a consequence of the increased interest for the research of the international migration, in the near future, redefined as the “era of migration.” From the gravitational theory (push-pull models) which considers migration as being a factor of spatial equilibrium, where the volume of a flux of international migration is defined as the result of the simultaneous action of both the distance and the number of the population from the two habitats, of origin and of destination, to the neoclassical economics theory, where the same flux of international migration is constituted into the balancing mechanisms of the internal deficiencies on the world market of the labor force and up to the new migration theories with reference to the ethnical economic enclave or to concepts of center and of periphery, respectively the theory of the dependence on the developed habitats (historical and structural tradition). The first of the new theories is related to the name of Oded Stark as first author of an approach which excludes the individual from the position of central element of the migration, replacing him with the household, followed by the theory of the segmented labor market, where the explanatory factors for the migration phenomenon in the creation of the labor force demand in the destination habitat are the structural inflation, the hierarchical motivational constraints or restrictions, the economic dualism or the parallel existence of two sectors discriminated in the economy of the destination habitat (one qualitatively superior, characterized by the stability of the work place, of the occupation and of the working conditions and the other qualitatively inferior, defined by instability, with uncertain occupations and difficult or dangerous working conditions), as well as the change of the replacement rate or the significant demographical change regarding the active population and yet unoccupied. As the theory shows exclusively the demand and not its balancing through offer, the presentation of an element of offer was necessary by identifying a third economic segment called element of “the economic ethnical enclave” generated by the companies owned by the emigrants, by A. Portes and K. Wilson. The direction of the dominant migration in the new theories becomes similar to the fluxes rural-urban, respectively periphery-center and the major attraction of the theory is suggestively entitled “the migration of the brains.” The best known representative of the world system theory, Immanuel Wallerstein has identified a historical process of internationalization focusing on the existence of three progressive strata
differentiated as importance on the international labor market: the central stratum or that of the dominant powers, the semi-peripheral stratum or that of the weakly developed states, and the peripheral stratum or that of the underdeveloped states.
The migrant networks theory represents the abstract product which is the most adequate for the most recent waves of international migration. The demographical literature details multiple terminological variants, from “migration network,” passing through “immigrants network,” to “personal network” or ”social network.” But no matter what the chosen variant is, the meaning which is kept is the same, respectively of interpersonal relationships which interconnect the emigrants, the ex emigrants and the non-emigrants in the habitat of origin and of destination through various relationships from those of kinship and friendship, to those regarding the spatial common origin or of primary ethnical group. Here, the approach of the migration is one determined by effects, and the process is of a self-kept and circular type. The systemic theory of the international migration claims that migration is better perceived by the careful analysis of the spatially delimited systems from the migration fluxes (Kritz M., Lim L., Zlotnik H.).
The migration fluxes are an important condition in the analysis of migration, and this fact leads to the inclusion of many other fluxes such are those of tourism and of going to study, within the new concept of migration system. In the last 45 years, the number of emigrants on international level was close to 200 million inhabitants and it became comparable as rhythm with the demographical surplus.
Figure no 1 The dynamic of the total number of emigrants in the period 1960 – 2005
– inhabitants –
Europe holds the first place both as volume and as mass in the total number of emigrants, after the year 1990, in comparison with Asia. The number of emigrants out of political reasons is spectacularly reduced and constant in the last four years, after the year 2001. The requests for asylum in the industrialized countries reduced themselves too as a consequence (in the year 2005 comparatively to 2004 they diminished with 15%, according to the data offered by the report of the UNO agency for the refugees).
The defining processes of the migration are the more rapid political and economic decline of the dominant systems of imperial/colonial type, the degradation of the surrounding environment, the rebirth of the forms of aggressive nationalism and the accelerated offensive of the contemporary fundamentalism, especially religious, next to the major economic changes towards globalization, not correlated with the territorial demographical growth. In this context, in Europe the single demographical projection substantially and constantly negative is signaled.
Figure no 2 The medium projection variant of the population of the world’s continents, between 2010 and 2050
– millions inhabitants –
"Europe’s destiny on its way towards the new horizons of the 21st century will be decided, first of all, on a demographical level " have written Anatole Romaniuc, a Canadian professor at the University from Alberta, born in Bucovina (Romania).
But not only Europe’s destiny, in different ways even World’s destiny too…
The projections in the optimistic variant anticipate for the years 2010, 2025, and 2050 much higher level for the world’s population of 6,903, of 8,337, and respectively of 10,646 billion inhabitants. Starting from the new reality of the demographic, migration or religious phenomenon and from the signal generated by the simultaneous analysis of the entrance or exit modalities (so called migration fluxes and religious fluxes), an useful system for new evaluations of different peoples mixtures of religious ideals or different people mixtures of income levels, for the approach of this demographical phenomenon integrated into the durable development is proposed for the demographic research in the very next future.
Thus, the need for new connections between durable development and migration will became obviously in the description of contemporary demographic phenomena and especially in European migration.
References:
1. Kritz. M.,Lim, L,Zlotnik, H.-International migration systems - a global approach, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992
2. Massey D.,Arango,J.,Graeme H.,Kouaouci A.,Pellegrino A.,Taylor E.,-Worlds in motion.
Understanding international migration at the end of the millennium, Clarendon Press., Oxford, 1998
3. Trebici V.- Small encyclopedia of demography, Ed. ştiinţifică şi enciclopedică, Bucharest, 1975
4. www. populationdata.net 5. www.esa.un.org/migration